Abstract

A decade ago Roberts (2007) suggested two visions of scientific literacy and science education. In this theoretical paper I develop the ideas behind a third vision, Vision III (Sjöström & Eilks, 2017), emphasizing moral-philosophical-existential-political alternatives in STEM education. For each of the three visions I suggest (for vision I and II based on previous publications, e.g. Sund, 2016; Lidar et al., in press) two subversions connected to different curriculum emphases. For Vision III this mainly means curriculum emphases not suggested by Roberts. One exception is the curriculum emphasis ‘self as explainer’, which can be interpreted as being about existentialism. I discuss and problematize the three visions especially in relation to different versions of ‘Bildung’ (Sjöström & Eilks, 2017), but also in relation to different philosophies of education and in relation to views on teaching and learning in and about science-technology-society-environment (STSE) and nature-of-science (NOS), respectively. I claim that science education based on the Bildung-version called reflexive Bildung can be seen as an alternative to science education based on Western modernism (Sjöström, in press). It integrates cognitive and affective domains and includes politicisation to address complex socio-scientific issues, but also moral-philosophical-existential alternatives. I discuss reflexive Bildung from post-human perspectives and also suggest and discuss implications of this Bildung-philosophy on science curricula, science teacher education and praxis of STEM education.