Common Science? Women, Science, & Knowledge

The roots of the exclusion and alienation of women and minorities from scientific knowledge may well lie in how science itself is taught. While academic feminist critiques of science and science education are important, the authors believe that more attention has to be paid to what non-academics think and feel about science. Here is a starting point for developing a feminist pedagogy around science in the larger community.

Jean Barr co-ordinates postgraduate courses in adult and continuing education at Glasgow University where she also teaches courses in the philosophy of social science and in feminist education. She has written on educational policy and practice for several international publications.
Lynda Birke is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender at University of Warwick and a biologist, who has written extensively on feminism and science. She is the co-editor of Reinventing Biology and author of Feminism, Animals and Science, and Women, Feminism and Biology.