Roth, Wolff-Michael and Barton, Angela Calabrese. (2004). ReThinking Scientific Literacy. Reviewed by Bradley Greenspan, National-Louis University

Roth, Wolff-Michael and Barton, Angela Calabrese. (2004). ReThinking Scientific Literacy. N.Y.: RouteledgeFalmer. Pp. vii +227 $24.95     ISBN 0-415-94843-6 Reviewed by Bradley Greenspan National-Louis University August 22, 2005 Being a full-time teacher on the inside of today’s science classroom, in a middle-class Chicago suburban Title I school which is not currently meeting AYP, has been both a blessing and a curse. As a blessing, it has allowed me to explore more non-traditional methods of science teaching over the past several years (Greenspan, 1999). As a curse, I have been exposed to rigid notions of successful science that I feel overlook the many other important contributions my students, especially my more non-traditional students, can make to the fields of science. My questions of interest have been: What is a scientist? What does it mean to do science and do it well? Who constructs these perceptions of science? What talents are we overlooking in our students that may enable them to seriously contribute to the fields of science? Are there new ways of thinking about science that may showcase these talents? These questions are addressed in current research studies. Multiple studies focusing in on the “dangerously exclusive practices embedded in taken for granted notions of inquiry” are cited, for example, in the work of Weinstein (2004, p.1). Other research calls for a need to transcend current themes in educational research and focus on new and disorienting views of teaching and learning (Fox, 2001). Re-thinking Scientific Literacy is another such source. In it, Roth and Barton propose that reforming science education, through focusing on standardized testing, is flawed. Instead, they claim a need to expand our views of what it means to be literate in science. Chapter 1, Science as Collective Praxis, Literacy, Power, and Struggle for a Better World, sets this up quite well: Science education often is a form of indoctrination to a particular worldview so that young people do not question the very presuppositions that underlie science (p. 3). Science class becomes a mechanism for controlling what it means to ‘know and do science’ rather than an empowerment zone where students are valued for their abilities to contribute to, critique, and partake in a just society (p. 5). Roth and Barton further point out “what we envision are science-related contexts that lead to positive formative experiences for students and adults alike, and which do not have boundaries along age or school buildings” (p. 17). They argue for an expansion of the edges of what we think of as being literate in science, the breaking of boundaries of our current notions of science literacy. With my initial impression of the first chapter of Rethinking Scientific Literacy, I thought I had found a book that would help me in two ways. First, I thought it would address many of my research questions in one forum. In this way, the authors were very successful. More specifically, however, I had hoped the book might help me address these issues directly in my classroom and directly with my current administration. Unfortunately, this help was missing. The following describes the book and analyzes its primary points. I present two themes that Roth and Barton apply to promote the breaking of current boundaries of “scientific literacy”. I then conclude with an assessment of their successes and failures from my perspective as a science teacher and educational professional. Science Literacy: Breaking The Boundary From Individual To Social Collective Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the current notion of science being an individualistic enterprise, one which “needs to be theorized from a more encompassing position: society” (p. 7). Beane (1997) proposes a similar-sounding “democratic core curriculum” that also focuses on social issues in all disciplines. Roth and Barton call it “citizen science” (p. 9) and discuss that: In our own research, citizen science is related to a variety of contexts, ranging from personal matters (e.g., accessibility to safe drinking water), livelihood (e.g., best farming practices), leisure (e.g., gardening in sustainable, organic ways), to activism or organized protest (p.3). Science literacy in this way is presented as how effective individuals work, as a social collective, to solve problems relevant to community life: In the same way science in the community is distributed; scientific literacy in everyday community life means to be competent in finding whatever one needs to know at the moment one needs to know it. (p. 10). Furthermore, the authors optimistically express that only through this citizen science can students be “actively engaged in transforming their environment” (p. 14). This agrees with school reform literature by Donaldson (2000), who discuss that people be “shapers of and shaped by” the world they inhabit (p. 41). Like Donaldson, Roth and Barton argue that such a shaping and changing necessarily creates: the potential for conflict and struggle for power. Science itself becomes a contested field, an arena for struggle. At the same time, science is often a tool, a means to conduct the struggle. Science is therefore a dialectic entity, both the site and means for struggle (p. 13). Roth and Barton highlight their own personal involvement in studies that view science literacy as a social, not individual, process that necessarily involves struggle. These studies demonstrate “ways of participating in science and scientific literacy that do not have boundaries coincident with formal education and life thereafter” (p. 21). The first of these examples is introduced in Chapter 2, Scientific Literacy as Emergent Feature of Collective Practice. Roth describes his three-year study of Oceanside, a community lying near Henderson Creek watershed in the Pacific Northwest. Henderson Creek has had an extremely strong effect on the ecological health of the area, with hot, dry summers causing insufficient water supplies and wet winters causing excess water in spring. As a result, residents have to limit their water quantities, and have dealt with water contamination during the summer months. Roth also describes an “indigenous community”, the WSANEC’, who are inhabitants of the watershed and have “little interest in participating with the activists in restoring the creek, which historically has been a source of food and spiritual resource” (p. 23). All of the people involved—residents, politicians, farmers, students, engineers—are shown as having real scientific literacy because of the active, dialectic processes that occur between them. While such processes are shown at times to create hegemonic struggle, Roth implies that as a result of these processes, each is given legitimacy independent of culture, age, or claimed expertise level. Because each individual brings “different resources based on a variety of socio-, ethico- and politico-scientific practices” (p. 45), each is seen (as the authors imply they see science itself) as “but one fiber next to many other fibers in the thread of life” (p. 46). The struggle created when science literacy does indeed break the boundary from individual to social has the potential to allow different individuals to “contribute in their own ways to make events recognizable for what they are” (p. 17). This echoes what Harold Benjamin referred to at the Inglis Lecture in 1949 when he discussed developing a particular person’s “personal capacities so that in all the ways he [sic] will be uniquely great” (p. 18). Roth concludes this description by arguing that “as long as each individual contributes to a society that also supports science and contributes to an emerging conversation in which science figures as prominently as religion, ethics, philosophy and so on, science literacy as a collective ability has been sustained” and the boundary of individualist science can be crossed (p. 46). Expanding the boundary of science literacy, from the knowledge and skills of the individual student to the collective knowledge and skills of all “everyday people” (p. 71) is the focus of Chapter 3, Scientific Literacy, Hegemony, and Struggle. Roth’s claim that science and society are not separate entities but intricate parts of a “matrix of culture” (p. 50) parallels Cook-Sather’s (2003) use of the movie The Matrix in evoking metaphors for human existence, teaching and learning that “cast students not only as active participants in their own education but as the principle creators of their education and themselves” (p. 946). The public meetings conducted by the Oceanside community show this active participative process as one in which, inevitably, some individuals struggle to be heard as others struggle for control of the direction and interests of the agenda. Without such a process, “particular citizens cannot be part of the choreography of scientific literacy” (p. 59). Roth concludes that this proposed choreography among citizens and scientists must be allowed because it forces us to “rethink knowing and learning as a production of knowledgeability, a flexible process from which individuals and their life worlds emerge” (p. 52). Barton’s research takes us to completely different, urban after-school science education programs in Chapter 4, Politics, Power and Science in Inner-City Communities. Here, life worlds emerge in a group of homeless teens living at Southside Shelter in New York City. The teens, named REAL (Restoring Environments and Landscapes), worked with Barton to develop a vacant lot into a community garden. Teen voice was heard and shared, videos were made, and community involvement was encouraged through the setting up of Community Days. Such activities are shown to reflect the National Science Standard 1, Understanding Scientific Inquiry. At the same time, Barton describes the discourse that occurred between the teens, community members and landscape experts, and how discourse was “an important mediating factor between power, knowledge and position” (p. 80). Science as a social process “involved learning how to negotiate and renegotiate power structures and one’s own place within those structures” (p. 93). As in Roth’s studies, struggle is seen as inevitable in such a situation, such as when the teens experience their request to fix a torn fence being repeatedly denied by the city government. Barton’s use of the term “unidirectional” in describing current school reform efforts implies decisions are being made at the level of the individual (standards, testing, and accountability) rather than at the social level. As shown by REAL, she asserts that notions of science literacy should include “the histories, cultures, and life worlds of those who do, use and in whatever way are affected by the science. And participation must be evaluated by how it can transform both science and the community in which science transpires” (p. 106). Science Literacy: Breaking The Boundary Between Science And Non-Science Multiple ways of scientific participation and contribution through a variety of case studies. Consequently, the authors’ view of ‘citizen science’ also implies the questioning of scientific expertise. They state early in Chapter 1 “science educators and scientists have proposed a model according to which science for all citizens ought to look and sound like scientists’ science” (p. 7). In chapters 5 and 6, Roth and Barton illustrate how new notions of scientific literacy can break the boundary between who is and is not considered scientifically literate. In Chapter 5, Margin and Center, Roth and Barton describe three different experiences of three very different students living in homeless shelters in New York City. Latisha, a weak student in the traditional sense, demonstrates her scientific knowledge through poetry. In addition, she completes making her homemade microscope early and proceeds to make a purse. Jason does not complete his project of making recycled paper, and instead chooses to make edible paper. Claudia fails to design her assigned project of building overhead planters, and instead chooses to make a desk. All three students satisfy basic needs (creating, eating, and holding or cherishing valued resources) while they simultaneously “co-opt power hierarchies” and allow authority to be created by those who are “consistently marginalized by dominant culture” (p. 108). Values, such as “proper scientific practices, behaviors and habits of mind“, define a distinct boundary between science and non-science (p. 125). The authors’ suggest that breaking this boundary enables us to: transform how we understand the nature and practice of science, the role of science in the lives of urban youth, and what this means for the purposes and goals of school science. We must see science education in the more political and consequential terms that mark life at the borderlands. (p. 127) Roth discusses current notions of science as exclusionary in the introduction of Chapter 6, Constructing Scientific Dis/ability. He supports his claims with results from a recent project in Vancouver, showing that those students designated as cognitively disadvantaged could actually achieve as well as other students when there is an expansion of assessment considerations. His work in Oceanside provides further examples showing that “when such students are in a position to contribute in ways that most appropriately sustain their own efforts, their disability disappears” (p. 132). The aboriginal students, mostly uninvolved in traditional schooling, make contributions and remain more engaged when schooling is framed in their native contexts. Steve and Davie, two LD students, are shown not for the reading and writing problems that both exhibit, but for their success in scoring highest in the class on non-traditional forms of assessments. Unfortunately, these assessments are not described, but Roth does describe how Davie “had become such an expert that he assisted in teaching another class of seventh-grade students to conduct research in and alongside the creek” (p. 134). Jungck’s (1996) research into science curriculum reform presents collaborative learning as a cornerstone of doing science. When viewed in this way, Roth shows that Steve and Davie “turn out to be functionally and scientifically literate individuals” (p. 138). Roth concludes by suggesting that science educators need to expand what they think it means to do science. Concluding Remarks Clearly, the authors’ claim is that scientific literacy is socially defined and created which also means we have the ability to expand our view of what is means to be scientifically literate. I applaud Roth and Barton for trying to do so much in a single book, and I am excited at the prospects it might lead to with further promotion. Unfortunately, for this reviewer, Chapters 7 and 8 add no additional insight. Chapter 7, Science Education As And For Citizen Science, restates science literacy as being based on interests, needs and contributions of all community members. Chapter 8, Dangerous Teaching, highlights case studies of three progressive women teachers in Pakistan. Much emphasis is placed on the role of gender and how it forces them to struggle with teaching for empowerment- both for themselves and for the poor children who they teach. It would have been beneficial if more emphasis would have been placed on how their notions of scientific literacy can be applied in the daily practices of today’s science teacher. A complex network of limitations that make such fundamental reform difficult overcomes those, like myself, interested in new ways of thinking about science curriculum and reform. I believe we need more guidance than is provided here. My current research focuses on my struggles in getting students, staff and administration to work on the “edges of what is understood” (Fox, 2001, p. 33). The resistance I have seen by students, teachers, and administrators is often caused by both long-held ideas of what constitutes good science education, and fears (real or imagined) tied to state funding and NCLB requirements. Roth and Barton seem to understand this resistance, and imply that new ways of thinking about curriculum must understand and work with the current reality of public schooling. The authors, for example, demonstrate how their case study with REAL satisfied National Science Standard 1. Yet, they do not refer to the practical issue of how to satisfy all of the other content standards with projects like these that are extremely long-term and complex, involve extra-curricular class time, and do not operate within the traditional school day schedule. By describing case studies solely in non-traditional settings, there is a disconnect for us educators in the public school sector. By not referring to ways in which their ideas can include be applied to the realities of public school educators, there is also a sense of impracticality (Reid 1999). The repetition found in Chapters 7 and 8 could have been replaced with some insight into what (in reference to the introduction) Weinstein (2004) might call an Other (Thirdspace) needed to bridge current narrow views of science literacy with the imagined notions that expand those views. One way this bridge can be built is by sharing and promoting case studies of public schoolteachers who have worked to extend the qualities we view as essential to good science. In defense of the authors, this might be considered a classic example of the chicken-and-egg scenario. In order to enact change, there is a need to present working models based on expanded views of science literacy, but paradoxically not many models exist to further support such views. The absence causes Roth and Barton’s rich descriptions, set up in Chapters 1 through 6, to lack connection with the mainstream. As a result, it does not capitalize on its potential effectiveness. Perhaps this could be addressed in their next book. References Beane, J. A. (1997). Curriculum integration: Designing the core of democratic education. New York: Teachers College Press. Benjamin, Harold. (1949). The cultivation of idiosyncrasy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cook-Sather, Alison. (2003). Movements of mind: The Matrix , metaphors, and re-imagining education. Teachers College Record, 105(6), 946-977. Donaldson, Gordon Jr. (2000). Cultivating leadership in schools. New York: Teacher College Press. Fox, G. Thomas. (2001). Creating research questions from strategies and perspectives of contemporary art, Curriculum Inquiry, 31(1), 33-50. Greenspan, B. (1999) The effects of student-directed learning on motivation: creating relevancy in a secondary science classroom. Eastern Education Journal, 28(1), 46-48 Jungck, John R. (1996). Ignorance, error, and chaos: Local learning/global research. Journal of Contemporary Philosophy or Modern Thought, 24(11), 363-376. Reid, William A. (1999). Curriculum as Institution and Practice: Essays in the Deliberative Tradition. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum Publishers. Weinstein, M. (2004). Within us, against us: Seeking a thirdspace through fiction in the science curriculum. Paper presented at the NARST, Vancouver, BC. About the Reviewer Bradley Greenspan is currently a third-year doctoral student at National-Louis University, and has been teaching high school biology and integrated science for 11 years. His research interests lie in the transformational aspects of curriculum, specifically focusing on student projects that explore the unknowns in science. Encouraging the expansion of current notions of what science is and what scientists do, his current work explores ways of involving more students to work at the ‘edges’ of science. He lives in suburban Chicago with his wife and three-year old daughter. Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.