Re-Visioning Science Education : Reconsidering Vision III

A point of departure in this paper is an awareness that we are living in the Anthropocene era. Based on this, education, including science education, needs to be re-visioned. Several scholars have suggested a Vision III of scientific literacy and science education as a complement to the well-spread two visions first suggested by Roberts in 2007. As suggested in this paper, the three different visions can be related to different educational-philosophical frameworks, worldview perspectives, and curriculum emphases. Vision I has a structure of science- and/or a scientific skills-emphasis and Vision II an everyday life- and/or a decision making-emphasis. Finally, a reconsidered Vision III can be seen as having an ethico-socio-political- and a relational-existential-emphasis. Different views of the relationship between the three different visions will be elaborated on in the paper. One way of seeing it is as Vision III being based on Vision II, which in turn builds on Vision I (e.g. Guerrero & Torres‐Olave, 2022). The Vision III-version suggested by Sjöström and Eilks (2018) can be seen as synonymous to eco-reflexive Bildung-oriented and critical science education. It integrates cognitive and affective domains and includes philosophical-moral-existential alternatives (see also: Sjöström, 2018) as well as politicization to address complex socio-scientific issues. “Bildung” is a central concept in central European/Scandinavian educational theory. It has a long and multifaceted history of ideas including for instance humanistic values and the ideas of critical-democratic citizenship. Vision III-driven science education can also be connected to other contemporary conceptualizations such as futures literacy, socio-ecojustice, agency, environmental humanities, and planetary health. It is with other words about a critical science education for sustainability. The paper will be finished with a suggestion of a novel and multifaceted way of viewing Vision III, that is, main elements of a reconsidered Vision III.Virtual Oral presentation