Chapter 13: Shifting Paradigms in Science Education: A Change Agent's Life on the Edge

Change is the only constant. Everything is connecting. A holistic image is emerging. I have been dissolving boundaries among entities throughout my career. The boundaries insulating formal education institutions K-16 that separate them from the community were the first to go. Then came the boundaries separating each of the sciences, the sciences from technology, and both from society. Next, boundaries among all disciplines began to dissolve yielding a transdisciplinary image. Ultimately the boundaries between practice and research blurred. Calls for systemic thinking were coming from all directions.

This is the story of my journey as a change agent in science education. It was a rocky start, on a long twisting path strewn with fallen trees and an occasional boulder. My story chronicles the increasing ways I involved the community as a resource to enhance science teaching, people who influenced me, innovations I developed demonstrating the viability of Science/ Technology/Society (STS) reform, lessons I learned about being a change agent, and my practice-research-theory cycle. The innovations were the subjects for my research to learn ways to improve environments for creative (out-of-the box) science teachers in schools and the learning of science. Regardless of the position I was in (to earn my paycheck), I used it as a platform to be a change agent to improve science education by shifting from the dominant, reductionist, mechanistic paradigm of transmission teaching to a holistic paradigm (STS) of constructivist learning. Earth’s last frontier, the ocean, its mysteries, its influence on humans became the perfect vector for science education change initiatives. It is even a great segue to today’s hot topic, climate change.