Building Networks for Critical and Altruistic Science Education

This edited volume provides theory-based accounts, often with practical examples, of how educators from various jurisdictions in elementary, secondary, and tertiary formal education contexts, as well as community-based situations, have helped students critically evaluate the relationships among science, technology (STEM), society, and the environment. The goal is to develop and implement personal and sociopolitical actions to address concerns. Collectively, the perspectives and examples in the chapters form an expanding Foucauldian dispositif countering hegemonic mechanisms that favor a few elites at the expense of the wellbeing of most other living and nonliving things. Many accounts draw on the STEPWISE project, illustrating how (a)biotic and symbolic actants have been progressively assembled to promote more critical and altruistic citizenship.

John Lawrence (Larry) Bencze (PhD, MSc, BSc, BEd) is an Associate Professor Emeritus in Science Education at the University of Toronto, Canada (1998-present). Prior to this role, he worked for fifteen years as a science teacher and as a science education consultant in Ontario, Canada. His research programme emphasizes critical analyses — drawing on history, philosophy, sociology, etc. — of science and technology, explicit teaching about problematic power relations and student-led research-informed and negotiated socio-political actions to address personal, social and environmental harms associated with fields of science and technology.