Scientific knowledge is for everyone, speaker argues

Marie Claire Shanahan has loved science for as long as she can remember.

But the associate professor in the Werklund School of Education says that although her parents always encouraged her to learn all she could in this area, they never considered themselves "science people."

“They supported and encouraged my interests but joked about how they couldn't or didn't understand science,” she explains, “but they were very knowledgeable people.”

Shanahan says her mother taught high school home economics, and perhaps didn’t realize how much science she employed in her profession. "She worked with foods and clothing. I learned about surface tension and reaction rates from her and how to visualize patterns in three dimensions.

“And if that isn't scientific, I'm not sure what is.”

Shanahan says each of her parents carried with them the experiences they had in school, where not excelling in science might have suggested they weren't scientific. And she says she saw first-hand how that relationship to scientific knowledge impacted other areas of their lives, such as access to health-care information and local conservation advocacy.

Today, Shanahan stills considers this one of the biggest issues she explores as a researcher — the perception of what people think it means to be scientific, and their capabilities in this area.

“I study a lot of different things, from elementary science classrooms to online science news sites,” she says. “In all of these situations, I'm always interested in understanding what people think it means to be scientific. I want to know how ideas about ‘being scientific’ end up including and excluding people from those activities.”

“Scientific knowledge is something that belongs to everyone. It belongs to patients and caregivers advocating for themselves and their families, it belongs to people tinkering in their garages. And yet, science education spaces tend to organized in a way that makes it seem that science is only accessible to certain types of people. I want my research to be part of changing that.”

Shanahan has been selected as this year’s Werklund Distinguished Research Lecturer. On Sept. 21, she will give her presentation entitled Public Science and Public Science Education. In her talk, she will argue that scientific knowledge is created by people of all ages and all different backgrounds, and she will share her research into how scientific knowledge belongs to all of us, and what that means for science education.

While the talk is free, registration is requested to ensure adequate seating and refreshments for the reception that will follow her presentation.