Citizenship Across the Curriculum

8 Science, Technology, and Understanding: Teaching the Teachers of Citizens of the Future

8 Science, Technology, and Understanding Teaching the Teachers of Citizens of the Future David Geelan In late 2006, Southeast Queensland, where I live, was in the grip of a drought, with severe water restrictions that were on the verge of becoming more severe. Brisbane had Level Three water restrictions: gardens could only be watered with a bucket and cars couldn’t be washed with a hose. Prisoners in the city’s jails had the length of their showers reduced. A city 100 km or so further inland, Toowoomba, had Level Four restrictions, with no watering of gardens allowed at all and other restrictions on personal water use. The citizens of Toowoomba voted in a referendum on whether to recycle treated wastewater back into the reservoir from which the town drew its drinking water. The treatment process yielded water cleaner than that already in the reservoir on every chemical and biological measure, so opposition to the recycling was essentially emotive (‘‘drinking sewage’’) rather than scientifically informed . And there was no alternative source of water available. Nonetheless the motion to recycle water was defeated at the referendum, leaving the town in a desperate situation. 148 ⭈ david geelan Science Education and Citizenship This story is an example of democracy in action, but it’s also a cautionary tale that illustrates the importance of scientific understanding for informed engagement in civic life. So many of the issues faced by the middle school and high school students my teacher education students will teach after they graduate have some scientific component—global climate change, nuclear energy, bioengineering and nanotechnology, to name just a few—that helping them to develop the skills of scientific thinking seems crucial to the whole concept of citizenship. This chapter explores some of my commitments and experiences in my fifteen years as a teacher of science teachers, and in particular the ways in which I have tried to integrate a concern for educating scientifically informed and engaged future citizens into my teacher education practice. Part of my understanding of civil society and my political commitments developed out of a research project I worked on in Perth, Australia, in 2000 and 2001. My colleagues John Wallace and Bill Louden were studying the ways physics education perpetuates advantage in society.∞ Science education, which I had always seen as socially neutral or as a tool for social mobility, was strongly implicated in the broader social processes by which opportunity is held out disproportionately to those who already have the most options and resources. This developing understanding was coupled with dramatic political shifts in Australia and the United States over the past decade, accelerated by the events of September 2001 and the subsequent wars and social changes. The Howard government in Australia had been in power for around six years in 2000, and its privatization-focused agenda—one that very intentionally strip-mined social services and public education—was accelerating the trends we were observing in our research. The development and growth of the Internet and web discussion forums also played an important role in my evolving view of citizenship and science education . The fact that I have friends in countries all over the world with whom I regularly discuss ideas around education has definitely informed my perspective on a wide variety of issues. Beyond that, the web is a reminder that we are part of a global society and are global citizens, and that my decisions (and those of my students and their students) in Australia a√ect the lives of my friends in Mexico and Denmark and South Africa. As these commitments have changed my outlook on the world, I have begun to incorporate them into my teaching practice, attempting always to be aware that my classes are pluralistic and that my students have a wide range of perspectives of their own on these issues. Indoctrination is the danger that attends any attempt to incorporate social issues in science education courses—but eschewing such discussion can itself indoctrinate students into the belief that science is objective, ahistorical, and unrelated to social and ethical concerns. Science, Technology, and Understanding ⭈ 149 Global Citizenship Citizenship, as I’m coming to understand it, is almost antithetical to nationalism and even patriotism. Perhaps that’s linked with an awareness of globalization as an inexorable process. David Smith (1999) has identified three meanings often assigned to the term ‘‘globalization’’ (this is...