What kind of science and for whom?

This article was written in the context of the science education reforms of the 1990s, such as the AAAS Project 2061, the NSTA science scope and sequence, and the NRC’s national standards for science education. While the researchers note that this reform movement was broad, progressive, and inclusive, they contend that, at the time of writing, it was being implemented in narrow and conventional ways: focusing on conceptual knowledge as the most important outcome, and opportunities to engage in practices of “real sciences” as the means to this end. This approach, they claimed, failed to appeal to many people, especially for people from non-dominant communities. This critique, while almost 15 years old, may still have relevance today and is important for informal science educators to understand as they design and lead programs intended to make science more inclusive.

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