Scientific Communication or Popularization of S

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• Scientific Communication or Popularization of ST

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• The SC or popularization of science and
  technology is a process of communicating and
  appropriating scientific and technological
  knowledge aimed at broad sectors of the
  population.
• Activities leading to the popularization of
  science and technology must be based on
  interdisciplinary dialogue and work, integrating
  diverse fields of knowledge and different
  theoretical and methodological approaches.

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• Aims Challenges..
• One of the major challenges facing developing
  countries is to make science and technology an
  essential part of the culture of the people.
• A number of historical, cultural, political,
  social and economic situations have given rise to
  the need to develop strategies that favour the
  popularization of science and technology in
  developing countries.
• Despite the wide variety in such situations, each
  is concerned with efforts to generate an
  endogenous scientific and technological culture.

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Four components of activities
ST interactive centers
Multimedia programmes for S T popularization
Mass media and the dissemination of S T
Formal education/science learning.
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• The areas to be reached by science and technology
  must be broadened to integrate formal education
  and communication with informal efforts in both
  fields, academic discourse with colloquial
  language, and laboratory materials with domestic
  objects and ordinary daily achievements.

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• It is also essential to make scientific and
  technological knowledge available to the ordinary
  citizen, in order to allow him or her to form
  opinions on such matters that can form part of
  daily conversations in the same way as politics
  and sport.

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• Advantages
• To ensure communication of most accurate
  possible.
• To help in public decision making
• To influence public policy
• To promote a higher level of scientific
  awareness among society
• To make scientific results useful to society

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Early History of Science Communication

• Royal Society was the place where discussion, in
  formal and informal gatherings, about scientific
  matters and the new philosophy, such gatherings
  were drawn from the upper classes of society.
• In the 18th century, however, the Industrial
  Revolution created a new type of urban working
  man who necessarily had to engage with the
  multifarious applications of the new philosophy

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• The establishment of the Royal Institution in
  1799 was the first real attempt to involve all
  classes of society.
• It recruited to its lecture hall and laboratories
  men of the middle class, like Humphry Davy, and
  of the lower class, like Michael Faraday.

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• The British Association for the Advancement of
  Science was formed. Amongst its objectives was
• to obtain more general attention for the objects
  of science and the removal of any disadvantages
  of a public kind which impede its progress.

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• The British Association catalysed the formation
  of similar societies in other countries.
• - American (1848),
• - Australian and New Zealand (1888),
• - South African (1903)
• - Associations and the Indian Science
  Congress (1888).
• Many other associations, such as that of Canada,
  were modelled on the British Association.

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• Among the great science communicators of the
  nineteenth century was Thomas Henry Huxley,worked
  indefatigably to bring science to the common man
  and was a great supporter of the Mechanics'
  Institutes that proliferated throughout the
  world.

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• a consequence of this activity, the great science
  museums came into being and universities founded
  faculties and colleges of science and technology.
  
• It became accepted that science was the way to
  personal and national prosperity.

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A Hierarchy of Scientific Communication

• Science education is the teaching of science in
  formal settings, in primary, secondary and
  tertiary institutions.
• The teaching of science in informal settings has
  two components
• 1. Public understanding of science
• 2. Public awareness of science

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• The Public understanding of science may be
  defined as the comprehension of scientific facts,
  ideas and policies, combined with a knowledge of
  the impact such facts, ideas and policies have on
  the personal, social and economic well-being of
  the community.

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• Public awareness of science is a set of
  attitudes, a predisposition towards science and
  technology, which are based on beliefs and
  feelings and which are manifest in a series of
  skills and behavioural intentions.