Core reading - if you read nothing else, read this!

[patrick]

The importance of science and humanities for democracy – a sketch is a guide to the ideas behind the InSECT Project, written by Harry Collins. It's not super-long - around 10k words - and you should find it very readable. The topics it covers include a look at how our view of science changed in the latter half of the 20th century, the social nature of scientific communities and how these are embedded in and interact with society as a whole, the effect of the internet and social media on citizens' views about science and scientists and what it means when we say that people should 'trust the experts'.

The teaching materials and approaches that we advocate using are all underpinned by this thinking, and you'll find it immensely helpful to be familiar with what's in this reading before you embark upon teaching using the InSECT approach.

This thread is open for comments, discussion and questions, as well as reflections on using this material to develop informed classroom practice.