EPI∙STEM PODCAST EPISODE 40

In this episode of the EPI·STEM podcast, Geraldine Simmie PhD and Michelle Starr PhD welcome Professor Sibel Erduran as their special guest. Professor Sibel Erduran is the Professor of Science Education in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford in the UK. Professor Erduran is an internationally renowned science educator and researcher and the Editor and member of the Editorial Boards of an impressive number of Science Education journals. Prior to taking up this position in the University of Oxford, Sibel was a former Director of EPI·STEM at UL.Professor Erduran started her career as a biochemist, qualified in the US, and later became a science and chemistry teacher. Here Sibel explains how she always carried a deep interest in the interdisciplinary nature of science and its relation to science and society. While evidence-based reasoning in science education continues to be a key skillset for young people, Sibel noticed the importance of opening broader questions of how we need to support science teachers and students differently in what has become a post-truth world. A world where there is a loss of trust in experts, where doubt can be socially engineered by different vested interests and power brokers, and where theimportance of science-in-society is nowadays more important than ever.Professor Sibel Erduran explains why science educators can no longer ignore the ethical and political dimensions of teaching science to young people and in science teachers’ continuing professional learning. Do we need to embrace our humanity in the science classroom or leave ourselves open to becoming reduced to an algorithm in this new world of AI. Young people will clearly need access to a multiplicity of knowledge(s), skillsets and values to navigate the complex social and environmental issues of our time, and to do this in ways that areempowering and imbued with hope and social justice. This new imaginary will need to open a new dialogue in the science classrooms, hold tensions in play, have new competences moving beyond critical thinking and problem solving and newskillsets such as, probabilistic thinking and critical appraisal of the power and limits of science. Working closely with Professor Olivia Levrini and others, Professor Sibel Erduran is one of the founding members of a new Special Interest Group (SIG No 8) in the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) called, Futures-Oriented Science Education. The SIG aims to open these new debates within the community of science education researchers in relation to the multiplicity of futures needing to be reimagined for science education. Sibel speaks to the urgency to open the debate on AI and how it influences all aspects of science education, the need to stay with the pros and cons,questions of regulation and the potential for inbuilt biases in these modelling tools. The problem of AI in science educators and teachers’ practices will need to be framed as more than technical competence and will need to include new skills, ethical sensibilities and critical capacities. The musical performance today is by Rosemary O’Malley andEstaban Flores, graduates of the Master’s in Traditional Music in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in UL. Rosemary is from Chicago and works in the European Centre for the Study of Hate in the School of Law in UL. Esteban, from France works in SAVINS music store in Limerick city. Rosemary and Esteban play a waltz by Brian O’Leary called I’ll Meet You On A Day That Never Ends and a reel called Kit O’Connor.