Page 406 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

32 Rethinking Models of Collaboration in Critical Pedagogy: A Response to Stonebanks 381

learning projects with which the current generation of preservice teachers is quite
familiar, can be made more powerful when they are combined with critical insights
such as those that can be gained through studies of critical media literacy.
Thus, as a way to improve Stonebanks’ ideas for teacher education, perhaps, a
model of teacher education that highlights both critical media literacy and place-
based pedagogy may be viewed as both engaging and meaningful for the current
generation of preservice teachers. Such an approach could provide a way around
more traditional multicultural education that quickly brings today’s preservice
teachers to the point of telling us that they “get it” when it comes to meeting the
intellectual and academic needs of all our students.

Gene’s Perspective

Like Cory, I essentially agree with Stonebank’s perspective on the need for critical
engagement in education. I also agree with Cory’s concern that standards-based
instruction tends to promote uniformity of thought and an emphasis on getting the
right answer. As an historian of education with a background in the history of
science, I am acutely aware of the fact that seemingly “right” answers are often
wrong. Einstein broke the Newtonian paradigm. African-Americans, despite the
arguments of early twentieth century psychologists, were not genetically inferior to
the White population. Standards-based instruction (at least as practiced in most
settings under No Child Left Behind) shows clear evidence of being neither
scientific nor particularly effective.
Intellectual curiosity and courage, comparison, discovery, and, particularly,
creativity impress me as what is mostly lacking from contemporary education, and,
more specifically, science education. I come from a critical background similar to
Apple, Kincheloe, and Steinberg. Substituting science lessons, as Stonebanks
argues, supposedly grounded in critical thought, however, is not necessarily an
answer to what needs to be taught in science classes in an ethnically and culturally
diverse society. I am not convinced from Stonebank’s account of teaching science
through the study of water lice that very much is learned in the end – either in terms
of scientific observation or politics. I would ask, based on this account, what is it
that students have actually learned? Stonebanks does not make this clear. Why are
they “brilliant” in their observations? How are they critical – either in terms of
science or their social condition? How are they being creative?
While I can’t argue against revealing hegemonic structures and the function of
the “powerbloc” in the culture and how they relate to the construction of scientific
knowledge, there is a point where one needs to learn science. If one is studying
medicine, then of course, this should include a historical understanding of the role
of Arab culture in the development of modern medicine. But clearly, this does not
substitute for an understanding of medical practice. Like Cory, I subscribe to a
Deweyan model of “learning by doing,” of having instruction rooted in the life and
community of the child. Yet there are specific concepts and ideas that must be