This edited volume brings closer two contemporary science education research areas: Nature of Science (NOS) and Social Justice (SJ). It starts a dialogue on the characteristics of NOS for SJ with the purpose of advancing the existing discussion and creating new avenues for research. Using a variety of approaches and perspectives, the authors of the different chapters engage in a dialogue on the construct of NOS for SJ, its characteristics, as well as ways of addressing it in science classrooms. Issues addressed are related to why a school science aiming at SJ should address NOS; what NOS-related content, skills and attitudes form the basis when aiming at SJ; and how school science can address NOS for SJ. Through a set of theoretical and empirical chapters, the authors suggest answers, but they also pose new questions on what NOS for SJ can mean, and what issues need to be taken into consideration in future research and practice. Chapter “Nature of Science for Social Justice: Why, What and How?” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com

We've been told, again and again, that life is unfair. But what if we're wrong simply to resign ourselves to this situation? Drawing on the evidence from our evolutionary history and the emergent science of human nature, this title shows that we have an innate sense of fairness.

Prompted by the ongoing debate among science educators over ‘nature of science’, and its importance in school and university curricula, this book is a clarion call for a broad re-conceptualizing of nature of science in science education. The authors draw on the ‘family resemblance’ approach popularized by Wittgenstein, defining science as a cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional system whose heterogeneous characteristics and influences should be more thoroughly reflected in science education. They seek wherever possible to clarify their developing thesis with visual tools that illustrate how their ideas can be practically applied in science education. The volume’s holistic representation of science, which includes the aims and values, knowledge, practices, techniques, and methodological rules (as well as science’s social and institutional contexts), mirrors its core aim to synthesize perspectives from the fields of philosophy of science and science education. The authors believe that this more integrated conception of nature of science in science education is both innovative and beneficial. They discuss in detail the implications for curriculum content, pedagogy, and learning outcomes, deploy numerous real-life examples, and detail the links between their ideas and curriculum policy more generally.

How might science education reflect the values of a socially just and democratic society? How do urban youth living in poverty construct science in their lives in ways that are enriching, empowering, and transformative? Using a combination of in-depth case studies and rigorous theory, this volume: Offers a series of teaching stories that describes youth’s practices of science, providing valuable insight to help teachers work with inner-city youth.Explores the importance of inclusiveness, membership rules, and the purposes and goals of good science, including utility, pragmatism, and doing good for others.Shows how science connects to the lives of youth both in and out of school. Builds on and critiques current reform initiatives in science education.Features stories taken from six years of teaching and research in after-school science programs with children and youth in homeless shelters.Illustrates how the children’s unique situations framed their constructions of science in compelling and challenging ways.

This second edition of Social Injustice and Public Health is a comprehensive, up-to-date, evidence-based resource on the relationship of social injustice to many aspects of public health. With contributions from leading experts in public health, medicine, health, social sciences, and other fields, this integrated book documents the adverse effects of social injustice on health and makes recommendations on what needs to be done to reduce social injustice and thereby improve the public's health. Social Injustice and Public Health is divided into four parts: · The nature of social injustice and its impact on public health · How the health of specific population groups is affected by social injustice · How social injustice adversely affects medical care, infectious and chronic non-communicable disease, nutrition, mental health, violence, environmental and occupational health, oral health, and aspects of international health · What needs to be done, such as addressing social injustice in a human rights context, promoting social justice through public health policies and programs, strengthening communities, and promoting equitable and sustainable human development With 78 contributors who are experts in their respective subject areas, this textbook is ideal for students and practitioners in public health, medicine, nursing, and other health sciences. It is the definitive resource for anyone seeking to better understand the social determinants of health and how to address them to reduce social injustice and improve the public's health.

In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically. A resolutely materialist spirituality based equally on science and science fiction: a wild feminist and afro-futurist ride! adrienne maree brown, co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit.

This book presents a series of analyses of educational policies – largely in the UK, but some also in Europe – researched by a team of social scientists who share a commitment to social justice and equity in education. We explore what social justice means, in educational policy and practice, and how it impacts on our understanding of both ‘educational science’ and ‘the public good’. Using a social constructivist approach, the book argues that social justice requires a particular and critical analysis of the meaning of meritocracy, and of the way this term turns educational policies towards treating learning as a competition, in which many young people are constructed as ‘losers’. We discuss how many terms in education are essentialised and have specific, and different, meanings for particular social groups, and how this may create issues in both quantitative survey methods and in determining what is ‘the public good’. We discuss social justice across a range of intersecting social characteristics, including social class, ethnicity and gender, as they are applied across the educational policy spectrum, from early years to postgraduate education. We examine the ways that young people construct their identities, and the implications of this for understanding the ‘public good’ in educational practice. We consider the responsibilities of educational researchers to acknowledge these issues, and offer examples of researching with such a commitment. We conclude by considering how educational policy might contribute to a socially just, equitable and inclusive public good.