Researchers agree that schools construct a particular image of
science, in which some characteristics are featured while others end up
in oblivion. The result is that although most children are likely to be
familiar with images of heroic scientists such as Einstein and Darwin,
they rarely learn about the messy, day-to-day practice of science in
which scientists are ordinary humans. Surprisingly, the process by which
this imagination of science in education occurs has rarely been
theorized. This is all the more remarkable since great thinkers tend to
agree that the formation of images -- imagination -- is at the root of
how human beings modify their material world. Hence this process in
school science is fundamental to the way in which scientists, being the
successful agents in/of science education, actually create their own
scientific enterprise once they take up their professional life.
One of the first to examine the topic, this book takes a theoretical
approach to understanding the process of imagining science in education.
The authors utilize a number of interpretive studies in both science and
science education to describe and contrast two opposing forces in the
imagination of science in education: epicization and novelization.
Currently, they argue, the imagination of science in education is
dominated by epicization, which provides an absolute past of scientific
heroes and peak discoveries. This opens a distance between students and
today's scientific enterprises, and contrasts sharply with the wider aim
of science education to bring the actual world of science closer to
students.
To better understand how to reach this aim, the authors offer a detailed
look at novelization, which is a continuous renewal of narratives that
derives from dialogical interaction. The book brings together two
hitherto separate fields of research in science education:
psychologically informed research on students' images of science and
semiotically informed research on images of science in textbooks.
Drawing on a series of studies in which children participate in the
imagination of science in and out of the classroom, the authors show how
the process of novelization actually occurs in the practice of education
and outline the various images of science this process ultimately
yields.
