What do images communicate about humans’ place in nature? Medin and Bang posit that the artifacts used to communicate science—including words, photographs, and illustrations—commonly reflect the cultural orientations of their creators. The authors argue that Native Americans traditionally see themselves as part of nature and focus on ecological relationships, while European Americans perceive themselves as outside of nature and think in terms of taxonomic relationships.
This Stocklmayer, Rennie, and Gilbert article outlines current challenges in preparing youth to go into science careers and to be scientifically literate citizens. The authors suggest creating partnerships between informal and formal education to address these challenges in school.
Mobile technology can be used to scaffold inquiry-based learning, enabling learners to work across settings and times, singly or in collaborative groups. It can expand learners’ opportunities to understand the nature of inquiry whilst they engage with the scientific content of a specific inquiry. This Sharples et al. paper reports on the use of the mobile computer-based inquiry toolkit nQuire. Teachers found the tool useful in helping students to make sense of data from varied settings.