Wrapping up Our First Book Club
Last time we read Bridging Science Education and Science Communication Research. Our awesome members shared some great thoughts with us. Here’s the highlights of our first book read!
Lori said:
Here are my thoughts:
1) It’s been a *long* time since I needed to read a full journal article front to back. This reinforced that journal articles never have been, and never will be, an engaging format for me. (And that’s really unfortunate for an article about science communication!)
2) As someone who considers myself a science communicator, it’s always felt like a science educator was something different…mainly because science educators often focus on kids, and my target audience is almost always adults. So, I appreciate having the chance to stop and consider the similarities and what each “field” can contribute to the other.
3) I’m a developmental psychologist by training, so the idea of culture shaping interpretation/application of science wasn’t surprising to me, but it was really interesting to consider the ways that science has shaped society (pg 138).
4) The ideas of science literacy requiring collaboration (Paper 1) and “soft skills” being super important for science literacy (Paper 2) really resonated with me. I think this is one reason why throwing facts at (for example) anti-vaxers isn’t super effective in changing their behavior, but conversations with their doctor seem to be helping.
5) The findings in Paper 3 (that most scientists see value in scientific dialogue but aren’t actually willing to do it) weren’t surprising to me. I faced this when I was trying to promote effective communication as a scientist at a research organization, and I see it now as a scicomm business owner. I think one of the big causes of this is that science, as a profession, doesn’t typically value or reward effective scicomm. The main career currency is publications and funding, and you get the same line on your CV regardless of whether your article was interesting or tragically boring. Also, by the time you’re ready to communicate your research findings, you’re probably also seeking funding for the next study, so scicomm gets short shrift. One marketing strategy that seems to be gaining traction for me in my business is to frame myself as someone who can take most scicomm work off a researcher’s plate so that they can focus on the research tasks that only they can do (or want to do).
6) A few points in this article reminded me of recent talks I’ve attended:
6a) I recently attended this webinar (https://scienceandsociety.duke.edu/ev...) by Jean Goodwin, through Duke University’s Science & Society initiative. She talked about science literacy being a requirement of modern responsible citizenship. I hadn’t thought of it that was before, but I completely agree!
6b) This week, I attended a webinar on empathy in scicomm (https://lifeology.io/scicomm/events-w...) by Reyhaneh Maktoufi, through Lifeology. She talked about the importance of science communicators garnering the trust of their audience. She also talked about dialogue with the audience as being one component of earning trust.
Good article pick, Monique! I’m interested to hear others’ thoughts!
Lori
Ellison O. said:
Hey guys! I think we picked a good one for our first read, this was quite interesting, and it definitely gives us a lot to talk about! Here are my impressions.
Now, I am a college student and am thus quite used to regularly consuming academic literature, so my reading palate, so to speak, has adapted to journal articles, but I do agree with Lori that this article is probably not optimally accessible to the general public. This is mostly because of its length and tone; I do think it is great that this article was written mostly free of any niche jargon, because I, myself a newcomer to this topic, was able to read and comprehend it without trouble.
I recall reading sometime last year (in a very interesting book) that educators in general often seem to have the wrong idea of the point of education. Take, since it is most relevant here, science educators; certainly they should desire to give students a solid knowledge base in science, but the point of the class is not for students to remember that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell — the point should be to introduce students to science in such a way that they are interested in and open to the subject after they leave the classroom, and feeding this interest is where science communication comes in.
This is what came to mind when I was reading the article, because it made me think about how intense efforts to educate students may result in them becoming closed off to further interaction with the subject, which would make the job of the science communicator very difficult, since they are then working with an uncooperative public. I would imagine that perhaps the mismatch between SciComm and SciEd could be smoothed over some with proper acknowledgement of what scientific literacy really is: an understanding of scientific methods, an appropriate knowledge base in scientific topics, and plenty of carefully fostered curiosity.
Once again, I am a newbie to these subjects, but this article reminded me of something I’d already read and I thought I would make note of that connection here! If anyone is interested, the book in question is called “The Death of Expertise: the Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters.” As one can probably infer, it is not the cheeriest of reading material, but it certainly is intriguing!
Monique (I, the editor) said:
…What I’m gathering is that SciEd is mostly focused on teaching scientific knowledge based on a curriculum, but SciComm is about getting people more interested in STEM…
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” ~Mark Twain
Continuing my comment, this article opened my eyes to the differences between SciComm and SciEd, and this was very important to my own educational philosophy. There are so many ways I’ve seen the two combined and work separately, and I would love to go into this in a greater depth. Now I have a better understanding of where my future in science, education, and communication stands.
The conversations with my friends on SciComm and SciEd were rather enlightening, and I hope we can do this more often on our small book club. I also look forward to more reading suggestions as well!
Be sure to tune in next time! Cherrio!
