Marginalized Discourses and Pedagogies: Constructively Confronting Science for All.

This Theme Issue of JRSTis devoted to examining critical, feminist, and poststructural theories and the implications these have in considering the ideal, “a science education for all children.” These three perspectives are brought together in this issue because they combine a questioning of the foundational canons composing science as a discipline and science education as a practice with an understanding that the intersections of race, class, and gender and other forms of identity labeling frame access to knowledge and power. Our desire to develop such a Theme Issue stems from our own experiences in which we have been involved in researching science teaching and classrooms endeavoring to address the multiple needs of girls and minority students. We have found this work to be both complex and infused with problems and dilemmas which do not lend themselves to simplistic, prescriptive solutions. Indeed, the articles presented in this issue all highlight the complexities of teaching science in a diverse culture and how these complexities suggest rethinking foundational assumptions about pedagogy and the discipline of science. For example, all of the authors have attempted through their teaching and research to deconstruct the canon of science as well as critique who one must be to partake in that canon. All of the authors have attempted to situate and problematize knowledge construction about science and self within the everyday framework that is marked by discourses of domination, control, opposition, resistance, and power. They show us how the ways in which these discourses emerge from pedagogical encounters and frame teachers, students, and classrooms. By arguing that teachers and students need to combine a critical understanding of science, including its content, culture, and discursive practices, with an understanding of students and educational processes, we can develop a deeper appreciation of how students and teachers must use these understandings as a basis from which to enrich the ideal of a “science for all.” The studies presented in this issue draw from current debates concerning schooling and the need for liberatory education, the social construction of science and of identity, and systems of JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING VOL. 35, NO. 4, PP. 339–340 (1998)