Page 309 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

23 River Advocacy as a Case of/for Novelizing Discourse in Science Education 283

more or less established literary genres, such as those of the natural sciences, and
everyday “folk” languages, such as those of river advocates – a process Bakhtin calls
novelization. To me, Pagan’s study clearly exemplifies this process of novelization
in the discourse of science education.
One prominent discursive layer observable in the vignettes is the discourse of
natural sciences such as environmental science and biology. From a curricular per-
spective, it is the unifying discourse that ought to provide purpose and meaning to
the educational activities and the scientific terms to be “used” by the advocates
(although the advocates may not experience it as such). After all, science is signifi-
cant. Without a generally accepted scientific discourse, terms such as “aquatic
invertebrates” and “macroinvertebrates” would not have their common scientific
meaning. Accordingly, pertaining to the linguistic characteristics of science educa-
tion, the discourse of science brings about what Bakhtin (1981) calls a “centralizing
tendency” (p. 67) from which scientific words obtain their very particular meanings.
However, creeping out of the cracks of what is linguistically kept together by the
dominant literary genre of the natural sciences is another discursive layer – the one
on which the language of science education unfolds in its own typical way.
Characteristic of this discourse is the use of intermediary languages by which con-
cepts share meanings from both the scientific discourse and “folk” discourse. From
a scientific perspective, the use of these intermediary languages may lead to the use
of words and meanings that do not exist in the discourse of science (e.g., “forms of
energy,” Kaper and Goedhart 2002a, b). Indeed, as every science teacher will admit,
using the language of the natural sciences as is will not help engage students in its
discourse. Thus, in the typical discourse of science education there is a decentral-
izing tendency as well – one that disrupts the dominancy of linguistic characteristics
from the natural sciences.
The struggle between these two tendencies, one centralizing and another decen-
tralizing, results in what Bakhtin (1981) calls “linguistic stratification” (p. 67).
Once dominant literary genres and “folk” languages are woven together in novel-
ized discourses, new literary genres with their own specific linguistic characteris-
tics may emerge. Thus, internalized in the discourse of science education, there is
already some kind of a dialogue between the language of the natural sciences and
students’ “folk” language as a result of which the language of science education
develops as another discursive layer with its own literary genre. However, as
Pagan’s study shows, this dialogue is not yet complete and finished. Rather, there
is another discursive process going on, reflecting how “folk” language struggles to
become part of the established discourse of the natural sciences.

A Case of/for Novelizing the Discourse of Science Education

In the vignettes presented by Pagan, one can observe another discursive layer
(deceptively) standing apart from the discourse of the natural sciences: the typical
“students’ basketball and dating talk.” On first sight, this typical “student talk” has
little to do with the kind of discourses commonly desired in science education.