Expressive Science Will Raise The Next Generation of Scientists
Chris Emery
Science is expressive, and when you express yourself in the scientific process, you will find some level of care, curiosity and relationship in it. The four crisscrossing concepts of my philosophy—care, relationship, curiosity and expression—drive my teaching so that students can experience science education in a way that challenges the messages, stigmas and traditions in society that too often affect our perception of science.
In my years of education, I typically had science presented to me as orderly, precise, indifferent, and non-expressive. I believed that, in order to be good at science, I would need to score perfectly on multiple choice tests, use the appropriate vocabulary, and flawlessly replicated laboratory procedures over my school career; then, I might have a place in the scientific community. I don’t believe this experience I had with science education is unique to me and, years later, I can say that I regularly participate in science and do well at it without having done those things. Science, in all its advancements over time, has yet to take a firm place in everyday life for so many people because, in society and school, we usually only hear a message from the field of science that sounds something like this: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Students need a general interest and value toward something—to care. When I teach, I give students the chance to place their values, preconceived and unrefined, at the table. Even if that value is that they do not actually care, things change, one way or another, by the time my lesson is over. They need to see things that are connected, affect each other, and have movement between them—they need to see relationships. New relationships with plastic, moss, boiling water, food or their school happen as students notice, wonder and relate with the “everyday”. They need to be in a place of inquiring, testing and discussing what perspectives there are and what makes sense to their mind and to other people—they need to get curious. In my classroom, they will get curious when the phenomena of life and our world are perceived differently, when they are placed in a science learning space. Woven into all of this, they need to have a personal participation in science and the science community—they need to express themselves in it. I firmly believe that when I allow students to make a love song about the rock cycle, to interview the cafeteria staff about the food that is most wasted at lunch, or to find as many ways as they can to capture water from thin air, that I can truly assess students’ learning by the many demonstratable ways inherent in their creativity. In my classroom, the message is this: ANY PERSONS WELCOME.
There is a societal expectation to raise the next generation of scientists, and the kind of messages students hear and the kind of expression they are allowed to have in science education will determine whether or not they choose to be part of the scientific community. To raise the next generation of scientists, we must not forget that we express ourselves by our involvement in science in whatever form it happens. Science is expressive, and when you express yourself in the scientific process, you will find some level of care, curiosity and relationship in it.