Staying with the Trouble: Science Education and Pedagogies for Humanising and Inclusionary Practices for all

Science education and pedagogies generally operate within a strong positivist tradition of knowledge and values that stretches back five hundred years, and arises from the writings of René Descartes and Francis Bacon. Recently, school science is tightly framed within the Nature of Science (NOS) with students expected to behave as mini-scientists. Science pedagogies are underpinned by principles of universal design, with little or no regard for the messiness and liminality of ‘good teaching’ and the necessary productive pedagogical struggles, or what Donna Haraway called ‘staying with the trouble’, for humanising and inclusionary practices for all. In this chapter, I deconstruct the framing of science pedagogies, taking the example of the new national curriculum framework in science education in Ireland. Drawing from critical and feminist perspectives, policy (reform) texts from the perspective of exclusionary/inclusionary pedagogical practices deconstructed. The aim of this deconstruction is not merely to ‘unpack’ the problem but, using an approach proposed by Jane Gilbert, to find an opening for reimagining science education for a new conceptual map and language to describe the relational nature of science pedagogies. While this study is conducted in Ireland, it will be interesting for others struggling with similar issues.