The problematic use of urban, suburban, and rural in science education

• Published in: Cultural studies of science education Vol. 16; no. 4; pp. 1289 - 1313
• Main Authors: Bradley, Frederick, Feldman, Allan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.12.2021; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Ambiguity (Semantics); Definitions; Dimensional analysis; Education; Educational Policy; Learning; Original Paper; Rural Areas; Rural environments; Science Education; Science Instruction; Sociology of Education; Suburban areas; Suburbs; Urban Areas; Rural; Urban; Suburban; Science education; Normalization
• ISSN: 1871-1502; 1871-1510
• DOI: 10.1007/s11422-020-10015-7

There is an ever-growing body of science education research considering factors associated with teaching and learning in urban, suburban, and rural learning environments. However, there also appears to be a tendency to employ these contexts in euphemistic descriptions, when comparing of subsets of our society here in the USA. With this in mind, we attempted to determine the ways the terms urban, suburban, and rural, are used, defined, and characterized in science education research. This process included two developmental phases, which resulted in the development of our multi-dimensional analytical framework; a trial phase to test the framework; and finally an analytical phase in which we used this framework to examine a decade of science education research. The framework was constructed using emergent themes identified in education and government publications during the first two phases. It proved useful to assess whether urban, suburban, and rural were being explicitly, implicitly, or undefined in science education research. Results suggest scant evidence of the explicit defining/characterization of “urban,” “suburban,” and “rural.” This supported our suspicion that they are frequently being employed in the implication of subsets of our population, or as non-descript adjectives. Selected articles ( n  = 122) yielded ( n  = 28) explicit, ( n  = 60) implicit, and ( n  = 34) non-definitions of the terms. Such practices may have consequences with respect to educational policy and social justice concerns in science education. This is of particular interest with respect to the normalization of certain settings, cultures, behaviors, and students in science education.