Students Actively Addressing STEM-Related Harms: Visions of the Possible

• In Event: Toward Critical Public Consciousness in STEM Education: Inter/Transnational Perspectives

Abstract

On the one hand, many people are grateful to fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (‘STEM’) for improving conditions for many living and nonliving things. Humans enjoy longer lifespans, for instance, through developments in medical and agricultural fields. Nevertheless, there appear to be numerous significant problems for wellbeing of individuals, societies and environments associated with STEM fields. Particularly in the neoliberal era, governments appear to have, for instance, encouraged various private sector contractual arrangements with scientists and engineers in ways that often seem to compromise the integrity of topic choice, methods of investigation, conclusions and dissemination (Mirowski, 2011). Such ‘business-science partnerships’ often, in turn, generate commodities that are linked to many personal, social and/or environmental harms, such as: household cleaning and hygiene products (Leonard, 2010); pesticides (Hileman, 1998); tobacco (Barnes, Hammond & Glantz, 2006); and, pharmaceuticals (Angell, 2004). Many people also expect serious harms from dramatic increases in global temperatures often linked to excessive fossil fuel uses (Klein, 2014). Much of this could get significantly worse, moreover, with recent moves by right-wing populist leaders — with further promotion (e.g., through deregulations) of problematic, but profitable, energy sources like coal and petroleum while de-funding and muzzling climate scientists, etc. (Faturechi & Ivory, 2017).
Despite seriousness of harms linked to neoliberalism-influenced STEM fields, school science tends to limit attention to them (Author2, 2005; Hodson, 2011). In domains of ‘STSE’ (science, technology, society & environment) and socioscientific issues (SSIs) education, where compromises to STEM fields and corresponding harms could be addressed, emphasis tends to be placed on portraying possible harms as controversial (and, perhaps, doubtful) and limiting students’ responses to their determination of logical personal positions on issues (Author3, 2010; Oreskes & Conway, 2010; Pedretti & Nazir, 2011). Such relative lack of attention to potential and realized harms linked to matters of political economy and STEM fields seems, as well, particularly under threat with recent emergence of many STEM education initiatives — which, paradoxically, often promote integration of the four STEM fields while marginalizing considerations from the humanities and social sciences (Gough, 2015; Author1 et al., in press; Collaborator1 & Author1, 2017; Zeidler, 2016).
In her recent analysis of right-wing populist movements, Klein (2017) recommends accompanying critiques (like that above) of problematic situations with visions of a better world to inspire citizens to act for general wellbeing. In this presentation, findings are presented — as signified in Figure 1 — of a ten-year action research project (Author1, 2017) aimed at encouraging and enabling youth to self-direct research and use their findings to at least partly inform actions they develop and enact to address STEM-related personal, social and/or environmental problems. Many such findings, including students’ inventions/innovations that — based on actor-network (Latour, 2005) analyses — not only perform intended tasks but also consider wellbeing of laborers, sustainability of materials and minimization of climate change contributions, may, indeed, inspire acts towards a better world for all. Many such features appear, as to be argued, to provide ecojust (Martusewicz et al., 2015) alternatives to neoliberalism-informed STEM education.

Author

• John Lawrence Bencze, OISE/University of Toronto