Reimagining Relations between School Science and Civic Society: A Critical Literature Review in a Fast-Changing Epoch

In the contemporary epoch, there is a new urgency for science education’s role in securing public interest values and the (democratic) commons in civic societies tasked with a green and digital transition in fast changing demographics and an uncertain future of unforeseen shocks. This pressing need is exercising critical theorists in education and science educators alike, and seen in a movement dedicated to re-imagining the often assumed relations between science, school science, nature, intersectionality and civic engagement. The crucial question is how to answer UNESCO’s 2021 call for a new social contract for (science) education in the direction of inclusive, care-based, culturally responsive and socially just pedagogies. In this study, we draw from critical and feminist lenses to interrogate the framing of the problem: a technical problem of citizen science within the Nature of Science or an emancipatory problem requiring a radical rethink of science education. We conduct a critical review of a select literature that advocates for Reimagining Science Education in order to reveal the emerging frameworks and to theorise the problem in ways that show the inherent danger in the continued adoption of a fast-globalizing normative consensus for standardisation of citizen science as the optimal way forward.