A Fracking Good Lesson: Can Science and Technology Blind Us from Seeing Cultural Problems?

By Jason Abdilla Last week, Dr. Tom Katsouleas, Dean of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering, wrote an article for Forbes about an alarming experience he had walking out of a movie theatre. North Carolina anti-fracking petitioners asked Katsouleas to sign a petition to ban fracking throughout the State. “I certainly don’t want to add environmental risk to our landscape and … Continue reading →

Using Discovery Narratives in Science Education

By Jason Abdilla No “I” in Science Literacy or Communication The distanced and disinterested way of communicating science is not only a custom of academic journals, but it’s also the preferred tone in educational texts. The invisibility of the author (by way of third person narration) gives the sense that neither bias nor culture nor personality will … Continue reading →

Teaching Science in Multi(sub)cultural Classrooms: Praxis for Teaching Hipsters (pt. 2)

PT II: Fostering Uniqueness, Guiding Creativity A profound skill the hipster exhibits is their creativity and ability to think broadly. Environmental educators should foster this creativity through a variety of projects and assignments. The following are a few examples of projects that seem to motivate and spark an interest in hipsters:   Instead of writing … Continue reading →

Seeing v. Hearing Science: Communicating and Constructing Science with American Sign Language

In today’s schools there are often competing accounts of natural phenomena, especially when schools are located in multicultural communities. -William Cobern & Cathleen Loving from Defining ”Science’ in a Multicultural World: Implications for Science Education (2000) Discussions about science communication commonly focus on the problems of written and spoken language. And, in many current debates about … Continue reading →

Weekly Science Sightings: Recap and Forecast (December 12-14)

Yes, it’s only been two days, but habits have to start sometime. This week on To See Science: 12.12.12 First official week! Still designing the site and preparing articles for the next few weeks/month. Thanks for the patience as we get this thing going! Wednesday (12.12.12) Jason Abdilla posted two pieces: the first looked at … Continue reading →