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Public Understanding of Science
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Scientific literacy as collective praxis

Wolff-Michael Roth

MacLaurin Building A548, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, V8W 3N4, Canada, mroth{at}uvic.ca

Stuart Lee

MacLaurin Building A420, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, V8W 3N4, Canada, shlee{at}uvic.ca

In this article, we conceive of scientific literacy as a property of collective activity rather than individual minds. We think of knowing and learning science as situated in and distributed across social and material aspects of a setting. To support the proposed conception, we provide several detailed cases from our three-year multi-site ethnographic study of science in one community, featuring different types of citizens who walk a creek, interact during an environment-oriented open-house event, discuss water problems, collect data, and have different conceptions of human-environment relations. The case studies show that collectively, much more advanced forms of scientific literacy are produced than any individual (including scientists) could produce. Creating opportunities for scientific literacy to emerge from collective activity, irrespective of whether one or more participants know some basic scientific facts, presents challenges to science educators very different from teaching basic facts and skills to individuals.

Public Understanding of Science, Vol. 11, No. 1, 33-56 (2002)
DOI: 10.1088/0963-6625/11/1/302
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