Becoming alive within science education (research): thinking with life history(ies), bodies and stickiness

Abstract

In life history methodologies, ‘human’ lives appear to take primacy over other lives. Within science education literature, life history methods often are approached as reflective tools to make meaning out of teachers’ pedagogical practices and commitments. In the present research, we tinker with life history research, to follow its performative work in (re-)producing what counts as life, nature, science and science education. Thinking with life history(ies), bodies and stickiness, we analyze a college instructor’s (Nurul) life with others. Nurul is committed to a science pedagogical approach (‘STEPWISE’) centered on STSE education for social and environmental justice. This paper relays what was (re-)produced when Nurul’s life narrative, and our own encounters with life history methodologies were plugged into one another. Analytically, we discuss stickiness of humanist and meaning-making practices in life history methodologies and how this might have enabled/complicated our analyses of Nurul’s life history. We invite further analyses into productive aspects of life history(ies) and how they might gesture to pedagogical possibilities for being/living differently within nature, science and science education.