"Science has often presented itself, intentionally or unintentionally as a "truer" or even the true way of talking about the world. In science classrooms, except for rare occasions, this is the way science is taught and presented. Not as a way of talking about the world, but as the way the world is."
Jay Lemke is an American semiotician and science education scholar with a background in physics. He is professor of education at the University of Michigan.
"Ecosocial Dynamics concerns ecosocial systems and networks, i.e. those ecosystems, including all material components, for which semiotic practices are essential to characterizing the dynamics of the material processes which constitute the system through their networks of mutual interdependencies."
"The mystique of science is an essential tool for technocratic rule. Through it we are all taught that science, as the paradigm of all expert knowledge, has an objective, superior, and special truth that only the superintelligent few can understand. Science education, like it or not, does a great job in foisting these myths on most of us."
"Learning science means learning to talk science... Talking science means observing, describing, comparing, classifying, analysing, discussing, hypothesizing, theorizing, questioning, challenging, arguing, designing experiments, following procedures, judging, evaluating, deciding, concluding, generalizing, reporting ... in and through the language of science."
"The language others speak to us, from childhood, shapes the attitudes and beliefs that ground how we use all our powers of action."
"Multimodal presentations have an inherent critical potential to the extent that we learn how to use the images to deconstruct the viewpoint of the text, and the text to subvert the naturalness of the image."
"A genre is maintained by the conventions of a community, and in most cases serves specific functions within the system of practices of particular institutions of that community."