This paper argues that science education has overemphasized the importance of construction at the expense of critique. In doing so, it draws on two key premises--Ford's argument that the construction of knowledge requires a dialectic between construction and critique and Mercier and Sperber's theory of argumentative reasoning that critique is…

Learners encounter science in a wide variety of contexts beyond the science classroom which collectively could be quite influential on student attitudes and abilities. But relatively little is known about the relative influence of different forms of informal science experiences, especially for the kinds of experiences that students typically…