History and Past Activities
|
|
History and Past Activities |
Cristina Palma Conceição
Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-ISCTE)
Promotion of public understanding of science initiatives: a space for change in R&D institutions
While important changes were occurring in science relationship with economy and with State, and science itself was facing new frontiers, transformations have taken place in what concerns citizens’ perceptions about these subjects (as Eurobarometer have showed). Some of them favour science; some announce new challenges. And, even if science has become an every day presence, many people keep showing little understanding of and interest in it – what also raises important problems if we really want to put techno-scientific research at the service of society.
In this context, some new politic initiatives have been launched trying to improve public awareness of S&T, to stimulate new scientific vocations, and, in a more broadly sense, to encourage new dialog platforms between lay people and scientists. “Science and Society Plan” is an example of this at European level, as it is, in the Portuguese case, Science Alive Programme, an initiative that gained particular attention from some experts (see European Commission benchmarking exercise on the subject).
Among other actions, this program challenged Portuguese R&D units to involve themselves in projects with schools, science centres and other civil organizations, to create open-days and secondary students’ summer probations, or to create science popularization actions, for instance, in leisure spaces. Scientists’ adhesion to these ideas has been significant – sometimes directly answering to public incentives, others in a more autonomous way – which constitutes an important fact, specially if we have in mind the scarce resources of the Portuguese institutions and its usual distance to non-academic fields, or if we realise the relative novelty of what has been requested, at least in Portugal.
Our propose in the workshop is to illustrate this involvement – in its different modalities –, and to explore the way Portuguese R&D institutions are apparently opening to public sphere and rethinking their social role: creating networks for the propose of non-formal scientific education or stimulating the acquisition of new competences among its teams to deal with this thematic. Finally, the point is also to consider the field of “public understanding of science initiatives” as – another – strategic starting point for analysing the changes occurring within science, its institutions, practices and roles. Some analogies/complementariness could perhaps be explored with studies more focused on science-economy links. For instance, in both cases we found signs of a science that seems to feel the need to interact more with several spheres of the society, but that faces the dilemmas of it’s our specificities and interests – the translation obstacles are just one, among others, possible issues to discuss.
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006