In Search of Activist Pedagogies in SMTE

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank David Burns and Stephen Norris again for their supportive comments and the attention that they bring to moral and ethical education. We hope that our elucidation of an activist, political pedagogy is an opportunity to explore and expand ideas of ethics and moral education. This response is offered as part of a conversation and represents some evolving thoughts that emerged after reading their article. We would also like to thank John Wallace, the Editor of CJSMTE, for this invitation to respond.

Notes

1. Wolff-Michael Roth's article, “Activism: A Category for Theorizing Learning,” received the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (CACS) 2010 Outstanding Publication in Curriculum Studies Award. This annual award from the CACS recognizes an outstanding publication related to scholarly insights and advances made in curriculum studies in Canada.

2. Journal discussions can obviate personal histories. So in the spirit of challenging tradition, we declare some of our institutional inspirations and affiliations. As a graduate student of physics, I (Alsop) found the radical science movement inspiring. This movement was associated with many high-profile scientists, including Steven and Hillary Rose, Lev Levidow, and others. In subsequent years, I have been actively involved in a series of social movements including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Science for Peace, Third World First, and, more recently, a series of environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including Ecosource, David Suzuki Foundation (DSF), Idle Free Ontario, and Learning for Sustainable Development (LSF). Throughout my (Bencze) science teaching and consulting careers and on into my PhD thesis research, I promoted student-led science inquiry projects as a way of helping students to become autonomous and creative knowledge builders. This goal continually met with resistance and, eventually, it occurred to me that there may be an invisible hand sustaining the status quo. After some reading (e.g., Ziman, 2000), it eventually occurred to me that societies seem dominated/compromised by economic elite. This has led me to focus my research and teaching on the STEPWISE theoretical framework (http://www.stepwiser.ca)—which I hope is contributing to positive social and environmental change. We anticipate that these backgrounds will not be seen as either particularly progressive or, for that matter, transgressive.

3. We chose this example because both C. P. Snow (2001 [1959]) and David Orr (1994) independently suggested that the understanding the second law of thermodynamics is a desirable expertise to navigate contemporary society.

4. The presence of boundaries that demarcate extrinsic and intrinsic and extrinsic scientific values could be interpreted as returning to a value versus value-free argument. It might be read as a project identifying values that science has and values that it does not have.

5. Lorraine Daston and Peter Gallison's (2007) study reminds us that even objectivity itself is neither static nor singular but is a dynamic entity with subtle and nuanced historical, cultural, and situational contingencies.

6. Indeed, such discussions might be extended to include Raymond Williams’ permanent education (see discussions in McGuigan, 1993) and Giroux's (2004) “public pedagogy”—those lifelong instructions that we all experience in our enculturation into dominant societal, cultural, institutional, and societal norms.