Chemistry Education and the Post-constructivist Perspective of Bruno Latour

Abstract

Using Bruno Latour’s framework of a “collective of humans and nonhumans”, this paper presents an analysis of chemistry instruction in a high school curriculum and professional development setting to present the chemistry education community with a new way to think about reality and knowledge construction and, at the same time, to reconsider the contentious problem of constructivism and realism in chemistry education. Latour’s notion of science as a process where humans and nonhumans produce knowledge in “construction sites” enables a research and commentary project where, through the methodology of narrative case study, four different parts of Latour’s framework are considered: (1) mobilization of the world into scientific activity, (2) the use of procedures that act as “speech prostheses” where nonhumans can enter discourse, (3) the depiction of a process where small steps enable the activity of materials to circulate into the knowledge structures of the classroom, and (4) a process where humans and nonhumans have new identities constructed and stabilized through the mutual exchange of their properties. This paper presents Latour’s ideas through the research question: “What are empirical examples from chemistry education of the operation of Latour’s framework of a concept of collective of humans and nonhumans in knowledge construction?” These results support a conclusion where Latour’s collective of humans and nonhumans has the potential to support new ways to think about research and practice in chemistry education, including in ways that align with emerging feminist materialist research.