Science Museums: Reflections from an Autobiographical Journey (original) (raw)

Critical Voices in Science Education Research, 2019

Abstract

In this chapter, I use the currere process of reflexive inquiry (PinarWF, AnnMeetAmEducResAssoc2:19–27, 1975), as a personal experience method (Grumet MR, JTeachEduc40:13–17, 1989) to map my intellectual interests about science museums and make meaning of them. Moving through the four moments of inquiry that Pinar describes − regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetic −, I start with a turn to my autobiographical past, looking closely at undergraduate, graduate and professional experiences that first opened a space for me to combine science and education, and then, to approach (and question) the work of science museums. Places, people, feeling and emotions emerged as part of this reconstruction. In taking distance of the past, I move within the other moments of inquiry. I look at the positions that ground my current doctoral research with museum exhibits that disrupt dominant cultural narratives and prevailing models of science communication. As part of this process, I reflect on the ways I have strengthened and refined my epistemological beliefs and my understandings about the challenges and possibilities to envision (and to advocate for) science museums as places for promoting social change. While identifying relations between intellectual interests and biographical movement, I explore potential angles for future research and, also, possibilities for combining theory and practice.

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