About Resource
This article provides a framework for designing and evaluating informal science learning practices designed to be more inclusive of marginalized groups. The author's social science research —including field work with grassroots community groups representing Asian, Afro-Caribbean, Latin American, Sierra Leonean, and Somali groups in South East London— highlighted how exclusion is embedded across science education, engagement, and communication practices. This is an issue that excluded groups are well aware of, and thus makes their decisions to opt out of participating in informal science learning "entirely strategic" choices.
This evidence pushes against what the author calls a fundamental misunderstanding of how exclusion works, which tends to be through deficit thinking: that the people who experience the problem are the problem, because they have the wrong attitudes and behaviors about science. That means informal science learning projects traditionally tend to approach inclusion incorrectly as well, through an "assimilationist crusade" or "evangelist's approach" meant to overcome those "deficiencies" by convincing people that science content is amazing and beneficial. The article describes a framework for overcoming this thinking and exclusionary practices to build more truly inclusive ones.
How to Use
The framework provided helps break down components that shape how inclusive a science learning project or practice is or can be. The author outlines a dual-model approach to social justice, to evaluate inclusion and exclusion through two dimensions: the distribution of 1) access and resources, and 2) recognition, respect, and value. Exclusionary practices lead to low access for and low representation of diverse groups. Instead, people from groups who already tend to feel welcome, represented, and able to access everyday science learning are the dominant participants.
Science learning institutions can move to inclusive practices, with high access and high representation of diverse groups, by evaluating their practices through three social justice lenses:
- Infrastructure access–or how practices shape access to the science fields, resources, jobs, and deciding committees, and how power is shared and distributed more broadly;
- Literacies– such as ensuring rules (formal and informal) for participation are explicit and changing rules to meet and incorporate people's different experiences and goals;
- Community acceptance– as captured by how much science learning institutions and staff take responsibility for change, and by how much communities see and believe that change.
Each of these lenses and how they shape the dimensions of access and representation are areas that project participants can design for and evaluate in community science projects as well.
Author(s)/Organization: Emily Dawson, University College London
Publication Year: 2019
Tags
Attributes:Respects Community Strengths, Equity-Focused, Shares Leadership
Outcomes:Increased Science Agency, Strong Community Partnerships
Approaches:Community-driven Citizen Science, Participatory Research
Type:Reports & Articles