ABSTRACT
In the foregoing vignette constructed on the basis of my ethnographic work, the essential nature of science classrooms is apparent. In this setting, students were to use a “simple” activity as an experiential model for a relationship in their textbook that was a dramatic simplification of a complex process that is actually quite difficult to observe in its entirety. There are few differences between this activity and those experienced by science undergraduates. There are considerable differences between this type of activity and those that characterize the construction of science knowledge in science communities. In these settings, attempts are made to further elaborate the complexities of what is taken as “known” so as to generate more precise, complex, predictive, and explanatory models. The contrast between these activities, science-in-the-making (Latour, 1987) compared to science-in-the-classroom, renders understandable why classroom practices so poorly develop interest in science and student understanding of the complex relationships in the natural world.
