A case study of Water Education in Australia
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Author(s)
Sammel, Alison
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2014
Metadata
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What does it mean to be scientifically literate in relation to water? Is this understanding the same for water literacy? And what implications do these two concepts have for water education in Australia? In addressing these questions, this paper provides a snapshot of the similar and competing educational ideologies that underpin the concepts of scientific literacy in relation to water, and water literacy. An investigation of the Australian Curriculum (Science), and a small case study of pre-service education students highlights the degree to which one concept is favored over the other. This bias ultimately raises questions ...
View more >What does it mean to be scientifically literate in relation to water? Is this understanding the same for water literacy? And what implications do these two concepts have for water education in Australia? In addressing these questions, this paper provides a snapshot of the similar and competing educational ideologies that underpin the concepts of scientific literacy in relation to water, and water literacy. An investigation of the Australian Curriculum (Science), and a small case study of pre-service education students highlights the degree to which one concept is favored over the other. This bias ultimately raises questions for water education in Australia, as it is not about whether the ACS or [future] teachers should be addressing issues associated with water, but rather how and to what end goal. This necessitates exploring the partial and political nature of any approach to educating about water, and highlights that not all approaches are equally as politically neutral or challenging.
View less >
View more >What does it mean to be scientifically literate in relation to water? Is this understanding the same for water literacy? And what implications do these two concepts have for water education in Australia? In addressing these questions, this paper provides a snapshot of the similar and competing educational ideologies that underpin the concepts of scientific literacy in relation to water, and water literacy. An investigation of the Australian Curriculum (Science), and a small case study of pre-service education students highlights the degree to which one concept is favored over the other. This bias ultimately raises questions for water education in Australia, as it is not about whether the ACS or [future] teachers should be addressing issues associated with water, but rather how and to what end goal. This necessitates exploring the partial and political nature of any approach to educating about water, and highlights that not all approaches are equally as politically neutral or challenging.
View less >
Journal Title
Creative Education
Volume
5
Issue
13
Copyright Statement
© 2014 The authors and SciRes. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Subject
Science, Technology and Engineering Curriculum and Pedagogy
Education