In Which Ways Can (Science) Education Promote the Well-Being of Individuals, Subjects, and Environments?

• In Event: 29.078 - A Framework for Sociopolitical Actions on Socioscientific Problems: International Perspectives

Abstract

Despite its centrality, the concept of well-being has not been extensively problematised in the original SE4C framework. In this presentation, I seek to address this issue by focusing on a singular aspect of SE4C, namely, the possibility of education promoting well-being. I start by reviewing the polysemy of the concept of well-being in the literature and relating its different meanings to cognate concepts such as quality of life, welfare, common good and social justice. After an attempt to discriminate amongst such views, I discuss (i) the extent to which it is possible to define universal parameters in order to establish adequate threshold levels for each one of them and (ii) how they would apply to the individual, the societal and the environmental domains. This discussion unfolds with an attempt to establish relationships between well-being and aspects of political life, such as participation and decision-making in the context of some actual experiences of enacting the SE4C framework, as described in Author1 (in press). Critical discourse analysis is suggested as an apt framework to do so in so far as it explores dialectical pairs, such as structure/agency, colonisation/appropriation, reflexivity/ideology (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1998) in promoting articulations between local experiences and socio-historical dimensions. Views of well-being that address the relationship between individuals and social groups can be productively used to tease out the aspects involved in the discussion of the role of education in the empowerment of individuals and the emancipation of social groups for political action. The articulation of social theory and discourse, as present in critical discourse perspectives, is suggested as a powerful analytical tool to examine such connections as present in educational literature, multilateral documents and curriculum materials. The irreducible nature of relationships between discourse and society may also help foreground nuances in global accounts of ways through which (science) education has been recruited as a major component of a hegemonic project of society based on values of capital. In this way, I seek to establish relationships between the ways through which relevant aspects of contemporaneity (e.g., individualism, efficiency, competitiveness, space-time ‘compression’, technologisation of social life etc.) are represented in science education. I question the possibility of promoting well-being outside practices defined by dialogue and co-responsibility on two grounds. One reason would be the risk of dismissing diversity and eliminating pluralism as an important element in the construction of identities and as source of reflection and alterity. Another reason would be the undesirable reinforcement of the asymmetry between academic/disciplinary and social/cultural contexts. Critical analysis of dialectical relationships in discourse also reveal how those who seek to promote well-being are impacted not just by reflexive dimensions of their actions but also by the reconfigurations in the social relations that can result in emancipation and in extended possibilities of participation and knowledge production of targeted groups. Finally, I conclude with a suggestion that, in the context of the SE4C framework, well-being is best understood as a dialectical generative process rather a stage to be reached once certain conditions are met.

Author

• Isabel Martins, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro