556090

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BSTXXX10.1177/0270467614556090Bulletin of Science, Technology & SocietyGigante

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Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society

Critical Science Literacy for Science

2014, Vol. 34(3-4) 7786
The Authors 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0270467614556090

the Communicative Arts bst.sagepub.com

Maria E. Gigante1

Abstract
The concept of critical science literacy advanced by Susanna Priest is significant to how citizens approach scientific
knowledge, but the concept is also relevant to undergraduate students majoring in the sciences, who are not necessarily
becoming critically literate in their own disciplines. That is, future scientists are not learning how arguments are structured,
meaning is made, and facts are agreed uponspecifically through communicative practicesboth within and outside of the
scientific community. This gap in the curriculum can be addressed through collaborative efforts between rhetoricians and
sociologists of science. Drawing from three major disciplinary traditionswriting studies, the rhetoric of science, and science
communicationthis article posits that a pedagogical intervention is necessary to improve science communication with
nonexpert publics. A science writing and communication course that is grounded in the rhetoric of science and that also has
sociological, philosophical, and historical components can provide science students with a critical awareness of how their
discipline operates in society and teach them how to become more responsible and effective communicators.

Keywords
critical science literacy, rhetoric of science, pedagogy, science communication, public engagement

Introduction scientists to contribute to this effort places the burden of

The concept of critical science literacy, advanced by
Susanna Priest (2013) in this journal, provides a compelling
answer to the question that has troubled science communica-
tors for decades: What do citizens really need to know about
science? Rather than focusing on fact-based knowledgefor
example, the Pew Research Centers 12-question quiz to cal-
culate scientific literacy (Kohut, Keeter, Doherty, & Dimock,
2009)Priest argues that science communicators should
strive to cultivate knowledge of how things work in the
scientific community (p. 138). Such knowledge includes
grasping and accepting the idea of uncertainty in science, the
levels of specialization within the sciences, the methodolo-
gies deemed acceptable for experimentation, and, most
importantly, the fact that science is a social process (Priest,
2013, p. 139). Priests explication of what is necessary for
citizens to know about science in order to make informed
decisions is timely; the shift from Public Understanding of
Science to Public Engagement with Science, as Sarah R.
Davies (2013) has found, has not been a homogenous
move (p. 690), and the question of what citizens need to
know to be engaged is still very pressing. Equally pressing
is the question of what scientists need to know in order to
contribute to the communicative effort.
As Suleski and Ibaraki (2010) report in Public
Understanding of Science, the unwillingness or inability of
communication on science journalists, and there are not
enough journalists to address and accommodate the immense
amount of scientific research published every month in major
journals. If science communication efforts are to be improved,
more of the responsibility for this task must shift to the sci-
entific community (e.g., Suleski & Ibaraki, 2010). It should
be said that the term science communication, when used in
this article, is specifically referring to the communication of
science to nonexpert publics. Arguably, at least part of the
reason for the rocky transition from the deficit model to
the Public Engagement model is that scientists are neither
trained to be aware of the ways in which scientific culture
operates nor prompted to take responsibility for communi-
cating their research to nonexpert publics. Again, to quote
Priest (2013), Many of the ideas involved here represent
taken-for-granted knowledge among people who (for what-
ever original reason) became familiar with how science
works in this sense at some point in their lives, whether they
1
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA
Corresponding Author:
Maria E. Gigante, Department of English, Western Michigan University,
1903 West Michigan Avenue, Sprau Tower, 6th Floor, Kalamazoo, MI
49008-5331, USA.
Email: maria.gigante@wmich.edu
78 Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 34(3-4)
did this in or out of school (p. 144). Rather than leave this
everyday, tacit knowledge of how things work (p. 138) democracyso that people can make good decisions, indi-
unacknowledged and taken for granted by future scientists,
what I would like to propose in this article is that critical
science literacy be taught to undergraduate science majors.
Students are not explicitly excluded from Priests discussion,
but their potential to contribute to creating a more critically
literate society merits closer attention.
Critical science literacy, according to Priest, would enable
citizens to discern between trustworthy and untrustworthy
information so as to make informed decisions about scien-
tific issues. Undergraduate students majoring in the sciences
also need to be trained in how scientific knowledge is formed
and in how to become discerning consumers of information.
The concept of critical science literacy for science students,
then, encompasses all of the concepts pertaining to citizens
that Priest outlines in her article; however, it must also go
above and beyond exposing how things work in the sciences
to include a production, or communication, component, so
that students can become responsible and effective commu-
nicators in their future careers. One way to introduce science
majors to critical science literacy is to take a pedagogical
approach: to require science majors to complete a communi-
cation-intensive course that combines analysis and
production.
Although it might seem like such courses must already be
required in university curricula, a recent search of the web-
sites of the top 10, highly ranked universities that grant the
most STEM degrees, generated by U.S. News & World
Report (Morse & Tolis, 2013),1 revealed that courses like the
one proposed here are not required for graduation. At these
institutions, high value is placed on communication skills, as
many of these schools have graduation requirements that are
termed communication intensive (e.g., Missouri Institute
of Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Clarkson
University). However, as is the case at many institutions, stu-
dents can choose from a long menu of courses from across
the disciplines to fulfill these requirements. Of course it is
well known that degree requirements, particularly in the sci-
ences, do not allow for much room in students schedules for
courses external to their majors. But the fact remains that
science majors are not required to learn discipline-specific
techniques for communicating for different audiences, pur-
poses, and contextstechniques that might be learned out-
side of science departments but have inherent value to
science.
Perhaps if educating future scientists in the social and
political dimensions of their discipline were understood as
an ethical issue, there would be more urgency in addressing
it. Just as medical students must be educated and trained in
the ethics of their profession, so too must science students be
educated and trained in the ethics of communicating research
findings to those who are affected by them. As Priest (2013)
puts it, The real reason to raise science literacy is to improve
vidually and collectively, on matters related to science and
technology . . . (p. 141). What is at stake, Priest (2009)
argues in an essay on science and the media is no less than
the future of humanity, in some cases, and in others no less
than the character of future human society (p. 231). Placing
this issue squarely within a higher education setting, it should
be fairly clear that a discipline with such far-reaching ramifi-
cations, that affects society at large, must have a curriculum
that not only spans content knowledge but also integrates a
deep awareness of how that knowledge is formed, agreed on,
and circulated as fact beyond the realm of the disciplinary
community.
Teaching critical science literacy to science majors
requires an interdisciplinary approach that can include the
history, philosophy, and sociology of science, some knowl-
edge of which, Priest (2013) argues, can help citizens assess
scientific claims. In addition to these disciplinary tradi-
tionsparticularly the social sciencesI argue in this article
that knowledge of rhetoric is especially necessary for future
scientists to be considered critically literate. Rhetoric, though
often misunderstood (see, e.g., Fahnestock, 2013), is con-
cerned with both analysis and production of texts, and thus,
it is useful for both training future scientists in analyzing
arguments in their fields and developing and honing their
own communicative practices.
In the pages that follow, I further elaborate on the inclu-
sion of rhetoric in undergraduate curricula for science majors
and, perhaps more importantly, describe some ways in which
science-centric scholarship from rhetoric and writing studies
might benefit the practice of science communication with
nonexpert publics. In the second half of this article, I provide
a layout of the type of communication-intensive course for
which I am advocating. Although the course, as I taught it,
represents a merger of three distinct disciplinary traditions
composition studies, the rhetoric of science, and science
communication scholarship derived from both the social sci-
ences and the humanitiesit would certainly benefit from
being team-taught, and it is flexible enough that its emphases
could be reconfigured according to instructors preferences
and areas of specialization.
This is not strictly a pedagogical article; I do not offer
assessment criteria or results. Rather, this is an article about
one pedagogical possibility for improving the communica-
tion of science to nonexpert publics by approaching critical
science literacy not only from the science side of the
equation but also from the perspective of higher education.
The purpose of this article is not to advocate for a unified,
airtight curriculum, but rather to encourage interdisciplinary
collaboration with the aim of finding the best possible way of
teaching undergraduate science majors how to be responsi-
ble and effective communicators. As rhetorician of science
Leah Ceccarelli (2013) notes, barriers to publication of
Gigante 79
pedagogical reflections are high in the academy, and there-
fore, courses similar to the one I propose do exist, but they
fly under the radar of the broader university community. In
this particular case, pedagogical reflections are deeply rele-
vant to current science communication efforts, and it is my
hope that this article on introducing science majors to how
things work in their discipline can open the door to more
scholarly discussion on improving science education in the
service of democracy.
Why Rhetoric?
The word rhetoric has a tendency to either cause confusion
or prompt repudiation, even in academia. In the Journal of
General Education, Jeanne Fahnestock (2013) addresses
common misunderstandings of rhetoric and clarifies the role
that the rhetorical arts play, not only in higher education but
also in civic matters. Fahnestock, who has made significant
contributions to rhetorical studies of science, defines rhetoric
broadly as the arts of communication that are used as a writing and to critically analyze the structures in place dif-
means of securing cooperation in social groups (p. 13, ital-
ics in original). Securing cooperation is achieved through the
art of persuasion, which is not an inherently sinister endeavor,
but rather, as Fahnestock puts it, a necessary component of
a successful polity (p. 14). Thus, the necessity of rhetorical
training in science education should be evident: Future sci-
entists can better understand their role in society and develop
facility in communicating their work to the citizens, across
social strata and with varying levels of interest, who are inev-
itably affected by scientific research. Rhetoric is not, there-
fore, intended to mislead or confuse, but rather to improve
cooperation and, ultimately, serve society.
Rhetoricians, like social scientists who study science
communication, are concerned with how society shapes and
is shaped by communicative practices. Rhetoricians and
scholars of scientific discourse have written extensively on
the ways in which scientific communities negotiate knowl-
edge formation (e.g., Bazerman, 1988; Gross, 1990; Prelli,
1989). Scholars have also explored and explained the intrica-
cies of scientific argumentation, style, and structure (e.g.,
Fahnestock, 1999; Gross, 1990; Halliday & Martin, 1993).
And they have studied the issues that arise when science
enters the public sphere (e.g., Harris, 1997; Myers, 2003;
Paul, Charney, & Kendall, 2001). Another growing body of
scholarship merges the rhetoric of science with writing peda-
gogy. Many of these pedagogically based articles emerge
from or seek to complicate a movement in composition stud-
ies referred to as writing to learn (e.g., Bazerman, 1989;
Carter, Ferzli, & Wiebe, 2007, Keys, 1999; Moskovitz &
Kellogg, 2005; Zerbe, 2007), which holds that the writing
process is a means of engendering critical thinking in a disci-
pline. Taking that idea a step further, Carter et al. (2007) use
theories of situated learning, which posit that by partici- audience at a particular time and under a particular set of
pating in the ways of doing that define a community, a
newcomer learns its ways of knowing (p. 284). Sharing the
results of their interviews with students who were assigned a
significant written task in their science courses, Carter et al.
argue that writing assists science majors in joining the scien-
tific community.
The idea that the act of writing in a fields professional
genres is a means of socializing students into a discipline is
significant to science communication efforts. Scholars of
writing and rhetoric have noted that professorsnot just sci-
ence professorshave been initiated or socialized into their
discourse communities without necessarily being mindful of
the ways in which arguments are structured, meaning is nego-
tiated, or knowledge is formed (see, e.g., Bazerman & Paradis,
1991; Duff, 2010). The initiation process is likely to render
discourse conventions all but invisible, then, to young schol-
ars and majors advancing in the field. Indeed, this taken-for-
granted knowledge (Priest, 2013, p. 144) needs to shift to the
forefront of future scientists communicative practices.
Encouraging students to engage deeply with scientific
ferentiates a rhetorically grounded science writing course
from a content-driven science writing course or a science
writing course in communication or journalism. Whereas a
communication or journalism course typically focuses on
writing for audiences outside of the scientific community
(i.e., nonexpert publics), a rhetorically grounded science
writing course can assist science majors with understanding
the intricacies of scientific communication both within and
outside of the scientific community. The importance of learn-
ing to communicate to different audiences in the same course
is summed up by Fahnestock at the end of Accommodating
Science (1986), an article that is cited frequently in the rhet-
oric community, but not generally for her concluding remarks
about writing instruction:
Ideally, students in advanced writing programs, who are
simultaneously taking courses in their specialties, should have a
full writing course that gives them extensive practice in
addressing different audiences, specialist and nonspecialist, on
subjects drawn from their majors. Only in such a course will
students receive the kind of genuine writing instruction that
makes audience addressed a reason for every language choice.
And only in such a course will they experience the problems,
moral as well as technical, of accommodating information for
different genres, audiences, and purposes. (p. 294, italics added)
Here, it is especially clear how a rhetorically grounded sci-
ence pedagogy and Priests notion of critical science literacy
converge: it is rhetorical training that can sensitize students
to different audiences and expose them to the moral concerns
that arise in various situations. Rhetoric deals with case-spe-
cific analysis, and, to quote Fahnestock (2013), it always
stresses the accommodation of an argument to a particular
circumstances (p. 22). The upper-level science writing
80 Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 34(3-4)
course presented in this article asks students to become rhet-
oricians of science, to analyze scientific discourse as argu-
ments open to dispute, and then to become science
communicators.
Preliminary Steps: Interdisciplinary
Collaboration and Assessing Student
Assumptions
Even with a theoretical groundwork in place, it goes without
saying that faculty outside of the sciences (I am in the English
department) who plan to teach a course to science students
would be remiss if they did not initiate conversations with
science faculty.2 Prior to teaching the course described in this
article for the first time, I met with science professors at my
university, a large, public research institution in the Midwest,
and explained the aims of the rhetoric of science. Our con-
versations also gave them an opportunity to discuss the state
of writing instruction in the sciences at my university. For
example, the science professors expressed their concerns
about students lacking the confidence needed to find and
analyze information, to synthesize their research findings in
their own reports, and to set up their own hypotheses. Beyond
making assumptions about writing, science majors at my
university also make assumptions about science, according
to their professors, that impede their level of engagement
with assignments.
One of the major assumptions that students make about
science is that it is not open to dispute; the science professors
explained that their students assumeand this is not a unique
perspectivethat everything is already known in science
and that they could not possibly add to the body of knowl-
edge. Of course, to the contrary, scientific knowledge is ever-
changing, and articles are constantly published that posit
new arguments to be disputed in the discourse community
(Kuhn, 1996; Merton, 1973). Other assumptions that I antici-
pated students having include the ideas that the scientific
enterprise has always been the way that it is now; that objec-
tivity in experiments is possible; and that accommodating
science for nonexperts is a process of dumbing down
information. Through collaborating with the science profes-
sors, I was able to take these types of assumptions that my
students might bring with them into the classroom, pertain-
ing to both the scientific enterprise and the writing process,
and integrate them into my course design.
In the next section, I provide a detailed sketch of the
course objectives, layout, design, and the types of readings
and assignments that would complement the course struc-
ture, as opposed to focusing only on my experiences teach-
ing a rhetoric and writing course to science majors. There are
a few reasons for sharing a sketch of a course as opposed to
a hermetically sealed, guaranteed-to-work course. First,
although the course was successful when I taught it at my
university to a specific demographic within a specific
academic program, my pedagogical day-in-the-life-of is
by no means an exactly repeatable experience from which
others can reap benefits. Second, as this is an inherently
interdisciplinary course, and thus could be taught from dif-
ferent disciplinary angles, a sketch is preferable to a finished
product because it allows details to be erased and redrawn to
suit disciplinary methods and preferences. Furthermore, the
course I am describing is one that I taught alone, but collabo-
ration and team-teaching are likely preferable for a course
like this, whether the course is shared between scientists and
humanists or among faculty from the social sciences and
humanities. Finally, courses like this one are not currently
required for science majors to graduate, and although I am
arguing that they should be required, I am not inclined to
pretend to be the ultimate authority and argue that my spe-
cific curriculum be adopted by universities across the United
States. I am, however, inclined to popularize the idea of a
course that has the basic objectives of teaching science
majors how things work in their disciplines and how to com-
municate within and outside of their disciplinary
communities.
And so this course sketch should be shared widely, and it
should be tweaked and rearranged and experimented with, as
long as the core objectives of critical science literacy remain
intact.
Teaching Critical Science Literacy to
Science Majors
The following overarching objectives highlight the two most
important dimensions of the course: the analysis/production
dynamic and the modification of communication for differ-
ent audiences. On completion of the course, students should
be able to
Rhetorically analyze several examples of scientific
writing and articulate the discursive practices of their
fields of study
Synthesize information and enter the scientific dis-
course community by writing according to its accepted
genre conventions
Rhetorically analyze several examples of scientific
accommodations and articulate the techniques of
communicating scientific information to nonexpert
public audiences
Accommodate their scientific papers for nonexpert
public audiences through various media
One example of a course layout that can carry out these
objectives follows this structure (also see the appendix for an
abridged syllabus):
Unit 1A Brief History of Scientific Discourse
Unit 2Reading Science
Gigante 81
Unit 3Argument and Style
Unit 4Science Communication with Nonexpert Publics
The purpose of a course structure that begins with an histori-
cal overview is to show students the stark contrast between
audiences and purposes for communicating science in the
17th century, when the Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society of London began publication (1665), and in the
21st century. A side-by-side comparison of historical and
current texts really highlights discursive techniques and
details, and it thus sets the tone for the kind of textual analy-
sis expected throughout the course. The second and third
units then delve deeper into communicating within the scien-
tific community in the 20th and 21st centuries. Then, the
fourth unit addresses another major shift in purpose and
audience when science is communicated outside of the scien-
tific community. Below, I describe each unit and then explain
the trajectory of the major course projects, which are all on
the same topic that students select themselves. Focusing on
one research topic for the duration of the semester can allow
emphasis to be placed on textual analysis and communica-
tive techniques, rather than being placed on content
knowledge.
The course textbook, Penrose and Katzs Writing in the
Sciences (2010), assists with both textual analysis and pro-
duction, as it not only synthesizes the arguments of rhetori-
cians and sociologists of science but also provides example
readings and activities for significant concepts throughout.
Moreover, their textbook situates scientific discourse
squarely within society, eliminating the notion of science as
a mythical entity set apart from an equally mythical, mono-
lithic public. In addition to Penrose and Katzs book, I
selected course readings from the history, sociology, and
rhetoric of science to broaden students perspectives.
Engaging students with a variety of representations of what
science is, what it does, and how it functions in society can
provide necessary context for the majority of their
coursework.
Course Structure
The historical unit is intended to put the spotlight on genre
conventions right away by virtue of the stark contrast it pro-
vides to current scientific practices. My students prior
knowledge about the history of science was limited to
important figures (e.g., Galileo and Newton) and their aston-
ishing discoveries. Historians of science Bowler and Morus
(2005) point out that science textbooks tend not to do justice
to the complexities of scientific history: All too often, it
turns out that the conventional stories are vastly oversimpli-
fiedthey are myths that tidy up the messy process of
controversy surrounding any new innovation (p. 2).
Although it is nearly impossible to do justice to this messy
process in a brief historical unit, it is, at the very least, pos-
sible to lend depth to students understanding of the
evolution of science in society over time and to shed light on
how discursive conventions changed drastically between the
17th century3 and the present time. Discussions of historical
scientific papers and practices naturally facilitate a compari-
son/contrast scenario with modern discursive practices,
making this unit an effective setup for later units that address
such concepts as audiences for scientific communication,
production technologies, organizational conventions, and
language and style.
Establishing sciences rich and dynamic traditionand
opening it up as an object of analysiscreates a helpful
segue into the rhetoric of science, the subject of Unit 2,
Reading Science. The purpose of this unit is to demonstrate
to students the ways in which knowledge of the rhetoric of
science can help them as readers and writers in a scientific
discourse community. Randy Allen Harriss introduction to
Landmark Essays in the Rhetoric of Science (1997) opens up
for discussion the definition of rhetoric broadly and of the
rhetoric of science more specifically. The notion that scien-
tists make argumentsand, in fact, are particularly good at
making argumentsstruck my students as surprising, as
most of them had been very comfortable with the concept of
objectivity being a real thing in science. Harriss introduc-
tion facilitates a gentle debunking of the notion of objectivity
without maligning science or dragging it down. The unit on
Reading Science is also designed to establish science as a
socially situated, human-made framework for understanding
how the world works. In this unit, students become familiar-
ized with the work that rhetoricians do: specifically, to seek
to understand the motivations behind communications and
the accepted methods of persuasion in a particular discourse
community. Students practice analyzing scientific papers
and breaking them down into their constituent partsthat is,
Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRAD
format).
The unit on Argument and Style builds on the previous
unit in that it addresses students assumptions about the inac-
cessibility of scientific articles, particularly due to issues of
syntax and semantics. The major objective of this unit is to
help students understand the linguistic and stylistic hall-
marks of scientific discourse that have a tendency to make
scientific writing esoteric to audiences outside of that area of
expertiseincluding other scientists. Simply having access
to the knowledge of what makes scientific writing esoteric
can be empowering to students. Linguists Halliday and
Martins (1993) work on scientific style can assist in explor-
ing such concepts as the use of nominalization to make con-
cepts concrete and give them fact-like status; hedging to
strategically fit experiments into the dominant paradigm; and
passive construction to remove the human element from the
research project (although, it is also worth noting that this
trend is changing to active, first-person construction in the
biological sciences). John Swaless (1990) Create a Research
Space model illuminates the argumentative moves that sci-
entists make in introductory sections of articles to reference
82 Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 34(3-4)
previous work, identify gaps in that work, and establish rel-
evance for the new research.
With an understanding of the conventions of IMRAD for-
mat and the hallmarks of scientific argumentation, the
changes that occur when scientific information moves out of
the scientific community and into the public sphere are easier
to grasp. The major goals of this final unit, Science
Communication with Nonexpert Publics, are to not only help
students understand the importance of accommodating sci-
ence for nonexpert publics, but also enable them to see the
difficulties and weaknesses of this process so that they are
inspired to take on the responsibility of communicating their
own research in an engaging, but still accurate, way.
Significant concepts in this unit include the dramatic changes
in purpose and mode of address when there is a change in
audience for scientific information. Fahnestocks (1986)
Accommodating Science provides a rhetorical perspective
of the process of communicating science to nonexpert pub-
lics. In this unit, students should become familiar with the
scholarship on science communication and the debates
therein. For example, students should become aware of the
fact that there have been different approaches to science
communication that have been less successful (i.e., the defi-
cit model). They should also learn about the complicated
and ongoing shift from Public Understanding of Science to
Public Engagement with Science (e.g., Davies, 2013).
Course Projects
The production component of this course is equally impor-
tant to the analytical component; in addition to analyzing
various genres of scientific communication in this course,
students should, ideally, have ample practice producing texts
in different genres (Carter et al., 2007; Fahnestock, 1986;
Keys, 1999). According to Carolyn Keys (1999) in
Revitalizing Instruction in the Scientific Genres,
A shift toward instructional practices in which students solve
problems, seek out information, pose questions, build devices,
create their own investigation plans, and collect authentic data
will have a considerable impact on the way students view and
implement writing tasks. (p. 120)
Encouraging students to reach a high level of engagement is
in opposition to what is often called passive learning,
wherein students receive information without having to
devise their own methods for seeking it out. It goes without
saying that student engagement, especially pertaining to the
writing process, is likely far more feasible in writing class-
rooms than in science lectures.
If the course is team-taught by faculty members in the
humanities, social sciences, and STEM disciplines, course
projects can be based on the experiments that students are
completing in labs for their major coursework. For example,
students can target a peer-reviewed scientific journal that is
relevant to their topics and write a research article according
to that journals specifications. Prior to completing that proj-
ect, students would read and analyze articles from that jour-
nal, both in class and at home, and complete an annotated
bibliography assignment to prepare them to write their arti-
cles. Because I did not team-teach the course, and it was
offered through the English department, my students did not
write a research article but rather a literature review article
on a topic that interested them. Still, they went through the
same steps I described for the research article: they researched
their topics, read and analyzed several examples of literature
reviews in the sciences both at home and in class, and wrote
an annotated bibliography in preparation for the literature
review. Once students gain practice writing for the scientific
community, they can more fruitfully begin studying the prac-
tice of accommodating science for nonexpert publics.
As students will have established a solid understanding of
their research topics from the main project (research article
or literature review), they should ideally keep that same topic
as they make the transition to addressing a new audience in
the unit on accommodating science. That way, more atten-
tion can be paid to genre conventions and discourse analysis,
as opposed to having students begin the research process all
over again on a new topic. With a focus on genre conven-
tions, students can practice using the types of appeals that are
made to nonscientist audiences, as outlined by Fahnestock
(1986) in Accommodating Science. These appeals, termed
deontological and teleological appeals, relate scientific
material to nonexpert audiences already held values and
beliefs; put simply, the deontological or wonder appeal
presents science as awe-inspiring and amazing, and the tele-
ological or application appeal attempts to relate discover-
ies in some way to peoples everyday lives (p. 279). Since the
publication of Fahnestocks article, science communicators
have elaborated on the types of appeals that may be useful
for framing information (e.g., Nisbet & Scheufele, 2009).
However, the notion of framing information for nonexpert
public audiences, Priest (2013) argues, would be unlikely to
accomplish very much in the way of encouraging deeper
thought about the nature of science (p. 141). Therefore, stu-
dents should become aware of the multifaceted nature of per-
suasion and use rhetorical appeals for the purposes of
encouraging engagement with science issues, as opposed to
using appeals, via framing devices, for purposes that are
more aligned with the deficit model of communication.
In this connection, continuous discussion about the ethics
of communicating science to nonexpert publics is essential
during this part of the course (e.g., Goodwin & Dahlstrom,
2014; Goodwin, Dahlstrom, & Priest, 2013). Students can
evaluate several examples of communication, particularly on
controversial issues, to learn about how these cases have
been handled and to debate how they might have been more
effectively addressed (Goodwin, Dahlstrom, Kemis, Wolf, &
Gigante 83
Hutchison, 2014; see also Note 2). Priests article, Critical
Science Literacy (2013), merits being foregrounded in the
course as well as receiving significant attention throughout
this unit. By understanding key issues in science communi-
cation prior to writing their own accommodated articles, stu-
dents are in a position to make more informed decisions
about how they choose to present their research topics to
nonexpert audiences.
The accommodation project(s) could take on different
forms and make use of various new media, depending on the
teachers objectives and comfort level. For example, my stu-
dents wrote an accommodated article using the The New York
Times as their model, and then as their final project they
made a website about their topics using a What-You-See-Is-
What-You-Get Web editor called Wix. The website assign-
ment was designed to be a final portfolio that showcased all
of their work from the semester, including their annotated
bibliographies, literature reviews, and accommodated arti-
cles, in a way that suited the new digital genre. To complete
the website project, students had to first analyze websites on
a wide range of topics to get accustomed to the layouts, color
schemes and fonts, images, and so forth, that web users come
to expect. They also had to identify which layouts and themes
were best suited to broad audiences. There are many options
for accommodation projects, however, that do not involve
making websites, such as podcasts, videos, photo essays,
posters, or PowerPoints and Prezis. Regardless of the
medium, the most important aspect of this project, as with all
of the other projects, is the time that students spend analyz-
ing texts in the genre in which they will be working. In prep-
aration for production, it is important for students to receive
training in how to analyze other successful and unsuccessful
texts in the genre in question, and then they should be given
opportunities to practice analyzing examples on their own.
Challenges and Future Directions
Challenges are to be expected when teaching any new course,
and this course, because of its interdisciplinarity, is even
more susceptible to challenges. The challenges that arose in
the course could fill a full-length article on their own, and so
I only mention a couple of the significant ones that my stu-
dents have faced. I offer my ideas for overcoming them, but
do so with confidence that there are many other possibilities
and approaches that I have not considered.
One major challenge involves reading and comprehend-
ing historical and current scientific discourse. It is fair to say
that students who struggle with reading comprehension in
general will struggle with scientific writing, and a few of my
students, reading ability aside, actually take pride in their
distaste for reading anything. Nevertheless, I inform them
that there is no way to avoid reading scientific papers if they
pursue a career that requires writing scientific papers.
Practicing reading sections of scientific papers together in
class is one way to assist struggling readers and avid protest-
ers of reading alike; moreover, strong readers seem to appre-
ciate this practice, as they are given opportunities to articulate
their thought processes and help direct class discussion.
Because most of my students have never read historical or
current scientific texts, I always encourage them to express
their first impressions of the readings, no matter how rudi-
mentary. These preliminary impressions become our entry
point into more nuanced discussions of argument, style, and
structure.
A reading that helps highlight the changes in conventions
of scientific argument, style, and structure over time is Gross,
Harmon, and Reidys first chapter of Communicating Science
(2002), which compares and contrasts a 17th-century scien-
tific paper with a 20th-century paper. Moreover, Gross et
al.s insightful commentary and contextualization of these
two texts serves as a model for students of close reading
practices and critical analysis. Truly, the only way to over-
come the barrier that students perceive between themselves
and the texts is to read several example papers together in
class, breaking them down paragraph by paragraph, and at
times, sentence by sentence, to discover how scientists
attempted to persuade each other about the merits and find-
ings of their research projects. Without some confidence in
reading science, students cannot possibly be expected to
write scientifically.
Still, writing is a challenge for most of my students
especially writing for a scientific audience. Staging at least
one round of one-on-one conferences with students during
the term to discuss their writing is worthwhile and can allevi-
ate some of their frustrations. Composition scholars agree
that there is merit to the practice of conferencing with stu-
dents individually, and the concept of the academic writing
center is predicated on this notion (see, e.g., Fisher & Murray,
1973; Lerner, 2005; North, 1984). In my experience teaching
the writing course to science majors, it is helpful to students
to stage the conferences after they complete a rough draft of
the literature review (or scientific article). Their lack of expe-
rience writing in this genre leads them to believe that they
could not possibly synthesize research papers and adopt an
authoritative voice to comment meaningfully on the work
that has been done in their fields. However, my students
seemed to internalize the genre conventions of the literature
review and were able to put them into practice unwittingly. I
suspect that their ability to work within the genre conven-
tions is at least in part due to the course design, which
requires them to complete several analyses of literature
reviews (both in class and for homework) prior to writing
their own. In one-on-one conferences, then, I am able to
remind students that they have already amassed a wealth of
knowledge on their topics, they have read several examples
of the kind of writing that they are expected to do, and they
84 Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 34(3-4)
have already identified the moves that experienced writers
make in class discussion.
The conference thus becomes an occasion to point out to
students exactly how they are already using those moves
themselves in their own drafts of papers, and where they can
improve: for example, with the draft of the students litera-
ture review between us, I might say to her, Here, youre
providing an example of the concept you just mentioned,
then flip the page and say, But here, you mention a concept
without explaining it as thoroughly as you did the last one;
this would be another place to include an example. The
same type of dialogue can occur for students usage of other
techniques besides providing examples, such as establishing
exigence for their discussion, transitioning between para-
graphs, synthesizing other writers arguments, or describing
methods. If a student lacks facility with a particular tech-
nique, one way to address the issue is to have example papers
on hand for reference, and to demonstrate, on the spot, how
that technique would translate into his or her own paper.
Offsetting some of the challenges of the course is the fact
that all of the assignments are on the same, student-selected
topic, allowing them to become experts in their subject
areas. Thus, responsibility for their learning is shared: the
professor is the expert on discourse analysis and production,
but the science students are the experts in their research
areas. In fact, my students are willing to admit that the litera-
ture review assignment is one of the more valuable experi-
ences in the course (despite their frustration with the writing
process), and their work, on the whole, demonstrates an
awareness of audience, context, and purpose. However, more
research is needed to be able to claim that the type of course
I am proposing actually leads to an evolution of students
analytical and communicative abilities. If faculty collaborate
to develop courses that merge rhetorical studies with studies
of science, technology, and society, such efforts can lead to
the development of assessment tools and revisions to the
course layout. Team-teaching the course would also offset
the challenges of a course like this even more, as instructors
from different fields would bring their diverse expertise to
the learning environment. If rhetoricians and social scientists
were to collaborate with STEM professors, students would
have the benefit of being exposed to a range of disciplinary
traditions, to see their differences and the places where they
intersect.
It should also be said that my classes have been quite
small (approximately eight students), despite my efforts to
popularize the course, and that my students, almost exclu-
sively, happen to major in the biological sciences. I cannot
comment yet, therefore, on how students in different STEM
fields respond to the course material. An article that reports
on students responses to the same communication-intensive
courseto determine if there are indeed great distinctions
based on their disciplinary backgroundsis a relevant and
interesting next step. The challenges that I describe here are
undoubtedly affected by class size and homogeneity, yet
these challenges, in a general sense, are likely familiar to
most instructors. With the development of more courses like
this oneand greater diversity in variables such as class
size, students majors, and instructors expertisea more
comprehensive set of challenges can be identified and thus
more effectively addressed.
Conclusion
Critical science literacy, as Priest explains it, is about giving
citizens the tools necessary for effective and informed deci-
sion making; it is about granting access and upholding
democracy. But an equal effort is required on the part of
scientific communities to become aware of the ways in
which their work influences society, to become critically lit-
erate in scientific knowledge-formation and dissemination.
This article proposes one way that Priests concept of criti-
cal science literacy can be particularized for students who
are the future scientists of our society: the development of
rhetorically grounded writing courses for undergraduate sci-
ence majors.
At minimum, such courses should expose students to sci-
ence as a socially situated disciplinary community, but an
ideal course would also teach students how to navigate dis-
course in the sciences and how to communicate for different
audiences and purposes. In a course that emphasizes both
analysis and production, students can become more aware of
persuasive techniques in scientific writing for different con-
texts and have several opportunities to employ those tech-
niques in their own creative projects. Thus, the course makes
the everyday, tacit knowledge of how things work in the
sciences (Priest, 2013, p. 138) transparent to science majors,
can allow them to take agency over their learning processes,
and can grant them access to their discourse communities. It
is not possible at this time to determine whether or not stu-
dents who complete the course will go on to apply their
knowledge in their future careers; nevertheless, it is worth
adding a pedagogical approach to public engagement efforts.
Priest (2013) concludes Critical Science Literacy with a
comment about the difficulties of measuring the efficacy of
particular approaches to improving public engagement, ulti-
mately deciding that such approaches should not be ignored
even if they are difficult to assess (p. 144). With more faculty
collaboration and publication of pedagogical approaches, it
might even be possible to reach a point where such approaches
produce gains in critical science literacy that are indeed
tangible.
Gigante 85

Appendix
Sample Course Layout

Unit Key themes Examples of projects and select readings

Unit 1: A Brief History of Natural Philosophy
Scientific Discourse
Historical Scientific Argument and Style The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
Audiences for Science
Unit 2: Reading Science Specialization of Science
Rhetorical Studies of Science
Scientific Revolutions
Unit 3: Argument and Style IMRAD Format
Scientific Syntax
Unit 4: Science Communication Reputation of Science in Society
with Nonexpert Publics
Models of Science Communication
Accommo-dation and Popularization
Selections from:
Bowler and Morus, Making Modern Science
Gross, Harmon, and Reidy, Communicating Science
Project 1 Preliminary Steps: Topic Selection and Research
Selections from:
Harris, Landmark Essays
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Project 1: Annotated Bibliography
Sample readings:
Halliday and Martin, Writing Science
Swales, Creating a Research Space
Project 2: Review of Scientific Literature
Sample readings:
Priest, Critical Science Literacy
Fahnestock, Accommodating Science
Davies, Constituting Public Engagement
Goodwin and Dahlstrom, Communication Strategies
Project 3: Accommodated Article
Project 4: Final Website Portfolio

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. There are 39 universities on the list generated by U.S. News &
World Report titled Top-Ranked Universities that Grant the
Most STEM Degrees (Morse & Tolis, 2013), and I researched
the general education requirements of the top 10 universi-
ties on this list. These universities, in order, are: California
Institute of Technology, Colorado School of Mines, Missouri
University of Science and Technology, Worcester Polytechnic
Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, Stevens Institute of Technology,
Michigan Technological University, Clarkson University, and
Georgia Institute of Technology.
2. The necessity of collaboration between scientists and rheto-
ricians is receiving more attention in scholarship on science
communication, in part thanks to Leah Ceccarellis (2013) call
to effectively transform our scholarly findings into meaning-
ful action. In addition to the aforementioned work that merges
writing studies and the rhetoric of science, there is work that
merges the rhetoric of science and science communication
with nonexpert publics, as Condit et al. (2012) point out in a
review of recent literature in Public Understanding of Science.
Perhaps the project that comes closest to merging pedagogy
with rhetorical studies and science communication studies is
Goodwin et al.s (2014) Teaching Responsible Communication
of Science (TRCS) at Iowa State University. TRCS, funded
by the National Science Foundation, is intended to augment
communication training programs and workshops for sci-
ence faculty, graduate students, and professionals with rhe-
torical know-how. The aim of the project is to encourage both
effective and ethical science communication (Goodwin et al.,
2014). Although the TRCS project is a necessary step forward
in improving science communication efforts, and although it
is concerned with teaching, it is not representative of the type
of course for which I am advocating in this article. In addition
to efforts like Goodwin et al.s, there should also be earlier
interventionsand in this case, I am referring to undergradu-
ate science curriculathat encompass writing instruction, the
rhetoric of science, and social scientific studies of science
communication. Such a triangulation of approaches merits
more thorough exploration.
3. One could certainly make the argument that the course should
begin the history unit much earlier. In particular, I began in
the 17th century because that is when the Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society of London came into exis-
tence, the first major scientific journal, which gave my stu-
dents a clear indication of what scientific writing was like at
that time.
86 Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 34(3-4)

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