Paper short abstract:

Moved by discussions on science education's relevance we ask: how can science education be reinvented to be less relevant yet relevant towards justice? What does this mean for science identities? We present public science pedagogies to cultivate critical scientific imagination in higher education

Paper long abstract:

Responding to inequalities reproduced in science education and the need to reimagine it, Tolbert and Bazzul (2023) provocatively argued that for science education to be more relevant, it must be “less relevant.” (p.1). In its positioning as supremely important, science education has left aside social aspects that shape our ways of living. Issues that have been perpetuated through science, such as colonialism, sexism, racism and classism. Literature shows that both science students and faculty see social issues as less relevant to their work, detaching science from social dynamics in the name of objectivity. This has positioned science not only as disconnected from the social world but also as an authority that must be blindly trusted. Blind trust in the authority of science risks falling into pseudoscience and extremism.

To problematise such a reality we ask: How can science education be reinvented so that it is both less relevant while relevant towards justice goals? What does this mean for science identities?

We argue that the relevance of science will come by troubling discipline boundaries while exploring its socio-cultural and political interests. We present the case of different science pedagogies as public pedagogy of science in which we communicate imaginaries about how science disciplines society and those who do science. Questioning the position and boundaries of science rather than taking its relevance as a given opens space for a critical scientific imagination needed to work towards justice. We provide examples of this imagination’s characteristics and implications for higher education pedagogies and identities.