Responding to the climate crisis requires a large-scale transformation of energy systems away from fossil fuels toward a more distributed, equitable, renewable-based society. The societal benefits of this transformation which could redistribute power, literally and figuratively, go well beyond decarbonization; a renewable society could also be a…

There is a broad impetus across policy and institutional domains to expand public engagement and involvement with emerging technology research and innovation. Yet innovative theory, methods, and practices to critically explore algorithmic system controversies and democratic possibilities are still in nascent form. In this paper, we bring together…

Science and Technology (S&T) indicators are contingent knowledge demanding critique and contextualization for validity: they are value-laden devices. Hence their potential for generating biased knowledge, exhibiting the attributes of devices enabling the social construction of bias and ignorance. But indicators are also prone to criticism and…

Once dominated by a focus on collecting and preserving, and later communicating science through hands-on experiences, science museums are slowly reshaping their identities and purposes to explicitly include and promote active citizenship, social responsibility, engagement with complex science and technology issues, and agency. Informed by…

This paper explores the concept of scientific literacy through its relation to democracy and citizenship. Scientific literacy has received international attention in the twenty-first century as demonstrated by the Programme for International Student Assessment survey of 2006. It is no longer just a concept but has become a stated and testable…

Learning democratic participation as future citizens is an important goal for science education for all students. To take part in debates and decision-making involving socioscientific issues, such as sustainability, students need to become aware of different positions and dilemmas regarding such issues. This study seeks to understand how…

According to previous research, in contemporary western societies health is seen as an increasingly non-political issue. Rather than being at the centre of collective decision-making and democratic politics, health is regarded as resting on individual responsibility. In this study we focus on, and explore an important and challenging…

Scientifically literate citizens must be able to engage in making decisions on science-based social issues. In this paper, I start by showing examples of science curricula and policy documents that capitalise the importance of engaging future citizens in decision-making processes whether at the personal or at the societal levels. I elucidate the…

As every elementary science teacher knows, children sometimes ask questions that can not easily be answered by science. The "messiness" of these questions may stem from the fact that scientific understanding is often incomplete and ever changing, a situation that can lead students (and the public) to be confused about the information…

We present a sequence of professional development sessions to support science teachers in designing socio-scientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL) lessons to foster democratic citizenship. We focus on seven stages for enacting SSIBL: (1) introducing a dilemma; (2) initial opinion-forming; (3) creating a 'need to know'; (4) inquiry; (5) dialogue;…

In a world of increasing scientific and technological complexity, where science and technology play an expanding role in our lives, there is need for a democratic citizenry that is skilled at discussing and making choices that are informed by science and shaped by individual and collective values. Although an oft argued rationale for teaching…

The Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit, operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. The foundation seeks to identify and address the challenges to making democracy work as it should through interrelated program areas that focus on citizens, communities, and institutions. Each issue of this annual newsletter…

When we think of communities of the future, we have to think of new social contracts between universities and society with a different ecology, and an intense compatibility towards transdisciplinarity. We know that today there is a need for truly fundamental reflections and questions on knowledge as the building block of global societies…

In this paper we critically review recent developments in policies, practices and philosophies pertaining to the mediation between science and the public within the EU and the UK, focusing in particular on the current paradigm of Public Understanding of Science and Technology (PEST) which seeks to depart from the science information-transmission…

Andrew Feenberg, in his book "Questioning Technology", offers his theory of "democratized rationalization" as a critical alternative to Jacques Ellul's essentialist perspective. Feenberg argues that Ellul has confused the tendency toward efficiency in technological discourse with the essence of technology, thereby disallowing for a "positive…