Attending to adversarial science communication: a commentary on Lewenstein and Baram-Tsabari’s vision of science communication education

Abstract

ABSTRACT Unlike K-12 science teachers who can turn to national documents such as the Next Generation Science Standards for guidance on what knowledge and skills are central to their disciplines, university educators who set out to teach science communication are faced with the challenge of having to develop/implement a curriculum without the benefit of a well-established disciplinary core. In the present commentary, we discuss how the framework proposed by Lewenstein and Baram-Tsabari’s (2022) begins to address this issue by taking a first step toward the articulation of a blueprint of science communication education. The commentary is organized as follows. First, Lewenstein and Baram-Tsabari’s (2022) article is considered in light of prior work by other science communication scholars. Attention then shifts to what our own research has revealed as an important absence in Lewenstein and Baram-Tsabari’s (2022) framework, namely the lack of attention given to training in adversarial science communication (e.g. addressing pseudoscience online, public debates). We then end by suggesting ways to attend to this issue, while emphasizing the need for continued field-wide (re)formulation of a common educational vision in/for the teaching and learning of science communication.