The value-free ideal, autonomy, and why values in science should be infused across the curriculum

Science education that is silent about the role of social values in science is incomplete, fails to prepare learners for socioscientific citizenship, and undercuts their autonomy. Schools should introduce them to the ways in which social values legitimately enter science. But asking classroom science teachers to shoulder the whole burden is unlikely to significantly improve understanding and may even make matters worse. Education in other school subjects, like history, civics, and ideally philosophy, can and must also do more to advance this dimension of student understanding of the nature of science. This approach has legitimacy and pragmatic advantages to the casual addition of one-off modules in values in science classrooms.