Representational Pluralism in Science Education

Abstract This essay analyses the theme of representational pluralism in science education and a possible interpretation through the inferential-pragmatic conception of scientific representations. A brief description of two principal conceptions of scientific representations (the semantic-structural and the inferential-pragmatic conceptions) and their implications for unicity and plurality are presented to compare how those philosophical approaches can help understand representational plurality in science education. Subsequently, a brief analysis of different topics of science education is made to determine relevant classes of representational plurality in science education: Plurality and coexistence of representations in subjects in a school context; plurality in diverse cultural contexts; plurality by approaches and methods of research; plurality and perspectivism. In the discussion and conclusions, those classes of representational plurality are analysed from the inferential conception of representations, and themes such as proliferation, reduction, normativity, and building in plurality are discussed. The conclusions point to the understanding that representational plurality is not a subject’s deviation from the norm of scientific and school representations; instead, it is inherent to the subjects’ construction of representations, individually and collectively. Certainly, this implies that the separation from the semantic-structural approach of scientific representations must be accomplished by cancelling any similarity condition for representations. Plural representations imply that teaching requires the construction of new scenarios for students to consider the intentionality of representations and interpret them more coherently with the expectations of scientific disciplines in diverse cultural contexts.