ABSTRACT
In this chapter I put forth arguments supporting the value of description for science education. In particular, I present reasons to consider the ways that science is constructed interactionally among participants in various communities through discourse processes. Research in science education has shown a shift in focus toward the intersubjective processes of knowledge construction, representation, appropriation, and evaluation. This shift situates educational processes in the intersubjective spaces centered on language and social processes (Kelly & Chen, 1999; Roth & McGinn, 1998) and suggests a number of questions about how science is interactionally accomplished in educational settings. Ways that knowledge is formulated, communicated, critiqued, appropriated, and evaluated define what counts as science for the particular social group under consideration (Kelly & Green, 1998). To consider what counts as science for educational purposes, I turn to the field of science studies. Science studies are the emerging multidisciplinary fields (e.g., sociology, anthropology, rhetoric, history, philosophy of science) that make scientific knowledge, practices, and communities the subject of investigation (for overview of the field, see Bowen, chap. 4, this volume; Jasanoff, Markle, Petersen, & Pinch, 1995). I argue that empirical, descriptive studies-largely from the sociological and anthropological points of view-of social interaction and cultural practices in science settings offer important intellectual frameworks for understanding school science. To understand the relationship of science and education, I consider problems with interpretation of descrip-
C H A P T H
Gregory J. Kelly University of California, Santa Barbara
tion as articulated in the form of epistemological critiques of such empirical studies of scientific practice. As documented by this collection and others elsewhere, educational reform concerns ways of addressing a set of normative questions about students, their educational experience, and knowledge. These questions may be informed by descriptive studies of everyday classroom life. Thus, this chapter provides a rationale for ethnographic and sociolinguistic descriptions of everyday life in science classrooms.
