41 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
P. Sengupta et al. (eds.), Critical, Transdisciplinary and Embodied Approaches
in STEM Education, Advances in STEM Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29489-2_3
Chapter 3
Towards a Production Pedagogy Model
for Critical Science and Technology
Interventions
Gabriela Alonso Yanez, Kurt Thumlert, Suzanne de Castell,
and Jennifer Jenson
Abstract While initiatives advancing STEM education are pervasive within the
global landscape of educational reform today, STEM discourses and reforms largely
fail to articulate or enact theoretical and epistemological shifts that critically con-
ceptualize the impacts of science and technology in bio-physical and social worlds.
The urgency to adopt STEM reforms in North American schools and to “train”
students for competitive twenty-frst century “knowledge economies” has resulted
in an uncritical embrace of underlying STEM narratives, in turn foreclosing critical
discussion, alternative models, and new perspectives on how we might do science
and technology education differently. In this chapter, we review critical literature in
science education in order to unpack the dominant narratives of preparation, prog-
ress, competition, and innovation that drive STEM pedagogies today. We draw upon
critical sustainability studies (CSS) to articulate new axiological orientations for
repositioning science and technology learning. In conjunction with CSS, we articu-
late the opportunities of “production pedagogy” theories and practices which
An earlier version of this chapter appears in future: the journal of policy, planning, and futures
studies. This chapter has been substantially revised.
G. Alonso Yanez (*)
Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
e-mail: galonsoy@ucalgary.ca
K. Thumlert
Faculty of Education, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
e-mail: kthumlert@edu.yorku.ca
S. de Castell
Faculty of Education, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, ON, Canada
e-mail: suzanne.decastell@uoit.ca
J. Jenson
Digital Languages, Literacies and Cultures, Department of Language and Literacy Education,
Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
e-mail: jennifer.jenson@ubc.ca