Reimagining public science education: the role of lifelong free-choice learning

Profound changes are occurring in society, disrupting current systems and institutions; these disruptions also are affecting science education practice and research. Science learning is becoming a lifelong, self-directed process, dominated by out-of-school, free-choice learning experiences. By necessity these disruptions in the science learning narrative necessitate that societies rethink what constitutes public science education in the twenty-first century. Rather than focusing only on schooling and university/post-secondary training, public science education should include meeting the lifelong science learning needs of all people, at all stages of life, wherever a person is, whenever she faces a learning need. In this context, public science education must be learner-centered and equitable, serving the real lifelong needs, realities and motivations of all people, not just those of children and youth or the most privileged. Such a comprehensive approach to public science education does not currently exist. The key to enacting such a comprehensive approach requires thinking outside of the current educational box, moving beyond Industrial-Age top-down, one-size-fits-all command and control approaches that center on schooling and higher education. A reimagined approach to public science education would embrace more distributed, synergistic, personalized, just-in-time approaches that emphasize and reward lifelong learning, including learning beyond school. This article discusses the scope and scale of free-choice public science learning across a range of informal contexts – museums, zoos and aquariums; broadcast media such as television and radio; hobby groups; electronic media such as social networks, educational games, podcasts and the Internet. In addition, the paper considers the challenges faced by both practitioners and researchers attempting to promote and reform science education in more systemic and comprehensive ways. As the what, where, when, how and with whom of science learning continues to evolve, new educational practices and research approaches will be required; approaches that place the individual and her lifelong, free-choice learning at the center, rather than the periphery of the public’s lifelong science education.