Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the role of STS teacher-scholars in STEM education and the development of plans for An STS Teachbook: Recipes from our Science and Technology Studies Communities for Critical Pedagogies in Undergraduate Education.

Paper long abstract:

Many scholars in STS find ourselves teaching future scientists, engineers, and medical professionals far more often than we teach future STS scholars. This can make developing engaging learning opportunities challenging. Educators must create classroom experiences that promote critical approaches to science and technology for students often reluctant to critique the sociotechnical infrastructures they hope one day to join. The result is a host of creative curricula that have the potential to challenge and inspire students and even to enrich scholarship in STS. However, the politics of higher education lead to certain challenges: we lose track of insights generated in the classroom and fail to share this work broadly, leaving crucial labor of our community unrecognized. Further, the ways our knowledge is performed, produced, and circulated in classrooms and with students remains under theorized.

This presentation will address the authors' work to build a new resource: An STS Teachbook: Recipes from our Science and Technology Studies Communities for Critical Pedagogies in Undergraduate Education. This Teachbook will include STS scholarship and compile “recipes” for different learning experiences developed in our communities. We will preview the Teachbook, explore the organizing themes, and share several recipes (including an improvisational activity related to the social, political, and ethical dimensions of sociotechnical artifacts, and a framing activity using guided analysis of op-eds and maps). With this project, we build a resource to recognize our community’s labor, a tool to support our ongoing efforts, and a contribution to developing better understanding of STS in practice.