Chapter 9: Using Transformative Moments to Construct Critical Science Stances

This chapter hopes to build on the notions that we can indeed create and design approaches that do meet the student’s needs and desires. Furthermore, we can create spaces within the current school atmosphere that are indeed transformative as described by Love (2011). I argue that the transformative process is often fraught with missteps, difficulties and messiness that often go under analyzed in critical work. Strangely, it is these very difficulties that provide much of the richness of transformative pedagogy as a learning tool. Furthermore, I would like to also contend that researchers often under-estimate the difficulties students have in trying to take on empowered critical stances in the face of media and social pressures that depict their immediate reality. For example, often researchers do not fully indicate how transformation has taken place nor do they address the numerous factors that must be in place before transformation can take place.