Ethnographies of Science Education: Situated Practices of Science Learning for Social/Political Transformation

Researchers who conduct ethnography in science education tend to have a deep commitment for transforming science to improve the lives of people in underserved communities. This edited volume explores how contemporary ethnographers in science education bring to light the local production of scientific knowledge and the ways it is implicated in larger social and political struggles. Ethnographies in science education contribute to understanding the experiences of linguistically, racially, and economically diverse populations who have been historically excluded from participation in science. An anthropological approach has also been instrumental in explicating the situated practices by which students enact science in the classroom and in their lives beyond schools.

This edited volume brings together ethnographers in science education to contribute a global perspective on science teaching and learning in school and university classrooms, at home, and after school programs. Included are examples of ethnography in science education from the UK, Argentina, Canada, and the USA in which contributors point to promising directions for theorizing the ‘culture’ of science education as we undertake educational reform. The authors in this volume argue that ethnography is not only a valid approach for the study of science education, but also they contend that it is essential to the development of more equitable practices for instruction and learning.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnography and Education.

Carol Brandt is an assistant professor of science education in the Department of Teaching & Learning at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. As an educational anthropologist, her research explores the sociocultural dimensions of learning science in informal contexts beyond the school classroom. She studies ways that language structures participation as youth and adults move between home, community, science centers, and school.

Heidi Carlone is an associate professor of science education at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. Carlone’s research uses theoretical lenses from anthropology of education, sociocultural theories, and cultural studies to understand the local/global productions of "science" and "science person" in K-16 in-school and out-of-school settings and implications of those meanings for those historically shut out of science and for science education reform.