ABSTRACT
When it comes to describing what science is, there is no shortage of notions. Many authors, including those in this volume, have argued that reformed understandings of science and science instruction in schools (Lemke, 1990; Lee & Fradd, 1998; Lynch, 2000; AAAS, 2000) are essential in ensuring equitable science education for all students. The analytical perspective I bring to this chapter, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), requires that the researcher engage both with the local level of science understandings, in this case the texts students write in their classroom, as well as larger meanings about those texts that circulate within societal understandings of science. While I will say more about these methodological issues later, I would like to begin by outlining some of these societal and cultural understandings of science that circulate and influence how we understand what science is.
