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Increasing evidence suggests that individuals develop their understanding of science concepts in and out of school, using varied community resources and networks. Thus in contrast to historic research approaches that focus exclusively on single organizations and/or educational events, the current paper presents exploratory research in which we utilized specific community ecology analytical tools and approaches to describe and analyze the U.K. science education community as a whole. Data suggest that overall the U.K. science education community is highly interconnected, and collaborative within individual sectors and moderately interconnected and collaborative between sectors; schools and to a lesser degree universities were outliers to this pattern. An important conclusion was that management to maximize the effectiveness of science education the U.K. science education community would involve support for continued diversification of the number of science education entities in the system and encouragement of reciprocally collaborative, synergistic relationships. We posit that systemic research enables a broader, more comprehensive view of a system's strengths and weaknesses, offering useful insights into the structure and functioning of science education activities; insights that could help researchers, practitioners, and policy makers improve the overall quality of science education delivery for all.

There is international concern over persistent low rates of participation in postcompulsory science--especially the physical sciences--within which there is a notable underrepresentation of girls/women. This paper draws on data collected from a survey of more than 9,000 10/11-year-old pupils and 170 interviews (with 92 children and 78 parents) from a 5-year study of children's science aspirations and career choice in England, to explore how gender interacts with girls' science aspirations. The research found that even though most children aged 10/11 years enjoy science, the majority already see science careers as "not for me." Using a feminist poststructuralist theoretical lens, this paper explores the identity work undertaken by the minority of girls who "do" identify with science and who express science aspirations at this age. It is argued that dominant associations of science with "cleverness" and masculinity pressurize girls to balance their science aspirations with performances of popular heterofemininity to render them "thinkable" (and that this occurs only within narrow parameters, through identity performances as either "feminine scientists" or "bluestocking scientists"). The paper concludes by discussing potential challenges girls may face in sustaining "thinkable" identifications with science and wider implications for encouraging greater female participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. (Contains 6 footnotes.)

The concern about students' engagement with school science and the numbers pursuing the further study of science is an international phenomenon and a matter of considerable concern among policy makers. Research has demonstrated that the majority of young children have positive attitudes to science at age 10 but that this interest then declines sharply and by age 14, their attitude and interest in the study of science has been largely formed. This paper reports on data collected as part of a funded 5-year longitudinal study that seeks to determine how students' interest in science and scientific careers evolves. As an initial part of the study, six focus group discussions were undertaken with schoolchildren, age 10-11, to explore their attitudes toward science and interest in science, the findings of which are presented here. The children's responses are analyzed through the lens of identity, drawing on a theoretical framework that views identity as an embodied and a performed construction that is both produced by individuals and shaped by their specific structural locations. This work offers new insights into the manner in which students construct representations of science and scientists. (Contains 3 footnotes.)