Equity in informal science education: developing an access and equity framework for science museums and science centres

2.1.1. Limits to infrastructure access

In examining infrastructure access to ISE through research, a contradictory picture emerges. ISE institutions and their representatives appear to be signed up to an equity agenda and numerous inclusion and participatory projects have been carried out. In the USA, calls for widening participation in ISE date back to the 1980s (Association of Science and Technology Centres, Citation1987; Gurian, Citation2006) and beyond (Fenichel & Schweingruber, Citation2010), while in other countries, such as Brazil and Tunisia, the underlying ethos of science centres, science museums and science communication has been directly linked to social inclusion (Tait Lima, das Neves, & Dagnino, Citation2008; Zouaoui, Citation2007). Despite this, however, the profile of people using ISE has changed little over several decades.

Recent research in the USA suggests ISE practitioners felt committed to developing equitable institutions for visitors and staff alike, but understood equity in a variety of, sometimes conflicting, ways (Feinstein & Meshoulam, Citation2014). Similarly, research on ISE professionals views and practices in the UK suggests tensions are inherent in how equity and inclusion are understood (Tlili, Citation2008). Of course, it would be hard for interviewed ISE practitioners to suggest they were ‘against’ equity, given the strongly positive values associated with it. Nonetheless, despite the apparent importance of equity within ISE, the translation of equity and inclusion from idealised concepts into ISE practice may be less than straightforward.

A move towards increased power-sharing and participatory approaches can also be identified in research on some contemporary ISE practices (Bandelli & Konijn, Citation2012), thus reflecting the second aspect of Porter’s (Citation1998) infrastructure access. While increasingly ISE institutions include community advisory panels or committees as part of institutional governance or project development, the extent to which such approaches enable or resist power-sharing has been questioned (Bandelli & Konijn, Citation2012; Bandelli, Konijn, & Willems, Citation2009; Lynch, Citation2011). Similarly, although calls for participatory practice in various elements of ISE activity have increased and have been specifically linked to issues of equity and widening participation (see for example Golding, Citation2009; Simon, Citation2010), this appears to have been difficult in practice.

Two projects, one from Vienna and one from London, provide useful examples of attempts at inclusive ISE practice, but illustrate too the tensions around infrastructure access that arise in such projects. The project from Vienna, Austria, followed an ‘outreach’ approach in that rather than attempting to attract different audiences to an ISLE, three ISLE-like spaces (called Knowledge Shops) were set up inside vacant shops in particular neighbourhoods (Streicher, Unterleitner, & Schulze, Citation2014). In other words, the project took ISE into communities identified as ‘socially disadvantaged’ and ‘difficult-to-reach’ (Streicher et al., Citation2014, pp. 1 and 3). Notably, the project disrupted some elements of infrastructure access by changing locations and venue ‘type’, including translations into a minimum of five languages, no entry costs and consultation with community representatives to develop relevant content.

The project from London’s Science Museum, in the UK, aimed to address the power-sharing element of infrastructure access by involving participants from outside the ‘typical’ ISLE profile in the project development (Foggett, Citation2008). The project sought to develop equitable, inclusive science learning processes, through working in a participatory manner with people that the museum had identified as ‘non-visiting groups’ (Foggett, Citation2008, p. 3), in this case the African-Caribbean community in London. The project was noteworthy for inviting a panel of community members to consult on and influence the programming of four events related to the bicentenary of the abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, taking an important step towards attempting to address the racist legacy of museums with historic scientific collections (Lynch & Alberti, Citation2010).

While both projects were clearly positive in a number of ways, tensions exist in whether the problems of ISE infrastructure access were challenged or changed through their work. Despite meeting many of the individual project aims, the critiques levelled by Lynch (Citation2001, Citation2011) at participatory museum projects can be applied to these two projects. Firstly, power-sharing was limited, for example, despite the influence of the community consultations, both projects were ultimately controlled by the ISE institution. Secondly, participants were framed as ‘other’ and finally, the role of equity was positioned as a peripheral rather than a core element of the institutions, specific instead to a particular project (Foggett, Citation2008; Lynch, Citation2011; Streicher et al., Citation2014). Creating spaces to experiment with and develop more inclusive ISE practices is clearly important; questions remain, however, about the extent to which projects such as these are able to change institutional practices or shift patterns of participation in ISE outside the time frames and spaces of specific activities.

Although these two examples cannot be taken as representative of the broader field of ISE practice, they suggest that despite resource-intensive efforts and the goodwill of ISE practitioners, the development of projects designed to address infrastructure access and include participatory approaches has been limited. Questions remain, therefore, about why infrastructure access remains a problem for ISE despite evidence to suggest that ISE institutions and their representatives are concerned about equity and do develop practices intended to address equity concerns. In other words, why has there been so little change to patterns of participation?

2.1.2. Extending the concept of infrastructure access

Porter’s (Citation1998) concept of infrastructure access can be extended by drawing on theories about educational and cultural participation, the reproduction of social disadvantages and oppression which provide a further degree of explanatory power. The data on who does and does not use ISE suggests that ISE participation is a socially stratified activity, with participation marked by the social position aspects of identity. Social positions are highlighted again and again as crucial identity factors in research on educational, political and cultural participation (Bourdieu, Citation1984; Bowles & Gintis, Citation1976; Shanahan, Citation2009; Young, Citation1990). Theories about identity and social positions such as gender, ethnicity and class, and their social roles are contested and come with their own tensions and histories (Skeggs, Citation1997). These demographic characteristics are, however, important because they illustrate the importance of social positions for identity because ‘social position has to do with entitlement to social and material resources and so to the higher deference, respect, and legitimacy accorded to those genders, races, ethnic groups, castes, and sexualities privileged by society’ (Holland et al., Citation2001, p. 271).

Educational and cultural participation have been explicitly linked to issues of identity and social position (in particular, ethnicity, gender and class) and the reproduction of social inequalities (Harding, Citation2008; hooks, Citation1992, Citation1994; Yosso, Citation2005; Young, Citation1990). Moreover, research suggests that people occupying the overlap between identity-based social positions (being female, elderly and homosexual, for example) can face particular disadvantages in terms of educational, cultural and social equity. Intersectional approaches exploring overlapping social positions have been used to explore the relationships between cultural consumption, ethnicity, age and class (Bennett et al., Citation2009; Trienekens, Citation2002), gender and education (Dumais, Citation2002; Mickelson, Citation2003), and the relationships between gender, ethnicity, class and education. Thus research from a number of different fields supports the argument that elements of identity, specifically in this case social positions, and the advantages or disadvantages they confer, play important roles in access to resources, such as, in this case, ISE. Understanding the relationships between power, people, institutions and society may be key for understanding equity in ISE.

Bourdieu’s work on the social roles played by educational and cultural institutions found that they preserved the advantages of the powerful and discouraged the participation of people from non-dominant groups, as a result, keeping them at a disadvantage (Bourdieu & Darbel, Citation1991; Bourdieu & Johnson, Citation1993; Bourdieu & Passeron, Citation1990). Through the development of a trio of concepts – habitus, field and capital – Bourdieu traced the practices through which educational institutions such as schools and universities and cultural/educational institutions such as art galleries and museums enhanced the cultural capital of those from empowered groups, while limiting the extent to which those from disadvantaged groups were able to access that cultural capital, or even the institutions themselves. While Bourdieu primarily focused on the role of social class as a feature of identity, as Gayo-Cal has argued, ‘if one wants to understand why people exhibit particular patterns concerning leisure, Bourdieu’s approach is still useful, but other factors […] like age, ethnicity and gender, also need to be considered’ (Citation2006, p. 187). Given that ISE venues can be understood as both educational and cultural institutions, to what extent are they embedded within a system that reproduces social disadvantage through inaccessibility?

To explore how Bourdieu’s perspective on the reproduction of social disadvantage could apply to ISE, an example of a specific ISE project that aimed to increase access and equity for ‘non-visitors’ is useful. The Creative Canals project was carried out at the Science Museum in London in 2005 (Hooper-Greenhill et al., Citation2007). As part of the project a group of Bangladeshi women from an area of London described as ‘deprived’ were recruited via links with a community organisation that provided English language teaching (Hooper-Greenhill et al., Citation2007, p. 102). The project was found to offer participants opportunities to practise their English language skills and enjoy a day out. In this sense participants may have developed some cultural capital (English language skills and information about the museum). The research noted, however, that the project made little difference to the core activities or audiences of the museum, to the participants’ interest in visiting ISLEs again or their longer-term access to ISE (Hooper-Greenhill et al., Citation2007).

Within this project participation was enacted under special circumstances for the Bangladeshi women, potentially reinforcing their expectations (and habitus) that ISE was not ‘normally’ for them. The research described the constraints on ISE participation within the women’s lives, including structural issues of free time and competing commitments that the project was unable to address. Furthermore, the project was driven by museum staff and their aims, rather than the needs, aspirations or motivations of the community group. In this way the infrastructure of ISE appears to have remained largely inaccessible, while participants’ experiences of ISE practice may have contributed to a sense of being peripheral rather than core audiences (Hooper-Greenhill et al., Citation2007; Lynch, Citation2011). This process can be mapped against Bourdieu’s cycle of the reproduction of social disadvantage (Figure 1).

As outlined in Figure 1, the relationships between ISE practices, ISE infrastructure and the attitudes, behaviours or habitus of those who do not usually participate in ISE can be understood by drawing on Bourdieu’s perspective on the reproduction of social disadvantage (Bourdieu & Passeron, Citation1990; Bourdieu & Wacquant, Citation1992). Although at first glance there appear to be contradictions in ISE practice – access and inclusion projects are carried out but the profile of ISE participants does not change – these contradictions can be understood if such projects are positioned within a cycle of social disadvantage, where the infrastructure of ISE remains inaccessible and the habitus of ‘non-visitors’ does not change. Thus, inaccessibility and inequity can be seen as a resilient, entrenched feature of the field of ISE.

Given the argument made so far – that ISE can reproduce disadvantages for people in certain social positions – why is access and inclusion in a potentially damaging system important? As suggested at the start of this paper, the role of science is sufficiently central to the different cultural, social, political, educational and economic aspects of contemporary lives that being unable to access opportunities to learn about, participate in, critique or otherwise enjoy science can be understood as a form of marginalisation. ISE represents a potentially empowering set of resources that could disrupt rather than reproduce cycles of disadvantage if the challenges represented by becoming more accessible, equitable and inclusive can be discussed, experimented with and ultimately addressed. In advocating change I do not mean to suggest that such changes are easy, but argue that such changes are important and require a better understanding of the issues involved (both problems and potential solutions) than is currently available in the literature.

2.1.3. Redistribution and recognition in ISE infrastructure access

To understand how the reproduction of social disadvantage is resilient in ISE, despite practitioners being found to be sensitive to equity issues (Feinstein & Meshoulam, Citation2014; Tlili, Citation2008), Young’s (Citation1990) work on social justice and Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence are helpful. The concept of symbolic violence was developed by Bourdieu to describe how disadvantage is reproduced in ways that are institutionalised, unclear and hard to combat (Bourdieu, Citation1991). Young’s (Citation1990) work on oppression takes this idea further and suggests that symbolic violence can develop in institutions and fields of practice through the taken-for-granted practices, customs and thoughts, none of which are explicitly intended to harm, exclude or disadvantage. She argued that inequitable practices could be understood as a form of oppression, stating that:

Thus, drawing on Young (Citation1990), the reproduction of social disadvantage in ISE has less to do with purposefully exclusive practices on the parts of ISE institutions and their representatives, than with the ingrained values, systems and behaviours of ISE practitioners, their visitors and their ‘non-visitors’, as well as society more broadly.

Young (Citation1990) argued that oppressive cultural and educational practices render non-dominant groups invisible by ‘othering’ the cultures, practices and knowledges of people from non-dominant groups, which she describes as a form of cultural imperialism. In this sense while the redistribution of ISE opportunities via changes to infrastructure access is clearly important, representation is also key, not only in terms of who or what is represented in ISE, but how such representations frame their content and whether differences are respected. Building on the Bourdieusian analysis of ISE practices outlined above, changes to infrastructure access may rest upon ‘new audiences’ finding culturally relevant content in science centres or museums and feeling welcome within them, rather than invisible or ‘othered’.

To understand how groups can be written out of science stories in ISE, it is useful to look at practice. In the development of an exhibition about human evolution at the Natural History Museum in London in the mid-2000s, for example, it was notable who was and was not highlighted in the way the story was told. The exhibition being developed focused on the discovery of the transition fossil ‘Lucy’ in the Afar region of Ethiopia. The story of the fossil was retold as academic rivalry between two White, Western men (Richard Leakey and Donald Johanson). In this version, the Afar tribespeople who carried out much of the archaeological dig as members of the team and their homeland were invisibleFootnote⁷.

Another example can be drawn from the South Africa Museum in Cape Town where, in 2012 a gallery of dioramas about life in the Western Cape represented Black South Africans in ways that described their work and the artefacts produced in an ethnographic manner as ‘other’. This exhibition so clearly represented the people it described in a problematic manner that a prominent and more recent exhibit label read as follows: ‘Out of touch? This gallery was commissioned in the 1970s and since that time approaches to exhibiting African culture have changed’.Footnote⁸ Despite the additional, more culturally and politically sensitive exhibition interpretation, in a neighbouring gallery the work and artefacts produced by a different group of people were presented as ‘science’, the people themselves were not represented through models or images, and the exhibition was not prefaced with revisionist exhibit text. Such examples highlight the tensions involved in representing ‘difference’ within ISE, even in institutions that could be described as culturally sensitive.

Given the political background of South Africa, examples drawn from a museum in Cape Town could be considered extreme; research suggests, however, that issues of representation and difference in ISE emerge in a number of countries. Garibay (Citation2009), for example, found people from Latino communities in the USA felt ISE institutions were unwelcoming and the lack of representation of their own cultures and languages was particularly problematic since this led to a sense that ISE was not culturally relevant for them. Research carried out elsewhere, for example, an interview study with female Māori scientists in New Zealand exploring early experiences of science (McKinley, Citation2008), a study of a series of ISE programmes in Native communities in the USA (Mack et al., Citation2012) and a qualitative study of a multicultural ISE programme with Jewish and Arab students in Israel (Tal & Alkaher, Citation2010), found that people from non-dominant backgrounds struggled with ISE experiences that felt culturally distant or irrelevant. Taken together these studies suggest that across different contexts, different groups struggle to see ISE and ISE institutions as culturally relevant because of the issues to do with power, language, content and representation.

The key point here about social justice and equity is that representations of culture, knowledge, values, practices or attitudes in ISE are rarely universal or ‘natural’, but instead draw upon the dominant forms of culture, knowledge and so on, while rendering other forms of culture, knowledge, values, practices and attitudes invisible (Fraser, Citation2003; Young, Citation1990). From this perspective, being able to critically reflect on ISE practices and recognise difference alongside concerns over the uneven distribution of infrastructure access is crucial.

Fraser argues that for a dualist view of social justice ‘the goal, in its most plausible form, is a difference-friendly world, where assimilation to majority or dominant cultural norms is no longer the price of equal respect’ (Citation2003, p. 7). In other words, improving equity and access in ISE requires more than providing existing science education programmes to different kinds of people (assimilation and redistribution), but taking difference into account and delivering difference-appropriate science education programmes (recognition and redistribution). Thus while people may well continue not to participate in ISE, equitable infrastructure access means that everyone is entitled to be able to choose to go (or not) and to have a meaningful, culturally relevant ISLE visit where their own communities and cultures are respected and represented.

2.2.1. Conceptualising ISE literacy

Porter’s (Citation1998) perspective on literacy is useful for understanding how the epistemic practices of an ISE institution can be differently interpreted by people as a result of their prior experiences. A useful example comes from research carried out by Wertsch, Minick, and Arns (Citation1984) in Brazil. Wertsch et al. (Citation1984) explored the differences in learning and teaching practices between two groups of six-year-olds; one group was facilitated by their (working-class) mothers and one by (middle-class) teachers. The two groups of adults facilitated the learning exercise in markedly different ways and the learning opportunities afforded to the children differed as a result. The study found that the mothers brought their experiences of work to the situation, treating the learning exercise as something to be done with maximum efficiency, carrying out much of the task themselves. In contrast, the teachers saw the exercise as educational, encouraged the children to do the majority of the task and treated mistakes as a useful part of the experience. Wertsch et al. (Citation1984) concluded that previous social experiences and cultural expectations significantly influenced how people respond to learning environments.

The example from Wertsch et al. (Citation1984) is particularly pertinent for ISE because it shows how differently the same learning opportunity can be understood and enacted. Unlike school classrooms, science centres, museums and other ISLEs are not always able to rely on participants’ interactions with trained staff to facilitate learning for the majority of visitors. Thus learning hinges to a greater degree on individual, family or peer literacy and ability to grasp the ‘right’ thing to do when faced with an exhibit as well as the extent to which the exhibit is designed to be accessible. Knowing what to do hinges, in turn, on the previous experiences afforded by someone’s social position and lifestyle.

Research on computer-based interactive exhibits in ISLEs suggests, for example, that the ‘rules’ of interaction are complex both logistically (hitting the right part of a touch screen, aligning your body correctly for a camera) and conceptually (tasks often follow a teaching pattern of ‘elicit action’ and ‘response from interactive’ based on understanding scientific content) (Heath, Lehn, & Osborne, Citation2005). The behaviour required to use such exhibits in the ‘right’ way is embedded in the interactive exhibit, which will not work without the right steps being carried out. In this sense, museum literacy – the ability to understand how to use or look at an exhibit – is implicit within the design, or, as Macdonald has argued, following Hall, exhibits are encoded with meaning which is more or less accessible, more or less translated or reworked, depending on how visitors decode them (Hall, Citation1980; Macdonald, Citation1998; Rice, Citation1992). Furthermore, research suggests that the actions required for ISE exhibits to ‘work’ have a cultural component, thus an interactive may require different steps in a science centre in Brazil, compared to a similar exhibit in a museum in France (Duensing, Citation2006). Thus the encoding and decoding required to make sense of and learn from an ISE exhibit may require culturally specific insights about the ‘right’ things to do.

Understanding what to do in an ISE institution or activity goes beyond museum literacy and knowing how to engage with a learning opportunity. Attention should also be paid to literacy issues in relation to the content of ISLEs, in other words, what about the ‘science’? Scientific literacy is often described as the cornerstone of science education (Kelly, Citation2010). Conceptualisations of scientific literacy within the field of science education vary and are contested. Simply put, they range from perspectives that emphasise what Roberts (Citation2007) has described as scientific knowledge, or content knowledge (the skills and information needed to be able to ‘do’ science) on the one hand, to, on the other, ideas that foreground socio-scientific literacy (the social, cultural, political or other contexts that science is involved with).

In ISLEs scientific content knowledge is frequently a prerequisite for making sense of an activity or exhibit. Tunnicliffe and Laterveer-de Beer’s (Citation2002) research, for example, shows that in order for visitors to use a hands-on interactive of replica skeletons to learn about zoology in a science museum they first had to know about how the skeletons of different kinds of animals worked. They concluded ‘the knowledge of zoology amongst most visitors assumed by the exhibit designers was far higher than they possessed’ (Tunnicliffe & Laterveer-de Beer, Citation2002, p. 133), thus visitors who entered the museum without much zoological knowledge left this exhibit with little more.

Scientific literacy and museum literacy are not, however, the only forms of literacy needed by visitors to ISLEs. As Bain and Ellenbogen (Citation2002) have argued visitors to ISLEs are faced with a need for multiple literacies. Not only do visitors need to understand how to navigate a science centre, zoo or museum to their own advantage (museum literacy), but they also need a range of content-based literacies. For example, in the case of a science museum a level of scientific literacy may be required, but beyond that visitors may also require background knowledge to understand the history or geography presented in the museum, not to mention other kinds of background knowledge that may be necessary (Bain & Ellenbogen, Citation2002; Hooper-Greenhill, Citation1995; Schlereth, Citation1992).

Research also suggests that a more literal form of literacy is needed by ISE participants. Just as Norris and Phillips (Citation2003) have argued that scientific literacy rests upon fundamental literacy (to be able to read and write), so too does ISE literacy. Research has demonstrated that visitors to ISLEs need to be able to speak and, almost more crucially, to be able to read the language of the institution, in order to understand not only the signage and opening hours, but also exhibit texts (Ash, Citation2004; Garibay, Citation2009; Yalowitz, Garibay, Renner, & Plaza, Citation2013). While this may in some senses appear an obvious and taken-for-granted aspect of literacy and access issues, it emerged as a key problem for people from non-dominant ethnic and linguistic backgrounds who are less familiar with the dominant language when attempting to visit an ISLE (Ash, Citation2004; Tenenbaum & Callanan, Citation2008) as well as within science classrooms (Shanahan, Pedretti, DeCoito, & Baker, Citation2011).

ISE literacy can therefore be understood as plural, as a multifaceted issue, including aspects of museum literacy, scientific literacy and fundamental literacy, as well as other aspects of content literacy that may overlap with the science presented in ISE. Under this description of ISE ‘literacies’ achieving fluency is no mean feat given the different sets of knowledge and skills required and this highlights how important literacy issues are for understanding equity and access in relation to ISE.

2.2.2. Literacy and inaccessibility in ISE practice

A study carried out in London is a useful example for understanding the extent to which ISE literacy can limit access for some people. Research carried out with adults from four different minority ethnic, socio-economically disadvantaged community groups found participants struggled with ISE literacy on a number of fronts in ways that overlapped to create ISE experiences that were off-putting (Dawson, Citationin press). The epistemic practices of the ISE institutions visited for the study relied on assumptions of English language fluency, scientific background knowledge and a series of specific learning behaviours, such as expecting participants to be able to understand how to use computer interactives, complex exhibit text or answer staff questions during facilitated workshops.

In literacy terms, the overlap of complicated and specific scientific language, such as ‘cells’, ‘pH’ or ‘habitat’ with English language, a language that despite being multilingual, participants were not fluent in, prevented participants from being able to access the information contained within science museums and science centres. Framing such literacies as forms of cultural capital, the study found that without pre-existing forms of cultural capital participants were unable to build or accrue additional capital through the ISLE visits. While participants were physically present within the ISLEs, they were unable to access the concepts or learning media they encountered (Dawson, Citationin press). Following Bourdieu’s theories of the reproduction of disadvantage presented earlier in Figure 1, the study found participants’ encounters with ISE practice left them more disposed against participating in ISE than they had been before (Bourdieu & Passeron, Citation1990).

Research in the USA suggests ISE literacies pose significant problems for ‘new’ or ‘other’ participants in ISE. Research with people from minority ethnic and minority linguistic backgrounds found they were uncomfortable with what they were expected to do within a science centre, museum or aquarium and confused about socially acceptable behaviours, exhibitions and exhibits; ‘they often needed to do extra work to “figure out” what the exhibit “wants” them to do’ (Ash & Lombana, Citation2011, p. 3). Research with Latino community members found ISE institutions were expected to be unfriendly places where visitors were expected to see but not touch, with difficult scientific content that was hard to understand (Garibay, Citation2009). Conversely, when their languages were represented, people from Spanish-speaking backgrounds in the USA felt more valued by the ISLE, more comfortable during their visits and felt the institutions were more culturally relevant (Yalowitz et al., Citation2013). These studies show the central role of ISE literacies in issues of access and equity; without addressing how to help and support ‘non-typical’ ISE participants access the content of ISE and better understand the ‘rules of the game’ initiatives that focus only on addressing infrastructure access may be limited.

It may be particularly important that those involved in orientation to and mediation of ISE institutions or activities consider how to better support ISE literacies. The Viennese Knowledge Shops, for example, displayed the ‘rules of the house’ in different languages on the walls of the disused shops they took over to help visitors know what to do and how to do it (Streicher et al., Citation2014, p. 4). Research also suggests family mediation plays a crucial role in enabling people to enjoy and learn from ISLE visits (Ash, Citation2003; Ellenbogen, Citation2002; Palmquist & Crowley, Citation2007). The central role of family mediation in visits to science centres, aquaria or museums suggests that providing more explicit and accessible support for families to build ISE literacies could be valuable. Similarly, while not all ISE participants interact with staff during visits to ISLEs, staff facilitation has been found to make or break a visit (Ash & Lombana, Citation2011; Ruiz-Funes, Citation2008; Uyen Tran & King, Citation2007). Thus, explicit staff facilitation on developing ISE literacies, not only through the mediation of science learning opportunities, but general orientation, language support and assistance with decoding exhibits, interactives and activities may be particularly valuable for disadvantaged or new participants.

2.2.3. ISE literacies and power

To understand how epistemic practices within ISE create such difficult conditions for people from disadvantaged social positions it is useful to turn again to theories from social justice and social reproduction. While Porter’s (Citation1998) use of literacy as a component of access is valuable, it is important to consider the implications of being ‘illiterate’ and the relationships between supposed literacy deficits and power. Based on a review of ISE practice in the USA Fenichel and Schweingruber (Citation2010) concluded that for underrepresented groups, ISE posed particular problems since the science learning opportunities they encountered ‘often privilege the science-related practices of middle-class whites and may fail to recognise the science-related practices associated with individuals from other groups’ (p. 120). In this sense, the ‘rules of the game’ that non-dominant visitors are expected to be able to notice, understand and operate successfully within are, as suggested above, norms and expectations that may not be their own (Bourdieu & Wacquant, Citation1992).

It is important, therefore, to go beyond positioning ISE literacies as composed of deficits on the part of ‘non-visitors’ and to consider, in addition, how differences in expectations, behaviours and cultural or social norms relate to power. As Young has argued, writ large, such differences can be understood as the difference in power between social groups:

The power structures embedded in the epistemic practices of ISE, whether in terms of assumptions about fundamental literacy, scientific background knowledge, other content-based literacies or ways of learning, can be understood as dominant forms of interpretation and communication. From this perspective ISE literacies can be framed as an issue of power; whose knowledge matters, whose practices matter and, in the end, who matters.

Examining gendered practices in ISE provides useful examples of the relationship between literacies and deficits. Research into gender equity in ISE carried out by Dancu (Citation2010) at the Exploratorium, a science centre in the USA, found that exhibits were designed in ways that made the majority of them more popular with boys than with girls. She found exhibits that were off-putting to girls included, for example, those designed to be used by only one person at a time, with text lacking connections to people or the ‘real world’ and exhibits with little or no representation of females in text language, examples or images used (Dancu, Citation2010). Research suggests gender issues in science centres and science museums are compounded by the social interactions of visiting groups (Ramey-Gassert, Citation1996). For example, Crowley, Callanan, Tenenbaum, and Allen (Citation2001), Crowley (Citation1999) and Borun (Citation1999) all found parental facilitation during science museum visits favoured developing science learning opportunities for boys at the expense of their sisters; parents talked more with boys about the science content of exhibits, asked them more questions and used more complicated language. The research suggested ISE institutions were places parents saw as more valuable for their sons than for their daughters (Borun, Citation1999).

Interpreting research on gender in ISE with a focus on ISE literacies suggests that not only were ISE exhibits designed in ways that were unappealing to girls – limiting the science learning opportunities available to them – but that male-centric parental facilitation meant girls had fewer opportunities to develop the skills needed for scientific literacy or museum literacy. Under such circumstances I suggest it is important to turn the notion of literacy on its head. Girls were not ISE illiterate, but rather the norms, values and assumptions embedded in ISE exhibits and parental facilitation disempowered girls.

Similar patterns can be seen in how representations of science in ISE can create problems for people from non-dominant groups. Despite academic debates, within schools, curricula, textbooks, ISE institutions and ISE activities, science is predominantly represented as an authoritative body of knowledge that people are required to learn, rather than something relevant to their cultures, knowledges or interests (Calabrese Barton, Ermer, Burkett, & Osborne, Citation2003). This is a problem because research suggests that narrow and authoritative representations of science privilege those amongst the already dominant social groups and alienate people from non-dominant social groups (Medin & Bang, Citation2014; Roth & Calabrese Barton, Citation2004; Shanahan & Nieswandt, Citation2011).

As Pedretti (Citation2002) suggests, however, challenging representations of science in ISE is far from straightforward. The interpretive hazards faced by making science public seem to produce representations of science that portray ‘the canon’ of scientific knowledge, leaning away from controversy or science as a fluid practice in-the-making, contingent upon social, cultural and/or political pressures. For example, Gieryn’s (Citation1998) account of the development of controversial science exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institute in the USA highlights a tendency for ISE institutions to be risk-averse and present the authority of scientific knowledge as a universal truth. Similarly, in studies of gender and sexuality in natural history exhibitions, Machin (Citation2010) and Levin (Citation2010a) found representations of sexuality that did not fit within a heteronormative frame simply disappeared. Elsewhere McNeil (Citation2007) has shown that the ongoing portrayal of public science as the stories of heroic White, upper-class men reifies Newton, Faraday and Darwin at the costs of more open, inclusive and ordinary accounts of science and scientists. As Macdonald’s (Citation2002) ethnographic study of exhibition development at the Science Museum in London attests, ultimately epistemic practices in the museum resulted in authoritative representations of science.

Representing science appears to be difficult, therefore, for ISE in ways that render an authoritative representation of science as the established norm. Drawing on Young (Citation1990, Citation2000), such representations can be understood as a form of cultural power. As Gieryn argues, science museums contend with science as a series of ‘little truths whose legitimacy rests not on reality but on normatively enforced standards of evidence, argument and purpose’ (Citation1998, p. 197). Thus for people from non-dominant social groups, learning ‘authoritative’ science requires the negotiation of two sets of practices or literacies: those associated with science and those of the dominant culture, both of which may be off-putting (Aikenhead, Citation2002; Medin & Bang, Citation2014). In this sense developing ISE literacies such that a person knows the ‘rules of the game’ can be understood as more difficult for some people than others. In other words, the ‘game’ is rigged.

As argued earlier, educational institutions, including ISE institutions, have been understood to reinforce the advantages of the advantaged by operating within the ‘culture of power’ (Delpit, Citation1988, p. 282). Thus a critical reading of research on ISE literacies suggests certain participants are not ‘illiterate’ but rather that they encounter situations in which they are disadvantaged by the embedded assumptions of ISE and the ‘culture of power’ therein (Bourdieu & Darbel, Citation1991; Macdonald, Citation1998; Rice, Citation1992). While the notion of ISE literacies provides a useful way to frame issues of conceptual access and equity in ISE, it is important to take a critical approach to the implicit notions of deficit and illiteracy. Deficit orientations work to privilege certain forms of knowledge and practice over others and in doing so privilege the groups with access to those forms of knowledge and practice over those without that access (Yosso, Citation2005; Young, Citation1990). Thus I suggest taking a critical perspective on the roles of power within ISE literacies enables ISE researchers and practitioners to acknowledge the need for both a redistribution of such literacies alongside a recognition of different forms of literacy, knowledges and practices (Fraser, Citation2003; Young, Citation1990, Citation2000).

2.2.4. Reframing ISE literacies: A critical pedagogy approach to difference and power

What does it take to be able to negotiate, navigate, manage and even benefit from the science learning and engagement opportunities of ISE? The literature on educational equity and learning suggests there are two key strategies relevant for addressing equity and access within ISE literacies as outlined above. Firstly, work from sociocultural constructivist pedagogy as developed by Vygotsky (Citation1978, Citation1986), Bruner (Citation1966) and Wertsch (Citation1985) can be used to understand the concept of difference and how difference can be addressed within the literacies elements of science learning in ISE. Secondly, drawing on concepts developed by Freire (Citation1998), Freire and Freire (Citation1992), hooks (Citation1994) and Delpit (Citation1988, Citation2006) from critical pedagogy, it is important to understand how power disparities might be addressed in science learning and ISE literacies.

Addressing the issue of how learners, visitors or participants differ and the influence of those differences is a key issue for understanding how the concept of ISE literacies can be used to improve equity and access. Just as research from sociocultural studies of science education suggests that who you are changes your experience of learning science (Lemke, Citation1990; Shanahan & Nieswandt, Citation2011; Tan, Calabrese Barton, Gutiérrez, & Turner, Citation2012), so too research on cultural participation suggests that prior experiences, attitudes, knowledges and expectations influence whether you would visit a museum in the first place (Bourdieu & Darbel, Citation1991; Hooper-Greenhill, Citation1994). Understanding people’s backgrounds, knowledges, cultures and taking them into account could therefore be key to developing more inclusive ISE practices.

The notion of ‘cultural humility’ developed in multicultural medical education is a useful conceptual tool here for ISE researchers and practitioners (Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, Citation1998). Tervalon and Murray-Garcia (Citation1998) argued that practitioners (in their case medical professionals) ought to develop a sense of cultural humility working with diverse populations through reflection, critique and collaboration, rather than a more narrow sense of cultural competence, which they suggest is not only difficult to truly achieve but potentially patronising and off-putting. In other words, rather than trying to second guess and define a range of diverse cultures (for example, assuming hair braiding workshops in science museums will appeal to African-Caribbean communities, which may draw in some visitors, remains a narrow way to represent such communities and their cultures) ISE practitioners may be better able to respect and represent diverse communities through working in collaboration and fostering a sense of cultural humility in their work. Thus, taking ‘difference’ into account need not require ISE practitioners to single-handedly understand the millions of specific and different backgrounds people bring with them, but rather to be able to recognise and respect differences and foster collaborations that provide them with the support, perspectives and experiences needed to develop inclusive ISE opportunities.

At the level of pedagogic theory, sociocultural constructivism provides a conceptual framework within which individual and group differences can be understood in relation to learning. Simply put, everyone learns differently in ways that are influenced by both their prior experiences and expectations as well as the learning environment (Wertsch, Citation1985). Such a model enables ‘difference’ to be included in understanding how learning does and does not happen and can help those working in and researching designed learning environments such as ISLEs to account for difference both analytically and in practice. Recognising and working with difference may be a key aspect of developing more equitable, more accessible forms of ISE practice and broadening ISE literacies to help make space for more people, more practices and a greater diversity of ‘ways in’ to science.

Sociocultural constructivist pedagogy as developed by Vygotsky (Citation1978, Citation1986), Bruner (Citation1960, Citation1966) and Wertsch (Citation1985) is particularly useful for understanding the roles of social position in learning since learning (and teaching) are seen as nested within social and cultural contexts. For Vygotsky, therefore, learning resulted from ‘the sociocultural experience of the child’ (Citation1986, p. 94). Because learning uses the building blocks of previous experiences – since as Bruner put it ‘knowing is a process, not a product’ (Citation1966, p. 72) – each learner brings something different with them to each learning experience. Importantly, such perspectives position all learners as different, not just those from certain social groups or backgrounds.

A sociocultural constructivist approach to pedagogy suggests, therefore, that taking the backgrounds of all learners into account is a key part of how ISE could support more equitable and more accessible science learning opportunities and open up what forms of knowledge are useful for ISE literacies. For example, researchers have explored developing culturally relevant science learning opportunities based on the knowledge systems of non-dominant groups and, as a result, reframing Western science (Medin & Bang, Citation2014; Stanley & Brickhouse, Citation2001). Drawing on these ideas researchers developed notions of alternative, critical or multicultural science literacy (Basu, Calabrese Barton, & Tan, Citation2011; Tan et al., Citation2012). For example, the concept of ‘critical science literacy’ (Basu et al., Citation2011, p. 117) suggests that scientific content knowledge, socio-scientific issues and community knowledge are important facets of learning science in a relevant and meaningful manner, in a way that is similar to the idea of cultural humility. Thus, changing who is represented, whose stories are told and/or whose languages are used in exhibits or programmes could significantly open up ISE literacies.

Bruner (Citation1966) also argued that not only do the social and cultural backgrounds of learners matter, but the smaller interactions of teaching (whether the teacher is a parent, peer, classroom teacher or ISE ‘explainer’) leave social and cultural traces upon the learning at hand. For example, the research on gendered experiences in science centres described above suggests the social and cultural shadows left by interactive science exhibits may be different for girls than for boys, reinforcing social norms that link masculinity and science (Crowley et al., Citation2001; Dancu, Citation2010; Ramey-Gassert, Citation1996). Similarly, as Aikenhead (Citation2006) has argued, some people have to do more work to move between their own cultural backgrounds and those of science learning, while for others such ‘border crossing’ practices are barely needed. Thus the perspective described by Rahm (Citation2010) is useful here since, following Vygotsky and Wertsch amongst others, she has described learning as a process of becoming and of identity work, situated in complex historic, cultural, social and political contexts. As a result, therefore, I suggest that the presence of these social and cultural traces means that explicitly acknowledging and addressing questions of power within ISE literacies could provide people with tools to understand why some of these differences exist and are reproduced, as well as the tools to begin to disrupt such processes.

The value of taking a critical pedagogy perspective to explicitly include power as a feature of ISE literacies is that it opens the door for critically reflecting on the assumptions, norms, expectations and power practices embedded within ISE (Freire, Citation1998; hooks, Citation1994). By drawing on critical pedagogy I suggest the problems of a deficit orientation in ISE literacies become clearer (people are not illiterate, they are disempowered) and, at the same time, the need to open up ISE literacies can be understood as a way to empower more people, to disrupt rather than reproduce cycles of social disadvantage.

Certain forms of knowledge and certain social groups are privileged in societies and without acknowledging the roles of power in such practices, it is hard to ‘offer strategies for social transformation’ (Yosso, Citation2005, p. 71). Thus from a critical perspective, equity and access are crucial features of ISE literacies, since by making the norms for interaction in ISE explicit (Delpit, Citation1988), including the roles or power, the implicit, coded and semi-secret behaviours required for successful participation in ISE and the resources they represent could be opened up to more people. As Brice Heath (Citation2007) has argued, developing environments where ISE literacies are explicit and that allow the different elements of such literacy to be explained, modelled and developed, is crucial for inclusion and access not just in ISE, but within broader aspects of science, such as opening up STEM subjects and STEM careers. A critical pedagogy of ISE literacies therefore has three steps: firstly, recognising that multiple forms of literacy are needed for participating successfully in ISE; secondly, acknowledging and making explicit the role of power; and thirdly, reframing ISE literacies to include the knowledges, skills and practices of ‘different’ and ‘other’ groups amidst the canon of authoritative science content.

2.3.1. Community acceptance as a challenge for ISE

Embracing the notion of community acceptance is no mean feat. The notion of community acceptance as described by Porter (Citation1998) and Grabill (Citation1998) would require ISE institutions and their representatives to take responsibility for exclusive practices and to address problematic aspects of ISE infrastructure access and ISE literacies. The changes implied by ISE community acceptance may come with costs, however, not least the resources needed to significantly reorganise current practices. Creating the change required to address inequity and inaccessibility in ISE, while difficult, may nonetheless be a crucial step towards ISE becoming more inclusive. Changes become necessary because, as Young has argued, ‘bringing about justice where there is exploitation requires reorganisation of institutions and practices in decision-making, alteration of the division of labour, and similar measures of institutional, structural, and cultural change’ (Citation1990, p. 53). From this perspective, the assimilationist approach, outlined at the start of this article, can be understood as a seemingly easier, albeit ultimately more problematic, way for institutions to address equity, since it requires relatively little change on the part of ISE.

Assimilationist approaches to equity and access in ISE rest on the assumption that infrastructure access alone is the underlying problem for ISE equity and accessibility (Fenichel & Schweingruber, Citation2010). Thus, as Lee (Citation1999) has argued, assimilationist practices require no revision of existing ways of representing science or people, nor do they require critical reflection on ISE practices, such as infrastructure access or ISE literacies, or the transformations that might be needed to take difference into account (Bell et al., Citation2009; Fenichel & Schweingruber, Citation2010). An assimilationist approach enables ISE researchers and practitioners to position equity and inclusion as problems that arise from the behavioural or knowledge-based deficiencies of those who do not participate (Bell et al., Citation2009).

As with other practices involved in making science public, imagining potential publics provides ISE practitioners with a mechanism for pitching their practices (Litt, Citation2012; Matthews, Citation2008) and for framing participation (and non-participation). The problem with these projections of ‘typical visitors’ and ‘non-visitors’ lies in how such imagined constructs subtly and less subtly influence ISE design processes and decisions. ISE practitioners use imagined visitors to develop exhibits, select the objects and images to be used, to write exhibit texts for, titles, select price points and more (Macdonald, Citation2002).

Research suggests these imagined publics are limited, in ways that mirror the socially narrow participant profile of ISE. For example, research in the UK identified these imagined, prospective visitors as scientifically literate, middle class, White and either part of a small family group or a school group (Dawson, Citationin press). Thus, by drawing on a limited conceptualisation of who ISE participants ‘could’ be, ISE practices become embedded with assumptions about literacies, infrastructure accessibility and ‘who’ counts as a visitor. Re-imagining who ISE participants could be, while far from simple, may be a key aspect of ISE community acceptance of difference and inclusion.

To understand ISE community acceptance as distinct from an assimilationist approach, it is important to think about the different aspects of recognition of difference and redistribution of resources that may be required to engender inclusive ISE practices and to think about what they might look like in practice (Fraser, Citation2003; Young, Citation1990). For instance, one element of ISE community acceptance could include re-imagining visitors by diversifying ISE staff recruitment and development. The ‘Career Ladder’ programme developed by the New York Hall of Science is a long-term staff recruitment programme designed to both diversify the ISE staff by mirroring the demographics of the local area within the workforce and to provide tangible STEM career opportunities and resources for participants in the programme (New York Hall of Science, Citation2010).

The programme was found to meet the needs of the ‘Explainer’ participants in terms of their career development and personal goals (Storksdieck, Haley-Goldman, & Jones, Citation2002). Notably, as ‘Explainers’ move through the programme they became paid members of staff, rather than volunteers, thus closer to Lynch’s (Citation2011) criteria for core rather than peripheral participation. The example of the New York Hall of Science ‘Career Ladder’ demonstrates that some ISE institutions have developed practices that break the mould in terms of equity and inclusion; such examples appear, however, to be relatively rare within the literature. What the New York Hall of Science example demonstrates is that it is possible for ISE practitioners and institutions to re-imagine who their visitors and staff might be and develop a sense of community acceptance towards ‘new’ or ‘different’ participants.

2.3.2. Community acceptance as part of a complex system

Porter (Citation1998) and Grabill (Citation1998) used community acceptance to refer to acceptance by those already in a given practice community of those who were formerly excluded, as illustrated by the example of the New York Hall of Science above. Bourdieu’s work suggests a more complex approach to community acceptance might be useful for understanding access, equity and inclusion in ISE. Drawing on Bourdieu (Citation1977) and Bourdieu and Wacquant (Citation1992), I suggest community acceptance can be read in multiple directions, to mean not only recognition, acceptance and welcome on the part of those already in the ISE community but also recognition, acceptance and perceived relevance on the part of those ‘excluded’ communities that ISE is worth their time and effort. In other words, community acceptance cuts both ways.

Garibay’s (Citation2009) research, for instance, suggests that for second-generation Latinos in the USA, without representation of their own culture, own language and own interests, ISE was perceived as irrelevant and ‘not for us’. In French-speaking Canada, marginalised students struggled to see ISE programmes as relevant to their lives (Rahm, Citation2008). Similarly, in the UK, research into the attitudes of minority ethnic groups towards museums in general found such places were seen as unappealing and unconnected to their lives (Tissier & Singh Nathoo, Citation2004), while research specifically about ISE mirrored these findings (Dawson, Citationin press). From this perspective, drawing on ideas about the reproduction of social disadvantages developed by Bourdieu (Citation1977) and Bourdieu and Passeron (Citation1990), the attitudes, behaviours and habitus of those who do and do not participate in ISE can be understood as a key part of the system. Put another way, community acceptance requires communities who view ISE as irrelevant to their lives to shift their dispositions towards, rather than away from ISE, without which patterns of participation in ISE are unlikely to change, and may hinge on changes to infrastructure access and ISE literacies leading the way.

The San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum in the USA provides a useful example of how ISE might redevelop practices to address concerns about equity and inclusion. The museum redeveloped much of its practice by working in collaboration with the local Vietnamese community (Fenichel & Schweingruber, Citation2010). The Children’s Discovery Museum sought to build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with the San Jose Vietnamese community through understanding what put them off visiting the museum – for example, the economic costs of visiting, such as entry fees, parking, transport, language difficulties, no Vietnamese staff and negative expectations of museums – and trying to address these issues. In thinking about what cultural humility might mean for ISLEs, collaborative projects of this type may be invaluable opportunities for reframing ISE opportunities in ways that are more accessible and inclusive.

Following the initial development phase, museum staff and Vietnamese community members worked together to create an exhibit that would combine scientific and mathematical content with artefacts and stories that were relevant to the Vietnamese community and exhibit interpretation with Vietnamese translations. While the research suggests the project was far from straightforward, working in partnership with community members was found to create a more inclusive science and math learning experience for visitors, create opportunities for staff to critically reflect on their work and meet at least some of the needs of the Vietnamese community (Fenichel & Schweingruber, Citation2010). This example suggests that changes on both sides of community acceptance require financial investment, time and commitment from all parties. Notably, the institutional side of community acceptance was a necessary first step in the process and in doing so worked towards reimagining their visitors, by developing a concrete sense of these visitors’ needs and relevance, through which the visitor profile of the institution ultimately shifted.

A second useful example comes from work carried out by the Parque Explora science centre in Medellin, Colombia, with communities that are arguably very vulnerable. Parque Explora worked in collaboration with local communities from the densely inhabited Moravia neighbourhood which developed on top of the ‘municipal dump’ (Aguirre, Citation2014, p. 3). The science centre also worked alongside the local environmental control agency and local government to develop projects that sought to build long-term relationships between these different stakeholders and address housing issues, environmental problems and social inclusion against a background of significant social injustice.

As with the previous example, themes that stand out in relation to community acceptance include the long-term approach to developing relationships that serve community needs, a significant commitment of resources and collaborative ways of working. Notably, the projects devolved power from the larger institutions to community leaders, their networks and trained community members to develop scientific skills and facilitation skills, which ultimately resulted in a significant level of community participation. Aguirre (Citation2014) acknowledges, however, that even in ambitious projects such as these, ISE institutions and practitioners need to recognise their limits, and advocates working directly with other organisations that can address social problems and needs that may be outside an ISLE’s remit. Nonetheless, in the short term at least, the work of Parque Explora appeared to shift the relationships between the science centre and the Moravia community, empowering that community by making the science content involved in the environmental issues they face understandable and relevant, developing a sense of community acceptance on the part of all stakeholders.

Community acceptance is therefore a multifaceted concept. I suggest, drawing on Porter (Citation1998), Young (Citation1990), Fraser (Citation2003) and Bourdieu (Citation1990), that community acceptance requires ISE institutions and their representatives to take responsibility for implementing changes that could lead towards more inclusive, more accessible ISE. The steps involved in such a process could include changes to ISE infrastructure and literacy practices that acknowledge, respect and represent difference, create more ways for more people to access ISE and reflect critically on the role of power in practice. It is, however, also important to recognise that community acceptance on the part of the excluded, potential audiences is also required. In other words, that those from non-dominant groups who are currently not represented amongst ISE audience figures would need to find ISE relevant, interesting and inclusive in order to want to participate. This element of community acceptance can, however, be understood as a second phase, since without community acceptance on the part of ISE institutions and practitioners, their policies, practices and staff, it would seem unlikely that ‘non-visitors’ would change their attitudes and behaviours.