Hidden wor(l)ds in science class: conscientization and politicization in science education research and practice

Conscientization involves a recursive process of reflection and action toward individual and social transformation. Often this process takes shape through encounters in/with diverse and often conflicting discourses. The study of student and teacher discourses, or scripts and counterscripts, in science classrooms can reveal asymmetrical power relations and the ways in which dominant scripts of marginalization are often enacted. Decoding the dominant structures in these discourses is a complex and political act that might offer some possibilities for transformative practice. But for this to take place teachers, students, and researchers need to collaborate to conduct classroom research that embraces the political dimension of conscientization.