Enhancing powerful knowledge in undergraduate science curriculum for social good

ABSTRACT

Social realist theorising about curriculum and social justice in higher education has emphasised the importance of providing equity of epistemic access to powerful knowledge. However, there has been little discussion about what constitutes powerful knowledge and how students can use it for social good. In the science disciplines, the traditional undergraduate curriculum is shaped by economic agendas and by perceptions of its purpose to train future scientists. This has resulted in a curriculum focused on the learning of scientific facts rather than on how scientific knowledge is created, validated and critiqued, overshadowing the potential for the curriculum to simultaneously empower learners to develop critical scientific literacy to productively engage with urgent socio-scientific issues such as climate change. In this paper, I argue that social good can be better served by engaging students with powerful knowledge of the epistemology of science through including ‘Nature of Science’ (NOS) in the curriculum.

KEYWORDS:

• Powerful knowledge
• nature of science
• undergraduate science curriculum
• critical realism

Introduction

The ‘post-truth’ era and its accompanying ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ presents both a challenge and a call to action for university science educators. The post-truth phenomenon involves a disregard for facts produced by experts, leading to the abandonment of any notion of truth by those whose ideological agendas may be impeded by ‘inconvenient’ facts. This phenomenon is particularly pertinent with regard to socio-scientific issues related to human health and the health of the planet. Harrison and Luckett (2019) argue that ‘[t]he rise of post-truthism looks set to be a ‘wicked problem’ for higher education’ (264). Higher education institutions can respond by making the development of critical thinking a central focus of all disciplines of study. This is especially pertinent for science disciplines, where curriculum should give science students access to knowledge and skills that equip them to engage critically with complex socio-scientific issues, thereby having a positive impact on shaping a sustainable global future.

Recent social realist discussions about knowledge and curriculum have focused on the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’. Michael Young’s 2008 book: Bringing Knowledge Back In: From Social Constructivism to Social Realism in the Sociology of Education introduced the concept of powerful knowledge. According to Young (2008):

[p]owerful knowledge refers to what the knowledge can do or what intellectual power it gives to those who have access to it. Powerful knowledge provides more reliable explanations and new ways of thinking about the world and acquiring it and can provide learners with a language for engaging in political, moral, and other kinds of debates. (14)

Powerful knowledge is specialised, discipline-based knowledge that is different from knowledge gained through everyday experience (Young and Muller 2013). In contrast to social constructivist views about learning and knowledge, the concept of powerful knowledge is supported by a realist ontological stance about a knowable reality, even if that reality can only be partially and fallibly known. The powerful knowledge movement is associated with the concept of ‘epistemological access’ (Morrow 2007; Luckett 2019), also referred to as ‘epistemic access ‘. This involves giving students access to the ‘generative principles of disciplinary knowledge’ (Wheelahan 2007, 648). Harland and Wald (2018) argue that:

[i]n order to understand specialised theoretical knowledge and to address what is presently ‘not known’, a student needs to learn the generative principles of disciplinary knowledge. Understanding this is fundamental to powerful knowledge and the process has been termed ‘epistemic access’. (617–618)

Thus, providing access to powerful knowledge in the curriculum means more than simply introducing students to the facts of a discipline. Epistemic access to powerful knowledge involves introducing students to discipline conventions regarding how knowledge is created and used (Shay and Mkhize 2018). Mastering these conventions can help students be successful in their studies (Boughey 2005). However, there is a difference between learning to master discipline conventions and learning about the reasons for these conventions. The rules of the discipline game are often picked up tacitly rather than through explicit instruction, and often not until the postgraduate years of study (Shopkow 2017; Yucel 2022). Discipline conventions are a manifestation of the nature of a discipline – its ontology and epistemology. Thus, explicit focus in the curriculum on explaining the norms and rules of the discipline through exploration of discipline ontology and epistemology can help students develop a deeper critical mastery of discipline conventions. More importantly, such a curriculum focus could also help them to apply knowledge of the nature of the discipline to situations outside the higher education context. A critical perspective on the nature of a discipline can have lifelong learning benefits as graduates navigate a world where discourses originating from different disciplines interact with human concerns.

In their editorial for a 2016 special edition of Teaching in Higher Education: ‘A socially just curriculum reform agenda’, Shay and Peseta (2016) argue that ‘distributive justice will only be served when curricula offer students access to powerful knowledge’ (365). In the same article, they raise a crucial question: ‘[I]n what ways do our curricula give access to the powerful forms of knowledge that students require not only to successfully complete their degrees, but also to participate fully in society?’ (Shay and Peseta 2016, 362). While it is incredibly important to equip students from all backgrounds with the academic skills they need to access powerful disciplinary knowledge through higher education curriculum, this paper focuses on the second part of Shay and Peseta’s question in the context of undergraduate science in Australia and asks – how could undergraduate science curricula better equip Australian higher education science students to access the powerful forms of knowledge needed to participate fully in society?

Given that perceptions about the purpose of higher education are a strong driving force in shaping the nature of the higher education curriculum that students experience, I advocate a broad view of the purpose of the undergraduate science curriculum that includes building critical scientific literacy to benefit individuals and society in an increasingly post-truth world. Providing access not only to the knowledge propositions that science produces but also to philosophically informed perspectives about how science generates, validates, critiques and shares that knowledge has the potential to empower science graduates through enhanced scientific literacy, providing opportunities for transformation of self and transformation of society.

The purpose(s) of a higher education in science

Discussions about ‘the purpose’ of higher education often fall foul to dichotomous thinking. Are we educating students for their own individual benefit or for the benefit of society? How is benefit defined? Purely in economic terms or as a deeper commitment to human flourishing? In reality, ideas about ‘purpose’ of higher education are based on a range of values which are prioritised differently by groups with different interests. Governments may value economic benefits for the country most highly. University managements might focus on the inclusion of employability skills in the curriculum as a means of securing prioritised government funding based on demonstrable graduate employability. Teaching academics may be focused on a range of values, some of which may inform tacit assumptions about the purpose of the science curriculum they design. It is important to surface these assumptions about the purpose of a university education, and by extension, the purpose of university curricula and submit them to critical scrutiny by considering the impact of the values that underlie them. By doing so, we can aim to design university curricula that balance multiple purposes in a way that serves the real needs of students and contributes to a socially just world.

Research into the perceived purpose of the undergraduate science curriculum in Australia indicates a tacit assumption by both science academics and laboratory demonstrators that all undergraduate science students intend to practice science (Rice et al. 2009; Yucel 2022), and thus the curriculum is still largely directed towards this aim. This assumption appears to remain as an influence on the undergraduate science curriculum, even though fewer than 20% of Australian science graduates work in a science-related job after graduation (Palmer et al. 2018). A recent critical realist study (Yucel 2022) employed a morphogenetic analysis (Archer 1996) to explore the potential causes of the persistence of traditional views of the purpose of the UG science curriculum, despite the growing diversity of graduate destinations. The study found that because science academics have roles in two different social institutions: science disciplines in their research role and university science education in their teaching role, there is an emergent structural logic of protection because of the mutual dependence of these two social institutions, as illustrated in Figure 1 (Yucel 2022).

Figure 1. The structural logic of protection conditioning curriculum change in undergraduate science.

Science disciplines are dependent on university science education for the training of future science practitioners, and university science education is dependent on the science disciplines for the production of new discipline knowledge and the discipline expertise of the science academics whose dual role is teaching. This logic of protection between university science education and science disciplines results in a perceived need for undergraduate science curricula to be heavily focused on training the next PhD students, who then become the science academics who support the science disciplines through their research and support university science education through their teaching (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. The reinforcing effect of the structural logic of protection on undergraduate science curriculum.

This structural logic of protection acts against innovation in the undergraduate science curriculum, which remains largely focused on its traditional purpose (Yucel 2022).

There are also external influences on ideas about the purpose of university curricula originating from political and economic social structures. Like many higher education systems across the world, Australian higher education is heavily influenced by neo-liberal government rhetoric which reduces the purpose of higher education to its role in driving economic growth and national prosperity. The Australian Federal Government recently released the Job-ready graduates: higher education reform package 2020 (Australian Government, Department of Education, Skills and Employment 2020). The main aim of the package is to change fee structures to encourage enrolments in courses that align with national economic priorities (Norton 2020). One of the key principles of the package is ‘[a]s a nation we need to ensure that education funding delivers efficient and effective outcomes for the national economy.’ One of the five key objectives also refers to a system that ‘serves students’ (Australian Government, Department of Education, Skills and Employment 2020, 7), but this is framed in terms of job prospects and economic security. There is no mention of community or society in the reform package objectives.

The economic narrative regarding the benefits of higher education is particularly evident in the science disciplines. The Australian Federal Government outlines the importance of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) education as ‘critical to Australia’s ability to compete in international markets, creating new opportunities for industries, [and] supporting high living standards’ (Australian Government, Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources 2022). Where individual and societal benefits of a higher education in science are mentioned, they are focused on how future scientific research conducted by science graduates can provide health and economic benefits. While health and economic benefits for individuals and society are important outcomes of investment in university science education, an undervalued perspective is the role of a science degree in building students’ critical scientific literacy to empower them to contribute to social good.

The potential of higher education for social good is overshadowed when social good is conceptualised only in economic terms. The narrow economic view of the purpose of a university science education is underpinned by a worldview of methodological individualism that supports prioritising the individual over society. Methodological individualism is the view that ‘the ultimate constituents of the social world are individual people who act more or less appropriately in the light of their dispositions and understanding of their situation’ (Watkins 1968, 270). Methodological individualism supports rational choice theory, in which there is a belief that individuals are responsible for their life situation through the free and rational choices that they make (Archer and Tritter 2000). Under this worldview, poor individuals are to blame for their poverty; rich individuals are personally responsible for their wealth. Methodological individualism downplays or dismisses the power of social structures and cultures in shaping the situations in which humans find themselves (Archer 1995), thereby overplaying the freedom of individuals to make rational choices. Under methodological individualism, society becomes simply the aggregate of individuals’ wants and needs, and thus societal good is conflated with individual good, which is often valued and measured in purely economic terms. As McArthur points out, ‘individual and social well-being are fundamentally inter-connected in a far more complex way than the traditional liberal view of social well-being as simply the sum-total of individual well-being’ (McArthur 2022).

When methodological individualism is applied to higher education through this narrow economic lens, the result is human capital theory. Human capital theory ‘is grounded in the foundational narrative of a linear continuum between education, work, productivity and earnings’ (Marginson 2019, 289). Human capital theory has been a dominant shaping factor of higher education in Australia since the 1960s (Moodie and Wheelahan 2018). Under the influence of human capital theory, the impact of government investment in higher education is measured by the earnings of university graduates (Marginson 2019). This puts pressure on universities to ensure that their graduates have developed ‘job ready’ skills, and this pressure is a force shaping university curricula. It is important for higher education curricula to develop students’ employability skills, but the dominance of human capital theory in Australian higher education overshadows the other perspectives that should be shaping higher education curricula, most importantly, the perspective of social good.

Critical realism, and in particular, the work of Margaret Archer on structure, culture and agency (Archer 1995, 1996, 2000), refutes methodological individualism and acknowledges that human agents both influence and are influenced by the society in which they participate. Critical realism for the social sciences emphasises the importance of the interplay between structure, culture and agency in constituting society, which is more than the sum of its parts (Archer 1995). This view supports bringing society back into the higher education picture as a driving force behind perceptions of purpose that have the potential to transform curriculum. In bringing a stronger focus on how higher education can serve the needs of society, we need not lose sight of the individual needs of students to be transformed through higher education and to flourish in society.

This brings us back to Shay and Peseta’s question: ‘in what ways do our curricula give access to the powerful forms of knowledge that students require not only to successfully complete their degrees, but also to participate fully in society?’ (Shay and Peseta 2016, 362). There is evidence from a recent study of university STEM students that regimes of assessment obscure the social purpose of a STEM education (McArthur et al. 2021). The traditional undergraduate science curriculum also obscures this social purpose. I contend that the traditional undergraduate science curriculum in Australia gives only partial access to powerful knowledge because the narrow framing of its purpose does not allow space for the development of students’ critical scientific literacy to support individual and societal transformation.

Critical scientific literacy

While the knowledge that science disciplines produce is powerful, on its own it is not sufficient for the development of critical scientific literacy. Scientific literacy involves more than just an understanding of the observational facts and inferential theories that science has produced and the techniques and methods used to produce them. Hodson (1998, 9) argues that ‘critical scientific literacy depends on a clear understanding of the epistemological foundations of science and recognition that scientific practice is a human endeavour that influences and is influenced by, the socio-cultural context in which it is located’. Bauer (1992, 8) defines a scientifically literate person as someone who ‘understands:

1. the substantive concepts of science,

2. the scientific approach, and

3. the role of science in society’

Bauer’s second criterion should not be understood as simply the techniques and methods of science but rather as the methodology of science in a much broader sense. It is part of the epistemology of science, i.e. how science generates knowledge, what counts as knowledge in science, and the status of scientific knowledge in terms of truth-likeness. The third criterion relates to the socio-cultural embeddedness of science and the reciprocal relationship between science and society. This is also an important component of science epistemology as it relates to issues of subjectivity and objectivity in science and the influence of socio-cultural factors such as gender, economics, politics and religion on the production and reception of scientific knowledge.

The undergraduate science curriculum in Australian universities has traditionally focused on the first of Bauer’s three criteria with very little emphasis on the second two. Since the early 1950s, university science education in Australia has focused on the training of students to participate in scientific research and development. Before this time, Australian universities were primarily focused on teaching, not research (Hyde 1982; Anderson and Eaton 1982). With the increasing emphasis of the role of universities in scientific research, the undergraduate years have been viewed as a foundation for postgraduate studies, and the focus of the undergraduate curriculum is on teaching students the substantive concepts of science and mastery of techniques used in scientific analysis and research to prepare them for later scientific practice. There may be a tacit assumption by science academics that students pick up an understanding of the second two of Bauer’s scientific literacy criteria through implicit messages in the undergraduate curriculum. However, this does not appear to be the case (Yucel 2022).

In the postgraduate years, the focus of curriculum shifts to Bauer’s second criterion for scientific literacy – learning about the scientific approach used to produce knowledge in science, as well as more in-depth exploration of the substantive concepts in a particular scientific field. Postgraduate students begin to understand how science creates knowledge though creating it themselves in an apprenticeship model guided by research supervisors. It is difficult to determine how much focus there is on the third of Bauer’s scientific literacy criteria, the role of science in society at either undergraduate or postgraduate level. There is some evidence for its inclusion in science curricula, but it is not a very visible element and its inclusion is likely to be ad hoc and reliant on the values and interests of particular science academics in different science disciplines (Yucel 2022).

The above analysis highlights gaps in the opportunities for university science students to develop critical scientific literacy at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Our postgraduate students as future scientists may be missing out on developing a deep understanding of the socio-cultural embeddedness of science and the impact of this on the potential for objectivity in science. An understanding of the role of science in society can also assist future scientists to engage with ethical issues related to science and society that will inform their practice. However, it is students who leave university after undergraduate study for whom the missed opportunity to engage with powerful scientific knowledge is greatest. Current undergraduate science curricula in Australia focus heavily on teaching declarative knowledge scientific techniques at the expense of critical perspectives on science (Wilson and Howitt 2018).

Students who do not undertake postgraduate studies in science may be missing out on the opportunity to develop a deep understanding of the epistemology of science both in terms of the methodology of science and the interrelationship between science and society (Bauer’s second and third criteria). Indeed, there is evidence that the pedagogical approaches used in undergraduate science and school science can actually promote misconceptions about what science is and how it works (Gulyaev and Stonyer 2002; DeHaan 2005; Niaz and Maza 2011). A heavy reliance on text books and didactic teaching of facts can give the impression that scientific knowledge develops ‘in a non-problematic, non-historical, “linear-accumulation manner”’ that ignores the difficulties involved in the historical development of a theory (Guisasola, Almudí, and Furió 2005, 333). Practical classes in undergraduate science may be called ‘experiments’ when, in fact, they are often demonstrations of how existing knowledge was developed, with the aim of getting students to practice the techniques they might later need to engage in scientific research (McComas 2003; Yucel 2022). When scientists conduct real experiments, they do not investigate problems with already known solutions. For undergraduate science students, experience of practical classes can lead to a misconception that there is a pre-known ‘right answer’ to scientific problems, and that scientific investigation is simplistically procedural rather than creative and messy, involving wrong turns, intuition and serendipity.

To counter these misconceptions, and promote better conceptions related to Bauer’s second two aspects of scientific literacy, the undergraduate science curriculum needs reframing to include explicit teaching about the ontology and epistemology of science. In the following section, I outline how including a body of knowledge advocated for school science, known as the ‘Nature of Science’, could enhance the critical scientific literacy of all university science students.

‘Nature of science’ for undergraduate science curriculum

Ideas about the ontology and epistemology of science as applied to science education form a body of science discipline knowledge known as ‘Nature of Science’ (NOS). Fundamentally, NOS concerns learning about science: ‘its history, its interrelationships with culture, religion, worldviews and commerce, its philosophical and metaphysical assumptions, its epistemology and methodology’ (Matthews 2007, 50). In school science, there is an extensive body of literature exploring the teaching and learning of this meta-perspective on science, and for several decades, it has been advocated as an important science curriculum focus for school science in countries including the USA, the UK, New Zealand and Australia (Yucel 2022). Until recently, there has been very little exploration of NOS in undergraduate science curricula. A notable exception in the Australian context is the work of Howitt and Wilson, who have advocated for the inclusion of critical perspectives in undergraduate science (see Howitt and Wilson 2015, 2018).

There is no single set of defining characteristics of science and thus no singular NOS. The practice of science shifts over time, and there is a wide range of practices across different science disciplines. Instead of a list of defining features of science, some scholars of science education have drawn on the German philosopher, Wittgenstein, to suggest that NOS is a ‘family resemblance’ concept (Irzik and Nola 2011). Dagher and Erduran (2016) suggest a framework they called the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA) to characterise NOS. The framework comprises 11 categories: aims and values, methods, practices, knowledge, social certification and dissemination, scientific ethos, professional activities, social organisations and interactions, financial systems and political power structures. This framework was found to align with scientists’ views about NOS (Wu and Erduran 2022). Clough (2007, 3–4) characterises NOS in a list of questions, which exemplify themes related to NOS. Expressing ideas about NOS as questions rather than statements encourages students to consider not simply what science is and what science is not but rather the extent to which science has a certain set of characteristics (Yucel 2022). Clough’s questions are:

1. In what sense is scientific knowledge tentative? In what sense is it durable?

2. To what extent is scientific knowledge empirically based (based on and/or derived from observations of the natural world)? In what sense is it not always empirically based?

3. To what extent are scientists and scientific knowledge subjective? To what extent can they be objective? In what sense is scientific knowledge the product of human inference, imagination and creativity? In what sense is this not the case?

4. To what extent is scientific knowledge culturally and socially embedded? In what sense does it transcend society and culture?

5. In what sense is scientific knowledge invented? In what sense is it discovered?

6. How does the notion of a scientific method distort how science actually works? How does it accurately portray aspects of how science works?

7. In what sense are scientific laws and theories different types of knowledge? In what sense are they related?

8. How are observations and inferences different? In what sense can they not be differentiated?

9. How does private science differ from public science? In what ways are they similar?

An understanding of NOS is integral to scientific literacy. Through a focus on the ontology and epistemology of science, NOS provides a critical lens through which to view the practices and theories of science. When applied to human concerns, this critical view of science builds scientific literacy through relating science as a body of knowledge to the society it was created by and for. In an increasingly post-truth world, where fake news and alternative facts abound, and the knowledge of experts is downplayed or dismissed (Lockie 2017; Lubchenco 2017), an understanding of NOS has the potential to contribute to social good through clarifying or correcting misconceptions about science in relation to important socio-scientific issues such as climate change, the anti-vaccination movement and the affordances and risks of artificial intelligence (Yucel 2022). The critical perspective gained through considering NOS can assist science students in developing a nuanced and balanced view of the relationship between science and society that avoids the ‘victory narrative’ that science has only brought good to the world, and the ‘suspicion narrative’ that science and scientists cannot be trusted. When combined with knowledge of the substantive concepts in science disciplines, NOS has the potential to empower students to engage in critical dialogue about socio-scientific issues by challenging incorrect assumptions made by others about science. In the section below, I outline and illustrate some ways in which an understanding of important NOS concepts can address misconceptions about what science is and how it works, thereby enhancing scientific literacy and improving epistemic access to the powerful discipline knowledge of the sciences.

Uncertainty and complexity

The concept of uncertainty in scientific theories (not to be confused with uncertainty in scientific measurement) is often poorly understood, leading to higher expectations of certainty in science than may be warranted (Kampourakis and McCain 2020). When scientists express uncertainty about theories or predictions, disagree with each other about theories, or put forward new theories that are challenged and overturned, this need not be a reason to distrust science as a whole because absolute certainty can never be an expectation for scientific theories. The psychological need for certainty can result in unrealistic expectations of scientists to provide certain answers to complex questions (Kampourakis and McCain 2020). This situation is not helped by media reports that gloss over the uncertainty expressed by scientists in scientific reports and present scientific findings as over-simplified and certain. This combination of over-simplification and over-stating of certainty can lead to a generalised distrust of science. When combined with a poor understanding of the substantive scientific concepts involved in socio-scientific issues, the result is a lack of appreciation of the impact of such issues.

An obvious example is scientific literacy concerning climate change. When people (i) do not understand the substantive concepts involved, e.g. conflating weather and climate, (ii) become frustrated when climate predictions are not completely accurate, and (iii) expect that predictions based on climate modelling are simple to generate, they may lose trust in science and be unconvinced that urgent action on climate is needed. Such people are not likely to be convinced solely by scientific arguments and evidence about the substantive facts. Explaining the mechanisms through which climate change is operating, or quoting statistics to emphasise the urgency of the situation is unlikely to be effective on its own. More effective arguments would also challenge the lack of understanding of the complexity of generating science-based predictions and unrealistic expectations of certainty. That is, they would combine knowledge of science concepts with understanding of NOS to create a powerful knowledge base to combat misinformation and disinformation about issues central to social good.

Science and pseudoscience

Another important NOS concept is the demarcation between science and pseudoscience. The demarcation issue has a long history, being evident in the writings of Hippocrates in the fifth century BCE (Gordin 2021). This topic has been discussed at length by philosophers of science (see, for example, the work of Popper 1963; Kuhn 1970; Lakatos 1977; Thagard 1978) who have attempted to ‘demarcate’ between genuine science and ‘unscientific’ ways of exploring the natural world, be they alternative ways of knowing or ways of knowing that masquerade as science, i.e. pseudoscience. A common view among contemporary philosophers of science is that it is unrealistic to expect to find strict criteria that are both necessary and sufficient to demarcate science from pseudoscience (Mahner 2013). However, the difference between science and pseudoscience is still worth exploring, despite the lack of strict criteria to demarcate them. The ability to detect deliberate attempts to pass off an idea, approach or doctrine as ‘scientific’ when there is no evidence in support of its claims is an important aspect of scientific literacy. For example, in the Covid-19 global pandemic, there have been myriad claims about prevention and treatment of Covid-19 that have no empirical support, such as the infamous claim by the former President of the United States of America that ingesting disinfectant could cure Covid-19 (Yamey and Gonsalves 2020). The most powerful arguments against such dangerous ‘post-truth’ claims involve not only a level of scientific understanding of how viruses interact with the human body but also a deep understanding of the role and importance of evidence in scientific claims.

Difference between facts, theories and laws

The difference between the ways the terms fact, theory and law are used by scientists and the general public may at first appear to be a trivial semantic issue. However, understanding this difference is important for scientific literacy. There is a common misconception that a scientific theory is a highly speculative ‘best guess’ about a natural phenomenon and thus can be criticised as ‘just a theory’ (Carpi and Egger 2010). The term ‘law’, on the other hand, is believed to denote a statement of certainty about a natural phenomenon (McComas 1996). Theories are erroneously thought to become laws when they are proven by sufficient and incontrovertible evidence. However, this is not possible because laws and theories are different types of thing. In science, laws describe patterns in nature, and theories are the explanations that scientists produce to explain those patterns. Theories are based on multiple observations, produced by the consensus of networks of scientists and are thoroughly tested and refined. However, they are never proven as there is always the possibility that an anomalous observation calls the theory into question. The term ‘fact’ is more nebulous. In science, facts are best understood as ‘shared empirical observations’ (McComas 2003, 142) that are used in the generation and support of scientific theories and laws. Facts on their own do not explain phenomena; theories explain phenomena. Thus, theories do not become fact; they are informed by facts. Laws have a more direct relation with observational facts than theories and thus may sometimes be put forward with a higher degree of certainty than theories, but they are not incontrovertible. Scientific laws can be wrong, just like theories can be.

Understanding the scientific meaning of the terms theory, law, and fact can contribute to critical scientific literacy related to a range of issues. It can help counter misconceptions about ‘scientifically proven theories and facts’ that are used to over-sell the certainty of science. We see this ‘sciencewashing’ in attempts to provide a fake stamp of scientific credibility to encourage us to buy products ‘scientifically proven’ to reduce wrinkles, thicken hair, or reduce belly fat. Conversely, understanding how science uses the terms theory, law and fact can help dispel unwarranted mistrust of well-supported scientific ideas such as evolution by natural selection as ‘just a theory’ and thus equally valid, in a relativistic sense, to ‘alternative’ (and perhaps ideologically more convenient) theories and facts.

Science as a human endeavour

Science is an inherently human endeavour, so the question of whose knowledge is represented by science is important. There is a persistent caricature of the scientist as a middle-aged or elderly white man in a white coat, working solo to bravely discover objective facts about the world for the good of humanity. There are a number of problems that stem from this caricature. Firstly, it conceals the positive effect of diversity on the practice of science. The diverse interests and backgrounds of scientists not only influence the research topics they choose to pursue but also the ways in which they interpret the data related to their research. A good example of this is in primate research, which, up until the 1960s was conducted my male scientists. The first female US primate researcher, Jane Lancaster, received her PhD in 1973, and through her research, challenged many of the assumptions about primate gender relations (Carpi and Egger 2010). Lancaster demonstrated the important role of female primates in social cohesion and the transmission of social dominance (Coe and Rosenblum 1974).

There is an important role for better understanding the scientific community in combatting a view know as scientism. First discussed by Hayek in 1942, scientism is the view that science is the only way by which we can know the world, and that all of human knowledge should be produced and assessed through the lens of science. A scientistic worldview dismisses other means of knowing, including indigenous ways of knowing, as inferior to science. Indigenous ways of thinking and interpreting the world have huge potential to enrich, complement and challenge Western ways of thinking (see Tyson Yunkaporta’s 2019 book, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World for a fascinating discussion of this point in the Australian context). In Australia, there are currently efforts to decolonise higher education curricula by embedding Australian indigenous knowledges (see Harvey and Russell-Mundine 2018; Page, Trudgett, and Bodkin-Andrews 2019), and a scientistic view is an impediment to this.

Situating science among other disciplines epistemologies can also enhance students’ interdisciplinary thinking through understanding that different disciplines produce and validate knowledge in different ways. Students can learn that discipline differences and alternative ways of knowing do not require the privileging of one way of knowing over another. They can learn that multiple perspectives can be combined to enrich interdisciplinary thinking about issues. McArthur (2020) draws on Adorno’s critical theory and dialectical thought to demonstrate that such thinking from different perspectives need not result in a compromise between different ways of knowing but rather allows us to ‘think through rupture’ (Adorno 2017/1958, 50) to ‘open up revolutionary alternatives’ (McArthur 2020, 28). This dialectical way of thinking about discipline epistemologies has enormous potential for interdisciplinary research.

The above examples demonstrate the potential of NOS as a form of powerful and transferable discipline knowledge in the undergraduate science curriculum. A NOS-rich science curriculum is potentially transformative for individual students, giving them a critical and nuanced understanding of how science generates knowledge and helping them to see the role and relevance of science in society. Through learning about NOS, science graduates may be empowered to make a difference in the world, whether through participation in the practice of science or through heightened critical scientific literacy for deeper engagement in socio-scientific issues.

Conclusions, challenges and opportunities

The current post-truth crisis prompts a re-think about the extent to which the traditional undergraduate science curriculum provides epistemic access to powerful knowledge. The heavy focus on teaching science as a series of facts to be learnt provides only a surface level of epistemic access to powerful discipline knowledge in science. Following Bauer’s three criteria for scientific literacy, the traditional undergraduate science curriculum provides little access to a deep understanding of the ontology and epistemology of science or a critical consideration of the interrelationship between science and society. The importance of these aspects in building scientific literacy has been recognised for school science, where there have been continued efforts to include a focus on NOS in school science curricula. However, there has been little recognition of the lack of focus on NOS in undergraduate science curricula. Thus, there is potential to recontextualise NOS curriculum frameworks from school science and apply them to the undergraduate science curriculum.

There are challenges to embedding NOS into undergraduate science curricula. Further exploration is needed into curriculum approaches such as creating dedicated NOS units, embedding NOS across the curriculum, or a combination of these two approaches. There may be little awareness among science academics that students are not developing adequate conceptions of NOS through messages implicit in the traditional science curriculum (Yucel 2022). There is therefore a need to draw attention to the importance of explicit teaching of NOS for the development of critical scientific literacy. However, simply recognising a need for NOS is not sufficient to ensure NOS learning outcomes. In order to include explicit teaching of NOS, academic scientists would need to be able to articulate well-developed views about aspects of NOS in the context of their discipline. Despite criticisms that scientists do not hold well-informed views about NOS (Schwartz and Lederman 2008; Wong and Hodson 2009, 2010; Sandoval and Redman 2015), there is evidence that, with appropriate guidance, academic scientists can clearly articulate a coherent set of worldview commitments related to NOS (Yucel 2018).

A further obvious challenge to the inclusion of an explicit focus on NOS is the problem of the crowded undergraduate science curriculum. In a recent morphogenetic analysis of Australian science academics’ views about the teaching and learning of NOS, lack of space in the curriculum was perceived as a significant barrier to including explicit teaching about NOS (Yucel 2022). There was a perception that any changes to the traditional curriculum would compromise its ability to adequately prepare students for a PhD in science and thus compromise the ability of their discipline to produce high-quality scientific research. The issue of the crowded curriculum is challenging, but it does present an opportunity to find innovative ways to design science curriculum that simultaneously serves the needs of all graduates, no matter their graduate destination. In doing so, there is potential to transform the undergraduate science curriculum to be a mechanism of change for social good.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).