Science Education for a Better World? Reflections on Embodiment, Language and Sensitive Action

The STEPWISE framework (Science & Technology Education Promoting Wellbeing for Individuals, Societies & Environments) takes a radical overhaul of traditional aims of science education, to stretch them well beyond the learning and application of scientific content. Rather, it conceives of science education as a process of cultural formation, promoting people’s awareness of impacts of knowledge cultures that value economic production and material consumption over social and environmental concerns. Citizens are called upon to ‘take action,’ pushing away from neoliberal demands. In this chapter, I give fuller consideration to theoretical premises of this type of education. By drawing on insights provided by phenomenology, and the two, interconnected, dimensions of embodiment and language, it is suggested that ‘stepping wisely’ may be more than a framework or model for science learning but would in fact equate to a process of real ‘stepping’, by ‘sensing’ and ‘being’ in connection with wider life cycles that bring together people with environments. A sustainable approach to life on the Planet, therefore, becomes possible when established beliefs about science knowledge as a body of truths are revisited in the light of recent interdisciplinary studies on human development which are asserting the primacy of movement, emotion and perception in learning. This chapter argues for promotion of critical science education that is not only a means for deconstructing powerful agendas but a process supporting inventories of potent images for desired, sustainable futures.