Abandoning the Deficit Model

by Caroline Hu

Abandoning the Deficit Model: Designing a Scientific Research Course in Dialogue with the Rest of the World

By Alyssa Shearer, PhD

Volume 27, no. 1, Rethinking Science Communication

One of my initial forays into science communications was in organizing a debate on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) with the Hunter College Food Policy Center in New York City. After attending a lecture series there, I was invited to help select the debate speakers, and for the first time, I began to appreciate that communicating science alone was not enough to disentangle a seemingly scientific debate. My prior coursework extolling the precision in which we can control plant genetics now felt vain in the wake of the realization that this control extended to corporate power over farmers’ rights.1 Simultaneously, I grappled with how aspects of my prior education in science underprepared me for certain realities of conducting research, and how the awareness I gained through the GMO debate might be applied to biomedical research. My experience was not a unique one, as traditional science curriculum does not often provide opportunities to explore socio-scientific issues or philosophical underpinnings of science in open, dialogic ways.2 The acquisition of specialized knowledge and research productivity tend to be the measure of worth in the sciences, meant to keep science and its practitioners isolated and apolitical.3 Broader science communications is also not routinely taught, and combined with these other deficits, stymies student ability to critique and connect the practices, purposes, and beneficiaries of science to modes of science communication and their impact.

These issues became increasingly important to me, especially as I ventured into teaching after completing my PhD. I found myself asking: How can education increase student understanding of the socio-political nature of science and the feedback cycle between research and society? How can science educators incorporate science communication praxis as a way to strengthen these connections while emphasizing student voice? And how can students be encouraged to use their own knowledge, skills, and voice beyond the laboratory and classroom, to use science to support social justice?

I have begun answering these questions by leading a Science Research Program for upper level high schoolers at Horace Mann School in New York City. After learning basic research skills in the first year of the program, students spend a portion of their summer break on a science research project of their choosing. Upon returning to the program’s second year, students bring data to analyze and communicate their work in three bread and butter academic forms: oral presentations to the class, a written research paper modeling those published in the scientific literature, and a research poster, such as ones presented at academic conferences.

In three years of teaching this course, I have sought ways to expand this basic format. Scientific communication is still a central focus, but now course content includes broader science communication as well. I connect both to social, political, and philosophical factors to build student awareness of how these are interwoven into the production, dissemination, and impact of scientific research. My goal is not simply to increase student clarity in technical and non-technical science communication, but also for students to develop epistemic insights and a sense of responsibility in deciding what, how, and why science is communicated. I aim to make apparent the necessity for clarity and connection in thought, action, and word as they develop into critically aware scientists who are in dialogue with the rest of the world.

In building this course, I continue to reflect on other experiences in my graduate studies that felt siloed from the outside world. I remember how I felt attending yet another biomedical seminar filled with molecular data studying chronic, diet-related disease, devoid of external context. I was nagged by the sterility of the information presented, as if more data and new drug targets were the only rational approach to improving health. Biomedical research papers studying compounds derived from plants used in traditional medicine gave only the slightest mention of their origins, if any, unbothered by the people and knowledge they overstepped. It became apparent to me that being regarded as a credible scientific researcher meant presenting a data-heavy deluge of sterile information.

My students pick up on this attitude quickly and attempt to imitate this style of communication. At this stage, they are often concerned with the “right way” to conduct, understand, and communicate science. Early on in crafting the course, I was also concerned with the “right way” and the “right topics” to teach and often felt the need to legitimize my lessons with more data. Eventually, it dawned on me that this approach was counterintuitive to the dialogue model of science communication that I wanted to emphasize to my students. Since this realization, I have opened the curriculum to more student-chosen content, to counteract such hegemony by treating students as active participants in deciding what is worthy of attention and research.

From the first day of class, I am transparent with students that my course will not practice the deficit model of science communication, where students or the public are seen as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge curated by experts. Instead, the course will be a collaborative effort between us. I am not an expert on each of their projects, and neither are their peers. It is our collective responsibility to learn how to communicate science accessibly in and outside of the classroom since there is no one way to teach, conduct, or communicate science. I invite them to share their interests and perspectives at various points throughout the year.

By Becca Rose, from “An Illustrated Guide to Embodied Learning”

Figure 1: I show my class illustrations depicting students and teachers navigating learning together and invite them to share what that could look like in our classroom.4

In an early lesson, I guide students in acknowledging the relationships among opposing attitudes toward science, the limitations of scientific knowledge, and how science is communicated. I introduce them to the concept of scientism, an excessive belief in the scientific method as the only way to attain knowledge, and the problematic implications of such a narrow-minded view on both science and society.5  We also define the opposing anti-science stance, where one rejects current scientific consensus and scientific methods outright. Considering this spectrum of views, I ask students to identify a shared misinterpretation of science that could result in both points of view, which leads us to science being seen as a source of truth. In unpacking this misunderstanding, we discuss how types of science communication can form such a perception. For example, I ask students to consider the authority implied by statistical significance in research, how it influences our perception of truth, and whether messaging based on statistical analysis would or should be equally accepted by all people. Data-centric messaging can leave audiences with no choice but to “believe the scientists” and backfire into mistrust by not allowing room for audience contribution and interpretation of what is deemed “true.”

To ground the impact of scientism in a real example, we examine the partnering of Indigenous and Western science after reading an article applying the Two-Eyed Seeing framework to ecological and fisheries research.6 The Two-Eyed Seeing framework, from Mi’kmaq Elders Albert D. Marshall and Murdena Marshall from the Eskasoni First Nation, uses Indigenous knowledge and Western science in the co-creation of questions, knowledge, and decisions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous science practitioners.7 It also clearly states that sharing such knowledge can be transformative to the learner, who then has a responsibility to act upon the knowledge gained. By discussing the case studies in this reading, students learn concrete examples of how the priorities of Indigenous communities and academic researchers studying the same ecosystem led to some differences in forms of evidence and research techniques, but conclusions yielded a large degree of overlap.3 I also encourage students to share how a Two-Eyed Seeing approach could be applied to their own research, and what connections their field of study has to Indigenous communities. Students have identified a range of applications, including how the Two-Eyed Seeing approach can be applied to mental health research and the need to respect land rights in their own environmental research on Indigenous lands.

Building on this foundation, students begin assessing the philosophical and socio-political underpinnings of their own research projects. We explore the overlap of epistemology and ontology with research methodology to examine choices made in designing their research questions, experiments, and the possible impact on their results. Students are able to identify assumptions made in such choices and share these insights during their research project presentations. By taking this approach, we facilitate a change in student mindset away from there being a “right way” of conducting research in order to gain the “right data” needed to prove or disprove a hypothesis. Students begin to appreciate the complexity of weighing alternatives in research design and consider how such choices contribute to nonuniversal application of the resulting data. I stress to my students that identifying and communicating nuances of research design is as important as clearly communicating scientific findings. This transparency can reduce the backlash of mistrust produced by science communication that skews toward absolutes and neutrality.

It is important for students to recognize that science does not have a language until we give it one, and that language reflects both objective and subjective narratives. In class, the students and I unpack implicit meanings of commonly used science metaphors, such as how such heuristics can limit our scientific perspective and even legitimize harmful associations.8 Students are familiar with the metaphor describing the body as a “machine” due to its prominent influence on western science and medicine yet typically have not given its legitimacy or effect much thought, or considered alternatives, such as “terrain.”9 In class, students grapple with how the “machine” metaphor has helped researchers to build a mechanistic understanding of some aspects of biology, such as cell signaling, but could be harmful in delegitimizing medical issues where mechanistic explanation is not yet known, or might not be plausible to research. They are less familiar with describing the body as “terrain” but eager to debate how it could lead to a more preventative and holistic mindset in research and medicine. I then explain how the mechanical mindset can extend beyond medicine when we unpack evolution described as an “arms race.” Students more easily recognize this as scientifically invalid because evolution is a process based on random genetic changes rather than a concerted effort to defeat an enemy. I then probe students to explore the way this metaphor links violence and war to innate biology. The insights from this lesson travel with students throughout the year as we organically come across other metaphors that they begin to question on their own.

As the semester continues, we analyze the empirical research of science communications. Students simultaneously practice their analytical skills while building an awareness of how factors beyond knowledge acquisition impact a person’s willingness to agree with scientific information. These factors include personal values and beliefs, cultural and political identity, and worldviews.10  Themes of scientism and anti-science re-emerge in these lessons as many people do not fall evenly into those two extreme viewpoints. To practice acknowledging and navigating personal perspectives when communicating science, students are presented with scenarios of people who hold one science skeptical view, such as vaccine hesitancy, and one science validated view, such as advocating for pollution regulations. Dialectically, students consider these seemingly opposing stances but work to find a value that allows that person to hold both perspectives. This activity aims to build an empathetic mindset in science communications that they can take beyond the classroom, rather than a more common reactionary approach taken when interpreting someone’s hesitancy toward a science-based claim as strictly anti-science.

These lessons culminate in a class project outside the scope of the students’ own research studies, where they either practice or analyze science communication, using evidence from the literature to assess the style and purpose of science communication in various forms of media. Students have the freedom to choose their topic and selection between a few designated formats. One student wrote an opinion piece exploring the history of eugenics and science behind modern prenatal genetic screening to question if such scientific advances support medical decision making or continue to condone ableist and eugenic policies. Another wrote an essay exploring communications research on how the style of reporting climate change research can negatively or positively impact political will toward climate action. Their work accessibly explains science along with the socio-political influences, empowering them to recognize science communication as more than just a way to share an isolated fun fact, or the latest research findings.

My students also practiced science communication to others by designing a workshop for Horace Mann’s Unity Week programming. This year, their workshop was entitled, “Speaking Science: How Language Used in Science Influences Perception,” connecting student research interests with our lessons on Indigenous science and science communications. The workshop introduced attendees to the practice of Indigenous science, focusing on the Indigenous practice of controlled burning for land management and wildfire prevention, and how this knowledge has been disregarded historically and in contemporary language. Student instructors demonstrated how biased language impacts Large Language Models through an activity where attendees prompted ChatGPT to write a story on a scientist’s expedition in a remote location of their choosing. Often, the AI responses described a story where an Indigenous guide assists a scientist in their expedition but was not an equal bearer of knowledge or discovery. Their creative workshop highlighted how essential it is to incorporate socio-political insight into science communication in order to counter conservative notions of who is worthy of scientific trust.

Through expanding this course beyond the traditional forms of scientific research communication, I have begun to answer my own pedagogical questions. While it is a tremendous undertaking for a high school student to firmly grasp a new scientific research project, I have seen that guiding student-led critique of the connections among research, science communications, and society fosters a more expansive and lasting view of the process, purpose, and impact of science. In a class where students enter with unique interests and knowledge of various scientific topics, emphasizing common philosophical and socio-political underpinnings of scientific research rather than only focusing on each research topic, has proven to enhance course relevancy and learning for all. Similarly, when students connect communication praxis to these commonalities across scientific disciplines, they appreciate how integral considerate communication is to equitable research practices and impact, instead of as a tangential task to research. I hope my students will take the answers we found together as fuel for a continued critical conversation that reimagines the possibilities of conducting and sharing science.

—

Alyssa Shearer, PhD: Alyssa is a science educator at Horace Mann School in NYC. Her scientific training is in biomedical research. She is thankful to have been a part of local science advocacy and activism work with March for Science NYC and Science for the People.

 

Notes

  1. Kelly Bronson “Responsible to Whom? Seed Innovations and the Corporatization of Agriculture.” Journal of Responsible Innovation 2, no. 1 (2015): 62–77; Richard Lewontin, “Agricultural Research and the Penetration of Capital,” Science for the People, January-February 1982, 12–17.
  2. Dana L. Zeidler, “STEM Education: A Deficit Framework for the Twenty First Century? A Sociocultural Socioscientific Response.” Cultural Studies of Science Education 11 (2016): 11–26; Annelies Pieterman-Bos and Marc HW van Mil. “Integration of Philosophy of Science in Biomedical Data Science Education to Foster Better Scientific Practice,” Science & Education 32, no. 6 (2023): 1709–1738; Renia Gasparatou, “Scientism and Scientific Thinking: A Note on Science Education,” Science & Education 26, no. 7 (2017): 799–812; Kristin L. Gunckel and Sara Tolbert, “The Imperative to Move Toward a Dimension of Care in Engineering Education,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 55, no. 7 (2018): 938–961; Daniel Morales-Doyle, “Putting Science Education in its Place: the Science Question in Social Justice Education,” Cultural Studies of Science Education 18, no. 1 (2023): 81–94.
  3. Science Teaching Group, “Science Teaching: A Critique,” Science For the People, July 1971, 11–13.
  4. Becca Rose, “An Illustrated Guide to Embodied Learning”, last modified September 28, 2016, https://www.beccarose.co.uk/an-illustrated-guide-to-embodied-learning.
  5. Ian James Kidd, “Doing Away with Scientism,” Philosophy Now. 2014. https://philosophynow.org/issues/102/Doing_Away_With_Scientism.
  6. Andrea J. Reid et al., ““Two‐Eyed Seeing”: An Indigenous Framework to Transform Fisheries Research and Management.” Fish and Fisheries 22, no. 2 (2021): 243–261, https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12516.
  7. Cheryl Bartlett, Murdena Marshall, and Albert Marshall. Two-Eyed Seeing and Other Lessons Learned Within a Co-learning Journey of Bringing Together Indigenous and Mainstream Knowledges and Ways of Knowing. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 2 (2012): 331–340.
  8. Andrew S. Reynolds, “Metaphors and Science.” in Understanding Metaphors in the Life Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022); Cynthia Taylor and Bryan M. Dewsbury, “On the Problem and Promise of Metaphor Use in Science and Science Communication,” Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education 19, no. 1 (2018): 10–1128, https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v19i1.1538.
  9. Frank Bures, “On the Body as Machine,” Undark, July 06, 2016, https://undark.org/2016/07/06/mind-machine-medicine-militaristic-healthcare.
  10. Shirley S. Ho, Dominique Brossard, and Dietram A. Scheufele, “Effects of Value Predispositions, Mass Media Use, and Knowledge on Public Attitudes Toward Embryonic Stem Cell Research,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 20, no. 2 (2008): 171–192, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edn017; Dan M. Kahan, “Climate‐Science Communication and the Measurement Problem,” Political Psychology 36 (2015): 1–43, https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12244; Stephan Lewandowsky, and Klaus Oberauer, “Worldview-Motivated Rejection of Science and the Norms of Science,” Cognition 215 (2021): 104820, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104820.