Increasing the number of feminist scientists: why feminist aims are not served by the Underdetermination Thesis

Recent feminist philosophers of science have argued that feminist values can contribute to rational decisions about which scientific theories to accept. On this view, increasing the number of feminist scientists is important for ensuring rational and objective theory acceptance. The Underdetermination Thesis has played a key role in arguments for this view [Anderson (1995) Hypatia 10(3), 50–84; Hankinson Nelson (1990) Who knows? From Quine to a feminist empiricism. Temple University Press, Philadelphia; Longino (1990) Science as social knowledge. Princeton University Press, Princeton; Longino (2002) The fate of knowledge. Princeton University Press, Princeton; Kourany (2003) Philosophy of Science 70, 1–14]. This thesis is alleged to open an argumentative “gap” between evidence and theory acceptance and provide a rationale for filling the gap with feminist values. While I agree with the conclusion that feminist values can contribute to rational decisions about which theories to accept, I argue that the Underdetermination Thesis cannot support this claim. First, using earlier arguments [Laudan (1990) in: R. Giere (ed) Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science, vol 14, pp 267–297; Slezak (1991) International Studies in Philosophy of Science 5, 241–256; Pinnick (1994) Philosophy of Science 61, 664–657] I show that Underdetermination cannot, by itself, establish that feminist values should fill the gap in theory acceptance. Secondly, I argue that the very use of the Underdetermination Thesis concedes that feminist values are extra-scientific, a-rational, factors in theory acceptance. This concession denies feminists grounds to explain why their values contribute to rational scientific reasoning. Finally, I propose two alternative ways to explain how feminist values can contribute to rational theory acceptance that do not rely on Underdetermination.

The Impact of an Engineering Design Curriculum on Science Reasoning in an Urban Setting

This study examines the use of engineering design to facilitate science reasoning in high-needs, urban classrooms. The Design for Science unit utilizes scaffolds consistent with reform science instruction to assist students in constructing a design solution to satisfy a need from their everyday lives. This provides a meaningful context in which students could reason scientifically. Eighth grade students from two urban schools participated in the unit. Both schools contained large percentages of racial/ethnic minority and economically disadvantaged students. Students demonstrated statistically significant improvement on a paper-and-pencil, multiple-choice pre and post assessment. The results compare favorably with both a high-quality inquiry science unit and a traditional textbook curriculum. Implications for the use of design-based curricula as a viable alternative for teaching science reasoning in high-needs, urban settings are discussed.

Three Kinds of Political Engagement for Philosophy of Science

In responding to critics and reviewers of my book, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science, I attempt to identify some misleading conventional wisdom about the place of values in philosophy of science and then offer three distinct ways in which philosophers of science can engage their work with ongoing social and political currents.

On pigs and packers: Radically contextualizing a practice of science with Mexican immigrant students

This paper reports on instructional practices observed in a high school English Learner (EL) Science course serving newcomer Mexican immigrant youth. The school is located in a rural Midwestern meatpacking community in which labor at the hog plant is economically- and racially-segmented; it is the town’s Mexican residents, many of them undocumented, who comprise most of the unskilled labor force. The general purpose of the paper is to document how the economic and racial context of this community influences science instruction in the EL Science course and to describe how this presents particular challenges in achieving equitable science instruction for Mexican immigrant youth in these rural, globalizing places. Entering the data via critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) and then utilizing Barton’s (2003) “practice of science” perspective, with an eye toward achieving “radical contextuality” (Grossberg, 1997), we describe the science events, identities, and structures of the pig dissection lesson and detail how what these students could do with science, as rendered by that lesson, was limited by the roles the teacher attributed to the students, her inability to draw on their funds of knowledge as resources for learning, and the voice and position she allowed them to take up. The data reinforce conventional understandings of schools as sites of cultural reproduction (Bowels & Gintis, 1976), as well as of resistance (Giroux, 1983), but afford us a glimpse of the particularity of those mechanisms within the demographically-transitioning American Heartland, iconic of the era of global capitalism.

Understanding Scientific Methodology in the Historical and Experimental Sciences via Language Analysis

A key focus of current science education reforms involves developing inquiry-based learning materials. However, without an understanding of how working scientists actually do science, such learning materials cannot be properly developed. Until now, research on scientific reasoning has focused on cognitive studies of individual scientific fields. However, the question remains as to whether scientists in different fields fundamentally rely on different methodologies. Although many philosophers and historians of science do indeed assert that there is no single monolithic scientific method, this has never been tested empirically. We therefore approach this problem by analyzing patterns of language used by scientists in their published work. Our results demonstrate systematic variation in language use between types of science that are thought to differ in their characteristic methodologies. The features of language use that were found correspond closely to a proposed distinction between Experimental Sciences (e.g., chemistry) and Historical Sciences (e.g., paleontology); thus, different underlying rhetorical and conceptual mechanisms likely operate for scientific reasoning and communication in different contexts.

The Role of Doctoral Advisors: A Look at Advising from the Advisor’s Perspective

The doctoral advisor is said to be one of the most important persons—if not the single most critical person—with whom doctoral students will develop a relationship during their doctoral degree programs (Baird 1995). However, we have limited knowledge regarding how doctoral advisors see their roles and responsibilities as advisors. Therefore, through in-depth interviews, we explored the perceptions of 25 exemplary doctoral advisors, who have graduated a large number of doctoral students, about their roles and responsibilities as advisors. We conclude this article with implications for doctoral education.

Between Local Culture and School Science: The Case of Provincial and Urban Students from Eastern Colombia

A lack of congruency between the teaching and learning of science and the student’s personal worlds has long been recognised by the international science education community as an issue deserving space in the research agenda. The purpose of this study was to explore the diversity of student reactions when subcultures such as family, community peers, and personal worldviews are considered along side the subculture of school science. Two-hundred and fifty students from urban and provincial schools in the northeastern region of Colombia (South America) participated. From this group, 18 students were interviewed. It was observed that students adopt a compartmentalisation of knowledge that is evident as both an avoiding strategy in the classroom and as a mechanism to differentiate between the natural world of their everyday situations and the one portrayed by a Westernised science instruction in the classroom. The findings reflect how multiple worldviews correlate with student frameworks as implanted by school science.

Roger Osborne (1940–1985), University of Waikato, New Zealand

This short paper outlines the emergence and achievements of the Science Education Research Unit at the University of Waikato over the period 1979–1985 under the leadership of the late Dr. Roger Osborne. Following his attendance at the ASERA meeting in Wagga Wagga in 1977, Roger Osborne rapidly built up a very productive team, which he led until his death in 1985. His legacy is tentatively evaluated. In conclusion, the cultural context in which this work took place is sketched.

Sreyashi Jhumki Basu: Building a more equitable world through science education

Dr. Sreyashi Jhumki Basu was a scholar committed to equity and social justice in science education who passed away in December 2008. In this essay, I describe Jhumki’s research and the call to action her life’s work has laid out for the science education community. In particular, I draw attention to the role of critical science agency in learning and the democratic science pedagogy model that Jhumki developed to support students in crafting such agency.

The Contribution of Trade Books to Early Science Literacy: In and Out of School

Lifelong science literacy begins with attitudes and interests established early in childhood. The use of trade books (i.e., a literary work intended for sale to the general public) in North American school classrooms to support the development of science literacy invites an examination of the quality of science content disseminated to students. A total of 116 trade books were examined to: (a) determine the degree to which science trade books complement expected science knowledge outcomes outlined in school curricula, and (b) compare trade book content to the goals of scientific literacy. Analysis across four science topics, Dinosaurs, Space, Inheritance, and Growth and Life Properties, revealed that this body of children’s literature is inconsistent in its coverage of curricular goals and elements of scientific literacy. Because trade books represent children’s first exposure to science, these shortcomings should be addressed if these books are to be maximally effective in promoting science literacy. Implications for using trade books in the classroom are discussed.

When does the researcher (should) also become a resource for the bricoleur teacher? A review of Ajay Sharma’s Portrait of a science teacher as a bricoleur : A case study from India

This paper provides a critical review essay of Ajay Sharma’s Portrait of a science teacher as a bricoleur: A case study from India. The main focus is two fold. First, arguments are presented to draw attention to how little advances in science teaching and science learning research have impacted teachers’ practice and student achievement in the last 40 years. Second, the paper describes how the researcher’s traditionally detached role and truncated agency may inadvertently contribute to preserving the status quo by only documenting the Other’s struggles and challenges. I suggest that researchers need to re-conceptualize their roles as co-agents of change if we are to assist the Other effect positive and long-lasting change in the increasingly complex and demanding contexts in which teachers are expected to teach and students to learn.

Towards science educational spaces as dynamic and coauthored communities of practice

In this essay review, four studies around the themes of identity and globalization are summarized and analyzed. The researchers’ perspectives are generally grounded in Brown and Campione’s ideas on situated knowledge (Classroom lessons: Integrating cognitive theory and classroom practice (pp. 229–270). Cambridge: The MIT Press/Bradford Books, 1994) and Lave and Wenger’s definition of learning as an activity fostered through participation in communities of practice (Situated learning. Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1991). Questions about the goals of science education spaces, the nature of globalization in relation to practices in schools, the role of identities-in-practice in relation to participation in communities of practice such as classrooms are explored. Recommendations for key design features in effective science educational spaces, based upon the findings presented in the collection of four studies, are offered. School, it is suggested here, functions best as a clearing house for the myriad science-related stories student participants generate in their various communities of practice (e.g., within popular culture, family, community, informal educational sites). In this way, school has the potential to construct bridges between multiple student experiences and identities-in-practice.

Making the Hidden Explicit: Learning About Equity in K-8 Preservice Science Education

Preservice teachers in a K–8 science methods course used guided video reflection to examine their interactions with children during science teaching. This inquiry approach helped preservice teachers identify and respond to gaps between their beliefs and intentions about teaching all children and their enactment of those beliefs. The experience of teaching a science lesson and then viewing it multiple times through a critical framework provided an opportunity for preservice teachers to recognize hidden assumptions, unexamined behaviors, and the unintentional meanings they may have conveyed to children. This encouraged them to think more critically about their roles as teachers in creating spaces where all children have access to quality science learning experiences.

A New Way of Thinking about Social Location in Science

The Durkheimian concept of the density of social relationships may prove more fruitful than the historical materialist notion of a social hierarchy for thinking about the social location of epistemic agents in science. To define a scientist’s social location in terms of the density of her professional relationships with other scientists permits us to give a more precise characterization of marginalization and thus to formulate more testable hypotheses about marginalized groups in science. The notion of social density helps to explain not only how some individual scientists are more likely than others to get a hearing for their ideas, but also how scientific inquiry flourishes more in some societies than in others.

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Statement of American Social Scientists of Research on School Desegregation to the U.S. Supreme Court in Parents v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County

In June 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review two related cases originating from school districts in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington that involved voluntarily adopted racial integration plans. Concerned about the outcome of these cases, 553 social scientists submitted a social science statement to the Supreme Court summarizing the large body of social science research supporting the school districts’ policies relevant to the Court’s determination. The statement, reprinted here, supports three interrelated conclusions: (1) racially integrated schools provide significant benefits to students and communities; (2) racially isolated schools have harmful educational implications for students; and (3) race-conscious policies are necessary to maintain racial integration in schools. Because of the overwhelming amount of scholarly data, social scientists argued, as the lower courts had found, that the schools boards have a compelling interest to promote racial integration and prevent racial isolation through choice-based school assignment policies that consider race as a factor. On June 28, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the school assignment plans on the grounds that the plans were not narrowly tailored to the interests that the school districts had asserted. In addition to affecting the ability of school districts to maintain racially diverse schools, the decision has broad implications for researchers who seek to help school districts in these efforts.

“Beneath their cheerful bunny faces,his slippers had steel toe caps”: Traction Cities,Postmodernisms, and Coming of Age in Philip Reeve’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Mortal Engines</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Predator’s Gold</Emphasis>

This article discusses Philip Reeve's young adult science fiction novels as literary collages. It explores the ways in which the author uses postmodernisms to introduce big ideas and construct a compelling futuristic world that combines fast-paced adventure with the bildungsroman.

Authentic science experiences as a vehicle to change students’ orientations toward science and scientific career choices: Learning from the path followed by Brad

Bringing a greater number of students into science is one of, if not the most fundamental goals of science education for all, especially for heretofore-neglected groups of society such as women and Aboriginal students. Providing students with opportunities to experience how science really is enacted—i.e., authentic science—has been advocated as an important means to allow students to know and learn about science. The purpose of this paper is to problematize how “authentic” science experiences may mediate students’ orientations towards science and scientific career choices. Based on a larger ethnographic study, we present the case of an Aboriginal student who engaged in a scientific internship program. We draw on cultural–historical activity theory to understand the intersection between science as practice and the mundane practices in which students participate as part of their daily lives. Following Brad, we articulate our understanding of the ways in which he hybridized the various mundane and scientific practices that intersected in and through his participation and by which he realized his cultural identity as an Aboriginal. Mediated by this hybridization, we observe changes in his orientation towards science and his career choices. We use this case study to revisit methodological implications for understanding the role of “authentic science experiences” in science education.

Science and creationism: a response to Kenneth Tobin

In his December editorial on Michael Reiss, Kenneth Tobin (Cult Stud Sci Educ 3:793–798, 2008), raises some very important questions for science and science teachers regarding science education and the teaching of creationism in the classroom. I agree with him that students’ creationist ideologies should be treated not as misconceptions but as worldviews. Because of creationism’s peculiarly strong political links though, I argue that such discussion must address three critical and interconnected issues, including the uncertain state of teaching evolution in public schools nationally, the political convergence of the creationist political beliefs with bigoted worldviews, and creationism’s inherent contrariness to science and human progress. I suggest that we as science educators therefore not consider all sides to be equally right and to instead take side against the politics of creationism. I also argue that we need much more serious discussion on how to better teach science to students who hold creationist worldviews, and that science educators such as Reiss need to be part of that.

Training Future Scientists: Predicting First-year Minority Student Participation in Health Science Research

Using longitudinal data from the UCLA Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) and Your First College Year (YFCY) surveys, this study examines predictors of the likelihood that science-oriented students would participate in a health science undergraduate research program during the first year of college. The key predictors of participation in health science research programs are students’ reliance on peer networks and whether campuses provide structured opportunities for first-year students even though only 12% of freshmen in the sample engaged in this activity. These experiences are particularly important for Black students. The findings inform efforts to orient students at an early stage, particularly under-represented minorities, toward biomedical and behavioral science research careers.