Activist Science and Technology Education

This collection examines issues of agency, power, politics and identity as they relate to science and technology and education, within contemporary settings. Social, economic and ecological critique and reform are examined by numerous contributing authors, from a range of international contexts. These chapters examine pressing pedagogical questions within socio-scientific contexts, including petroleum economies, food justice, health, environmentalism, climate change, social media and biotechnologies.
Readers will discover far reaching inquiries into activism as an open question for science and technology education, citizenship and democracy. The authors call on the work of prominent scholars throughout the ages, including Bourdieu, Foucault, Giroux, Jasanoff, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Rancière and Žižek.
The application of critical theoretical scholarship to mainstream practices in science and technology education distinguishes this book, and this deep, theoretical treatment is complemented by many grounded, more pragmatic exemplars of activist pedagogies. Practical examples are set within the public sphere, within selected new social movements, and also within more formal institutional settings, including elementary and secondary schools, and higher education.
These assembled discussions provide a basis for a more radically reflexive reworking of science and technology education. Educational policy makers, science education scholars, and science and technology educators, amongst others, will find this work thought-provoking, instructive and informative.


Professor Steve Alsop and Professor Larry Bencze are internationally recognised authors in science and technology education. They have established records of publication and are leaders in the area of science and technology education and activism. For the past three years, for example, they have been editing the web-based Journal for Activist Science and Technology Education (JASTE) and have recently edited a special edition of the Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education in this area. Their recent edited books include Analysing Exemplary Science Education (Open University Press) and Beyond Cartesian Dualism (Kluwer).