What Does It Mean to Say Science Is Dynamic
Abstract
The fields of science education and science communication share the overarching goal of helping non-experts and non-members of the professional science community develop knowledge of the content and processes of scientific research. However, the specific audiences, methods, and aims employed in the two fields have evolved quite differently and as a result, the two fields rarely share findings and theory. Despite this lack of crosstalk, one theoretical construct—framing—has shown substantial analytic power for researchers in both fields. Specifically, both fields have productively made use of the fact that when people approach situations or texts in the world, they do so with a sense of "what is going on here" that guides their actions and sense-making in that situation. In this article, we examine the dynamics of how interactions between scientists, reporters, members of the general public, and various texts give rise to in-the-moment frames that shape each actors interpretation of scientific research. In doing so we couple science communication literature's focus on framings within and across texts with science education's focus on dynamic framing in interactions. We present a case study that follows a single piece of scientific research from scientist to reporter to the general public. Through semi-structured clinical interviews, video-based observation, and qualitative content analysis, we demonstrate that changes in science knowledge as it moves along the pathways of science communication are the aggregate result of dynamic moment-to-moment framings dispersed over people and interactions. The complexity and nuance of the story presented here have implications for how each field—science communication and science education—conceptualizes the process by which the public comes to knowledge of science. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52:221–252, 2015.
Dynamic framing in the communication of scientific research: Texts and interactions. Scientific advances have the power to radically change human existence. However, scientific research may only become advantageous if it is fully understood and acted upon by the general public. Likewise, the public must grasp research that has potential detrimental impact on society so that its negative effects can be mitigated. In either case, it is widely accepted that an understanding of scientific issues is necessary for full participation in society. This position has been advocated for over a century (Central Association of Science and Mathematics Teachers, 1907; National Science Board, ) and several industries—both professional and academic—have arisen to help achieve the goal of a public knowledge of science. Chief among these are the social science fields of science education and science communication.
Both of these fields share the overarching goal of helping non-experts and non-members of the professional science community develop knowledge of the content and processes of scientific research. However, the specific audiences, methods, and aims employed in the two fields have evolved quite differently. Science education is generally concerned with the teaching and learning of science in both formal (e.g., K-12 classrooms) and informal (e.g., natural history museums) contexts, and usually, although not exclusively, focuses its efforts on children. Science communication is generally concerned with engagement with science and the interaction of scientists with the general public (usually, but not exclusively, adults through media).
It would seem obvious that there is a fair amount of overlap between them. Imagine a situation in which a retired scientist volunteers as a docent at a planetarium and helps guide field trip classes through the exhibits. As she does so, she finds herself confused by a comment from one middle school student and works to try to make sense of the idea based on her previous experience in a research laboratory. Now consider a situation in which a high school junior watches a PBS special about early hominids in order to help her write a paper about human evolution. She finds one part of the special particularly surprising and compelling and sends her best friend a text message about it. Finally, picture an expectant mother and father trying to decide whether or not they will immunize their baby. To do so, they read several conflicting news articles about the safety of vaccines and then talk together to try to resolve what they have read.
Are these examples of science education or science communication? Does it matter? Should it matter? Our suggestion is that categorizing these types of phenomenon as either science education or science communication is unproductive. Both of these fields bring with them certain ways of viewing the world and values about what is important to study. Placing any of these phenomena in only one category runs the risk of producing research that neglects some aspects of the situation while over emphasizing others, thus providing only a partial picture of the phenomenon. Such a division may obscure continuities between theoretical perspectives and ultimately lead to these two fields systematically failing to study those whole phenomena (e.g., the docent's lifelong learning, the middle schoolers' in-the-moment learning, and the interactions between them) in ways that could contribute to a complete picture how people come to know science.
We suggest that it is time for these two fields to start sharing perspectives, methods, and theories that can holistically enrich each other, as well as help society by empowering people to critically engage with science. This paper presents a case study from data collected for an ongoing study that sits at the nexus of science education and science communication, and is purposefully designed to inform both fields. Specifically, this study explores a problem space generally seen as the purview of science communication—the translation of information about scientific research from scientist to reporter to the general public through popular news stories—but adopts methods of interactional analysis more at home in science education. As such, it provides an example of the ways in which these two fields might find productive overlap.
Preview of the Work
The ultimate goal of the research from which this case study is taken is to understand how people critically examine and learn from popular science texts in their daily lives. However, we do not take "science texts" as static entities from which public knowledge of science is conferred; popular science texts are not merely conduits that pass scientific information to the public. Instead, they are the end result of a chain of text consumption and production that are shaped by the varied perspectives of scientists, communicators, and members of the general public. Writing of all science texts, whether academic or popular, is a social act that is constrained by genre norms, social values, and implicit beliefs about audience; all of which shapes the content of the text (Bazerman, 1983). Likewise, reading a science text is a constructive act in which the content of the text is actively deciphered through a dense thicket of personal beliefs and prior knowledge (Bazerman, 1985). So, for example, a scientist's understanding has a direct impact on a journalist who reads her research, just as the journalist's understanding has an effect on his reader's interpretation. In this way, scientific knowledge changes as it flows through the pathways of science communication (Cloître & Shinn, 1985), generally becoming more simplified, less tentative, expressed in a more authoritarian manner, and divorced from the methods that produced it (Whitley, 1985; Collins, 1987; Latour, 1987).
In this paper, we explore the question: What causes the changes in scientific knowledge documented in the science communication literature? We will argue that framing is the mechanism of this change. The most basic definition—derived from the seminal work of Goffman (1974)—of a frame is a set of simple elements that organize the perception of a given situation. Framing is how those elements tune the interpretation of a phenomenon. In other words, framing constantly answers the question "what is going on here?" in any activity. From the science communication literature we know that frames embedded in texts affects the interpretation of scientific research (Nisbet & Mooney, 2007). For example, the purposeful emphasis on "open questions" and "scientific uncertainty" by the conservative right in the climate change debate has lead to people overestimating the number of scientists who are skeptical of global climate change and not supporting legislation that would mitigate its effects (McCright & Dunlap, 2003). From the science education literature, we know that framing is a dynamic, tacit process that regularly occurs in all interactions between people trying to make sense of scientific content (e.g. Hammer, Elby, Scherr, & Redish, 2005). For example, the ways groups of students frame their activities when solving a physics problem from moment to moment—from understanding it as just filling out a worksheet to discussing their understanding of the science—affect what they notice and attend to (Scherr & Hammer, 2009). Therefore, this work conceives of all the actors in the pathways of science communication—scientists, news reporters, and member of the general public—as science learners who draw on their existing knowledge and perspectives construct understandings as they consume and create texts, and who are all part of an interconnected system of informal science education and communication.
In what follows, we first present a short mapping of the divergences between the fields of science communication and science education. Next, we argue that the concept of framing cuts across both fields, can be leveraged as a point of convergence, and can be successfully employed to make sense of common phenomenon surrounding public knowledge of science. Finally, we examine a case study from our larger research project that analyzes a piece of scientific research as it moves from scientist to reporter and eventually to the public. We analyze how both the texts and the actors on this pathway frame the meaning of the research, and show how dynamic frames impact interpretation of the research in all interactions at every stage of the communication process. This case study demonstrates one way in which the fields of science education and science communication can productively inform research in the same problem space. It is our desire that this effort might spark dialogue between researchers in science education and science communication in the hope of constructing a mutually beneficial overlap between the two fields.
Points of Divergence and Convergence
Divergence: A Lack of Cross Talk Between the Fields
Why has there—historically—been so little crosstalk between two fields that have the potential for such profound synergy? We argue that the answer lies in the individual development of each field. For example, "science education", as a distinct undertaking grew out of mid-Nineteenth century efforts that explicitly tied a liberal education with the advancement of science (Layton, 1986). Over its history, the field has remained a domain-specific subfield (albeit one that grabs a great deal of attention and funding) of the larger field of educational research. As such, science education's development mirrors the larger evolution of educational research toward a focus on individual teaching, thinking, and learning (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). On the other hand, science communication as we know it today originally evolved as a practice within the natural sciences communities of the 1970s, wherein scientists concerned about the respect and standing of science among the public endeavored to rescue its reputation (Bucchi & Trench, 2008). During these early stages, in an attempt to define itself as a unique field, science communication formed its own publications and networks for idea-sharing rather than joining the networks of more mature and related social sciences. It has only been fairly recently that the influence of natural scientists has weakened and science communication has aligned itself with and drawn ideas from research in mass communications, cultural studies, and other related fields.
So science education and science communication draw from different research traditions, but many social science disciplines communicate across such divides. Why are these two disciplines unable to build bridges? A major point of divergence is in the fields' conceptualizations of the process by which "public knowledge of science" comes to be. Traditionally science education—particularly as it has been taken up in policy documents and individual classrooms—has assumed that a "public knowledge of science" is achieved through the separable processes of teaching and learning. While educators and researchers have had many productive debates about what should be learned (e.g., scientific facts, scientific practices, the nature of science) and how it should be taught (e.g., discussion based, inquiry method, project-based science, constructionist), they have nonetheless at least tacitly conceived of the knowledge of science as something that should be taught and learned.
In contrast, science communicators and researchers are often, explicitly or implicitly, averse to thinking about the processes they study as involving teaching and/or learning (Lewenstein, 2011). This is likely related to the field's discourse over the past two decades about moving from a deficit model to an engagement model. Since the 1990s, a common narrative in this literature describes a shift in science communication research and practice from what has been called deficit models of science communication to engagement models (Irwin & Wynne, 1996; Sturgis & Allum, 2004). In the deficit model, science is transmitted one-way from scientists through media channels to a naive public. Instead, science communicators argue it is better to view audiences of public science as diverse, shifting, and active constructors of their understanding (Wynne, 1992; Einsiedel, 2007).
The one-way transmission model parallels a tacit view of science education based on an "assembly line instruction" model in which teachers "deliver" information to students who absorb it (Rogoff, Paradise, Arauz, Correa-Chávez, & Angelillo, 2001). For science communication researchers then, aligning themselves with educators would undermine their desire to move away from delivery-oriented models. Science educators, however, would argue that the one-way transmission model, while still a part of much U.S schooling, does not align with most modern views on science education. In fact, science education has been increasingly influenced by constructivist theories of learning and teaching that also reject a deficit view and assert that learning is an active process of construction. Despite these potential similarities, the differing conceptualizations of the process by which people come to know science appear to stem from distinct epistemologies in the fields.
Other distinctions seem purely the result of how the two fields evolved historically. For example, the typical locations, populations, and time scales that each situates "public knowledge of science" differ between the two fields. Thus, the emphasis within science education is on K-12 public schools (the recent push to study informal science notwithstanding), children, and moment-to-moment classroom interactions; science communication focuses on public discourse and the adult producers and consumers of popular media. These "home fields" of each discipline have molded the perspectives and rhetoric that each adopt. However, we argue that, unlike the first distinction, these differences are not epistemological in nature, but are simply a result of historic utility. In fact, the typical locations, populations, and time scales of one field should be of interest to the other. If science education researchers want to understand how science learning takes place across the lifespan, or how school science prepares adults to understand scientific issues, then studying how people interpret popular science media should be an important component of the science education research agenda. Likewise, school can be viewed as one of the most common and early locations of science communication, and therefore science communication researchers may be curious about how science media is used in school or how school interactions shape later communication practices. Both fields can and should inform one another, and despite these epistemological and historical divergences, there are many possible points of contact around which the fields can converge. In the following section, we discuss the notion of framing that has become increasingly ubiquitous in the social sciences and posit that it can be a productive point of convergence between science communication and science education.
Convergence: Framing as a Potential Point of Contact
Until this point, we have purposely focused on how these two fields have diverged from one another. While there are important differences in these fields, we now wish to highlight their commonalities. Namely, they are both concerned with the understanding the knowledge, practices, or abilities that are necessary and/or sufficient for people to make sense of science. In other words, a functional scientific literacy (Ryder, 2001) that allows people to engage in robust debate in order to make their own decision about scientific issues in their lives. Over the recent years, the fields have come to remarkably similar conclusions about what it takes for people to be sufficiently able to make sense of science. In particular, a large body of research in both science education (Cooley & Klopfer, 1963; Aikenhead, 1973; Lederman, 1992; McComas, Clough, & Almazroa, 1998; Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell, & Schwartz, 2002; Sadler, 2004; Chen et al., 2013; Khishfe, 2014; Lederman, Bartos, & Lederman, 2014) and science communication (Wynne, 1992; Irwin & Wynne, 1996; Roth & Lee, 2002; Chittenden, Farmelo, & Lewenstein, 2004; Bauer, 2009; 2011) suggests that a simple factual knowledge of the existing science canon is insufficient for making sense of knowledge claims. Instead, the ability to understand questions of science—both inside and outside of school—requires both knowledge "of science" and knowledge "about science" (Driver, Leach, Millar & Scott, 1996), including an understanding of the methods, thinking, and social processes that produce scientific research.
The assumption behind this belief is that if people understand how science knowledge is produced and propagated, they will be better able to make sense of and evaluate that knowledge. Further, what these researchers find over and over again is that these understandings of science do not exist in a vacuum. People's knowledge of the purposes, goals, and objectives of their encounters with a particular piece of science knowledge—whether in text or speech, in a classroom or the news—impacts how they understand of that knowledge. Researchers in both fields have drawn on the construct of framing to get analytical leverage on the ways that knowledge impacts public understanding of and engagement with science. In the next sections, we expand the history and use of framing in the social sciences, and how it has come to be used in science education and science communication.
Framing in the Social Sciences
The existence of frames that organize meaning and interpretation is a remarkably popular idea in the social sciences. Work in such disciplines as anthropology (Meek, 2007), sociology (Benford & Snow, 2000), psychology (Brewer & Gross, 2005), linguistics (Lehrer & Kittay, 1992), communication and media studies (Scheufele, 1999), political science and policy studies (Chong & Druckman, 2007), and educational research and the learning sciences (Hammer et al., 2005) adopt some form of frame theory. In fact, the idea is so prevalent that in some fields the use of term "frame" is considered cliché (Benford, 1997). With so many fields adopting and developing theoretical perspectives about frames, any single definition is unsatisfying. In the definition provided above from Goffman (1974)—a frame is a set of elements that organize the perception of a given situation—many constituent parts of the meaning of frame are left up to interpretation. What exactly is meant by "set" and "elements"? How do they "organize perception"? Where do they exist: In the mind or in the world?
This lack of clarity has allowed the disciplines that adopt frames as a concept of inquiry to develop their own definitions, which makes discussing frames across disciplines remarkably difficult. In an attempt to distill the essential parts of framing theory, Entman (1993) argues that frames exist in a least four locations in communicative interactions: The communicator, the text, the receiver, and the culture. The various uses of frames and framing in the social sciences each foreground different aspects of these four locations. In what follows, we argue that science communication tends to highlight the text, generally treats scientists or journalists as the communicators, indirectly examines the receiver, and uses public discourse as a stand-in for the culture. In contrast, science education tends to give equal weight to the communicator (i.e., teachers) and the receiver (i.e., students), often uses pedagogy and curriculum as the text, and analyzes culture in its local instantiation.
Framing in Science Communication
In communications research, frames, and framing have become an increasingly popular topic of study (Entman, 1993; Scheufele, 1999; D'Angelo, 2002). This work typically focuses on either the creation of frames, referred to as frame building, or the effects of those frames, referred to as frame setting (Tewksbury & Scheufele, 2009). Frame building research often studies the types of frames contained in discourse surrounding controversial or pioneering scientific research, and how sources and journalists negotiate these frames to create interpretive storylines (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Nisbet, Brossard, & Kroepsch, 2003; Nisbet, 2009). For example, in their seminal work, Gamson & Modigliani (1989) traced media coverage of nuclear power from 1945 to the 1980s and found that pro-nuclear power discourse framed as scientific progress gave way to anti-nuclear power stories framed around the dangers of unchecked or runaway science. They argue that these framings parallel, and may have a direct impact, on public opinion and policy toward nuclear power. In another example, Nisbet et al., (2003) use quantitative content analysis of media frames found in mainstream press articles about stem cell research to determine patterns in press coverage over time. Studies like these focus on framing building at the macro-level—encompassing long-term media narratives and political controversies.
In contrast, research that can be labeled as frame setting looks at framing on the micro-level. This research, drawing on earlier framing effects research (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981), manipulates exposure to frames and analyze how this alters individual interpretation and understanding of the issue (Tewksbury, Jones, Peske, Raymond, & Vig, 2000; Brewer & Gross, 2005). For example, Chong and Druckman (2007) argue that repeated exposure to frames have a bigger impact on less knowledgeable individuals, because they rely more heavily on simple heuristic, rather than complex systematic, information processing. Likewise, Brewer and Gross (2005) found that exposure to focus on single values surrounding a policy issues—say equality in the school voucher debate—narrow people's thought to that one value while reducing the overall thinking about the issue. Science communication research of the frame setting variety examines the effect of various frames on individuals' opinions, understandings, and beliefs about specific scientific issues (Cobb, 2005; Stewart, Dickerson, & Hotchkiss, 2009). For example, Cobb (2005) had participants read one of nine different descriptions of nanotechnology research that each varied the salience of particular frames in research. He found that the various frames had small but consistent effect on respondents' opinion changes about the risks of nanotechnology. This type of research can be seen as micro-level—focusing on individual effects of particular media frames.
While both frame building and frame setting research in science communication have an impact on our perspectives, we must present some caveats. First, the majority of this work analyzes frames as they are found in media. Very few accounts are given for the actual origin of these frames in individuals (with the exception of journalists and their practices). This means that text is treated as the main object of inquiry and the communicator is black-boxed as a non-cognitive agent. Second, the focus of much of this work is on controversial topics of science, like climate change, evolution, and stem cell research. These issues are certainly important to study as they have a huge impact on our world and are consistent topics of debate in public discourse. However, people may be so familiar with these issues that their pre-existing beliefs may mask frame effects. To have a full picture of science frame building and setting, we must study framing around the everyday, mundane scientific research. Third, the majority of framing effects studies, while demonstrating how and when these effects can occur, do not venture to suggest mechanisms for these effects; they explain that something happens, but not how it happens (Berger, Roloff, & Ewoldsen, 2010).
We argue that the way science education has treated the notion of framing can be leveraged to help address the first and third caveat above. In the following section, we will summarize research on framing in science education with a particular focus on in-the-moment framing in individual interactions.
Framing in Science Education
Some work in science education has examined framing in ways similar to the frame building work in science communication. For example, researchers have used discourse analysis of textual features to identify framing in science textbooks and journal articles (Dimopoulos, Koulaidis, & Sklaveniti, 2003, Dimopoulos et al., 20052005). This work suggests that textbooks have different framing "strengths;" some textbooks use language that creates a strong textbook-as-authority-type frame and others use weaker framings in which students have some pedagogical control over their own reading. Like work in science communication, these studies of Greek textbooks treat the framing as a static feature of the textbook (or images within text) that is evidence in the linguistic features of the text.
However, in the past decade, science educators have begun to use the construct of framing to describe teaching and learning interactions in schools and out. In this work, researchers explore how individuals or groups make sense of the learning contexts in which they are situated (e.g., Levin, Hammer, & Coffey, 2009; Oliveira, Cook, & Buck, 2011; Berland and Hammer, 2012; Levin, Rose, Calabrese, & Barton, 2012; Swanson, Bianchini, & Lee, 2014). For these researchers, this "sense-making" in interaction draws heavily on—and in fact can be defined by— participants' knowledge. For example, Rosenberg, Hammer, & Phelan (2006) describe how eighth grade students' locally coherent sets of epistemological knowledge about the world— what Hammer and his colleagues now refer to as frames (e.g. Scherr & Hammer, 2009)—impact the ways in which they engage in classroom activity. Similarly, Russ & Luna (2013) examine how a high school biology teacher frames her teaching—as either connecting biological ideas—in which case she draws on one set of epistemological knowledge elements—or using procedural knowledge—in which case she draws on a different set of epistemological knowledge elements. The particular set of knowledge participants use in a given context constitutes their framing of the interactions. In this sense, the frames explored in the science education literature are similar to what Bromme & Goldman (2014) call "epistemic stances" (p. 59); they are knowledge structures that people use in making sense of science they encounter in the world.
In this science education research, framing is understood to be a dynamic process that "depends on input from the physical world, from culture, and from social interactions " (Redish, 2004 p. 31), rather than as something stable that "lives" in a text. Because framing grows out of the particulars of interactions between students and teachers, any changes to those interactions or the context, however slight, can produce moment-to-moment changes in the knowledge that participants bring to bear in the interaction (i.e. their framing). This focus on dynamics leads to a preference in the literature to use framing as a verb, rather than frame as a noun. From example, Levin et al., (2009) demonstrate how high school teachers' framing of their own teaching changes on the timescale of minutes, and contrast that timescale with traditional accounts of teacher learning in which changes in practice occur over weeks, months, or years. This work demonstrates science education researchers' focus on micro-level analysis of the dynamic nature of framing that results from the fact that framing is a process of regular and mutual negotiation of interaction.
This highly dynamic notion of framing may contrast with other work that describes how "members of the scientific community bring different epistemic stances to that information [in popular texts] than do members of the general public" (Bromme & Goldman, 2014 p. 59). Here, Bromme and Goldman emphasize differences in the overall frames that "scientists" and the "general public" draw on. Setting up this dichotomy necessarily creates a deficit model of the public's understanding of science; if the public's stance is not the same as scientists it is "bounded," or insufficient. In contrast, we draw from science education that focuses on moment-to-moment framing differences within individuals in the "general public," highlighting how particular frames or stances can be productive (or not) in a given context. This is not to say that these frames are not different than those used by scientists; presumably they are. Instead, it suggests that focusing on the differences between scientists and the general public is useful for exploring how people make sense of the science they encounter.
Further, science education researchers also conceptualize framing as a tacit process. While there may be times when framing (or mismatches in framing) come to the fore in interaction (Scherr & Hammer, 2009), most often teachers and students are not explicitly aware of how or why they are framing the interaction in the way they are (Redish, 2004; Russ & Luna, 2013). Given that framing is understood to be a cognitive process involving a set of particular knowledge elements, this tacitness is not surprising; we are not always aware of the knowledge we use in our interactions. As Hammer et al., (2005) describe "Framing is typically tacit, but is all the more powerful for its implicitness" (p. 98). Further, this tacitness suggests that framing is not deliberate; generally speaking, teachers and students do not purposefully chose between alternative framings—or alternative sets of knowledge—of a situation. Likewise, framing is inextricably linked with whether and how learners and teachers engage in learning (Scherr & Hammer, 2009; Berland & Hammer, 2012). This work does not treat framing as a "cause" that leads to an "effect" such as learning or engagement or reasoning. Instead, particular framings or sets of knowledge afford—or allow—particular types of reasoning on the part of teachers or students. Framing and learning co-emerge in interaction.
Despite its tacit and fleeting nature, science education researchers take the approach that framing is visible, and thus analyzable, in every interaction. A substantial body of research in science education has focused on identifying markers of framing in discourse and interaction. For example, following work by Scherr and Hammer (2009) that identifies specific verbal, paraverbal, and non-verbal cues for framing, Russ, Lee and Sherin (2012) use markers such as body position, eye gaze, pacing, and hedging language to analyze framing during interviews with middle schoolers about science. Although teachers and students engaged in framing may not be explicitly aware of their framing, there is behavioral evidence of framing and knowledge use in the interaction.
Our intention in this review is to point out that the work in science education and science communication around framing is not inconsistent with one another. They share an interest on how people's framing of a text or situation is related to the meaning they make of that text or situation. However, the science communication literature has worked to establish the role of static frames located within texts on meaning-making. In contrast, the science education literature has devoted much of its energy to exploring how dynamic frames are constructed and changed during meaning-making interactions. In the following study, we hope to demonstrate how these views of framing can be productively combined to give a fuller picture of how all of the actors and texts make sense of new scientific research from the scientist to the public.
Methods
To examine how interactions between scientists, reporters, members of the general public, and various texts shape framings of scientific research we present a case study that follows a single piece of scientific research from scientist to reporter to the general public. Through semi-structured clinical interviews, video-based observation, and qualitative content analysis we examine how each actor and text interacts to produce expectations about the importance and meaning of the research that may or may not match the intended message.
Larger Study Context and Design
Data for the case study is drawn from a larger ongoing study conducted by the first author that explores learning and interaction at each stage of the science communication process. This work involved video-based ethnographic observation and clinical interviews with three groups of participants: (i) Twenty adult (aged 21–67) participants representing non-scientist members of the general public from a large urban city; (ii) Four scientists from a large Midwestern university; and (iii) 15 staff members of that university's news service. The data collection process began with observing and videotaping three weekly meetings of the university news service group during which they discussed what new research conducted within the university was worthy enough to be written about on the university's news website. Once a particular piece of research was decided on, the first author interviewed the news reporter about his or her assigned research before and after writing the story, and also interviewed the scientist whose research was the basis for the university news story. In addition to these interviews, the reporter–scientist interactions were observed and recorded. Draft copies of the news articles, the original scientific journal article, and email exchanges between the reporter and the scientist were collected. Separately, the adult non-scientist participants from the general public were asked to think aloud as they read one of the news stories about the focal pieces of research. Synchronous video was captured of both the participant and the computer screen they were reading from while they read and thought aloud. Finally, the participants were interviewed about their understanding of the article. In the entire data corpus there are four focal studies whose whole chain of communication were followed from the scientist to the public.
Case Study Data Selection
Rather than focusing on trends and patterns across all four studies in the entire data corpus, here we present a single case study (Lichman, 2011; Maxwell, 2012) constructed from content logs, transcripts, and thick descriptions of the observations and interviews, and content analysis of relevant texts around a single piece of scientific research. Qualitative case study analysis is particularly useful in this work because it allows us to explore not only whether framing was evident in the text and interactions (which previous work has already established) but also how framing is played out, made up of, and gives rise to the particular interpretations of the actors across the pathway of science communication (Maxwell, 2004).
Specifically, we use the case of a biomedical study of prescriptions of proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs). PPIs are a group of drugs (such as Prilosec™, Nexium™, and Prevacid™) that reduce gastric acid and are used to treat conditions, such as indigestion, peptic ulcer disease, and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). The research on 1600 patients diagnosed with GERD uses retrospective data from administrative sources and medical charts from a Veteran's Administration (VA) hospital. The researchers conclude that for many patients PPIs are initially prescribed at higher doses and after two years remain prescribed for longer than recommended by guidelines provided by the American Board of Internal Medicine and American Gastroenterology Association. This research was funded through a federal Veterans Affairs research grant awarded to the VA hospital under study. The journal article has four authors who represent both the VA hospital and medical school of the university in which our study of framing was conducted.
Our narrative case follows this research as it is interpreted and communicated by the scientist who performed it, a university news reporter writing about it, and a member of the general public trying to make sense of it as they read a popular press account. Tables 1 and 2 provides descriptions of these actors and texts, respectively.
| Actor | Description | Data |
|---|---|---|
| Shannon | Writer and editor for the university news service; Author of the university news story about focal research | ● Video observations of university news service meeting |
| ● Interview before writing news story | ||
| ● Video of interview with Jacob | ||
| ● Interview after university news story publication | ||
| Cindy | Writer and editor for the university news service | ● Video observations of university news service meeting |
| Paula | Writer and editor for the university news service | ● Video observations of university news service meeting |
| Jacob | MD/PhD; Research fellow at the university's medical school; First author of the scientific journal article about the focal research | ● Audio of interview with Shannon |
| ● Interview after news stories and journal publication | ||
| Steven | MD/PhD; Research fellow at the university's medical school; First author of the scientific journal article about the focal research | ● Think aloud while reading the popular news story |
| ● Interview after reading |
| Text | Description |
|---|---|
| Journal Article (JA) | Peer-reviewed scientific journal article about the focal research; authored in-part by Jacob |
| Fact Sheet (FS) | A guideline for press coverage provided by the publishing journal filled out by Jacob |
| University News Story (UNS) | News story about the focal research published by Jacob's university's news service and authored by Shannon |
| Popular News Story (PNS) | News story published by mainstream news source, based on UNS, but authored by non-participant writer |
One type of case analysis of the larger study would have been a case of a single popular press account; this would involve carefully examining the public side of the story by focusing on how several public participants interpreted the text at a single point in time. Here we instead present a case as it moves through time; we follow a single piece of research across the different contexts and participants, Jacob, Shannon, and Steven. Thus, while we examine only one public participant, our "single" case explores multiple texts and participants. We selected this case using purposeful, intensity sampling (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The particular focal study was chosen from the corpus, because it was clear and information-rich, but is also a non-exceptional demonstration of framing of both the texts and the interactions surrounding the text that exemplify patterns that were stable across all cases. As such, the prominence of our phenomenon of interest allows us to employ the methods and theoretical lenses from both science communication and science education to explore how scientific knowledge changes on its pathway from scientific publication to the public.
Data Analysis
Phase 1: Identifying Framings Evident in the Text
The first phase of analysis focused on the texts themselves. We performed qualitative content analyses to identify the frames present in each of the four texts (Mayring, 2000). This type of analysis is consistent with the type of analysis often performed in science communication literature. The purpose here is not to provide an exhaustive account of the article's content, but instead to provide a brief descriptive review of the article for the purpose of comparing its contents with the actors' interpretation of the research (Phase 2). To derive these frames, we started by independently reading the article line by line and applying a coding scheme taken from Nisbet, (2009a) of typical frames found in public discourse about science.
Rather than describing the latent meaning of frames at a "storyline" level as is common in science communication literature, we adopt a fine-grained approach that identifies frames on a sentence or subclause level. This micro-analysis is similar to approaches taken in science education that explore the dynamics of knowledge construction (e.g., diSessa, 1993). Specifically, during the independent coding each author identified the particular frames evident in each line (if a frame was evident) and any possible frame not already in the typology was added and named. We then brought the independently derived typologies together and combined them into our final typology (see Table 3). Of the 10 distinct frames identified by each author, only two were identified by one author and not the other. As such, the mutual negotiation required to combine the independent typologies together was minimal. For example, one new frame identified in the texts was originally called frequency by one coder and commonness by the other. In discussion, we determined that these two codes had the same meaning and that commonness was the more accurate name.
| Frame | Description | Example(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Commonness | Prevalence in society; personal experience | ● "Account for over 50% of prescriptions" |
| ● "Most widely prescribed" | ||
| Social progress | Improving quality of life; Solutions to societal problem | ●"Have improved quality of life for millions of patients" |
| ● "We hope this leads to new therapies." | ||
| Economic | Monetary costs; economic investment; market benefits | ● "Resulting in more than $11 billion in annual direct health care costs" |
| ● "I think the point of that is this is taxpayer money." | ||
| Morality/ethics | Right and wrong; For or against personal principles; What one values | ● "I didn't feel comfortable making that argument." |
| ● "It would be different if we were talking about Medicaid." | ||
| Uncertainty | Gap in the scientific literature; Personal leeriness; Recognition of limits of knowledge; Groundbreaking | ● "There are limited data on PPI prescriptions in Veterans" |
| ● "We just don't know" | ||
| ● "Maybe I missed it." | ||
| Runaway science | Science hurting society; Corruption; Fatalism; "Out of control" | ● "They want people to get hooked…" |
| ● "There is a lot of overmedication in the science community | ||
| Public accountability | Serving the public good; Motivated by policy concerns; | ● "Help guide efforts for optimal PPI use" |
| ● "This approach is a top priority in the 'Choosing Wisely' campaign initiated…" | ||
| ● "There has been a push by professional societies." | ||
| Risks | Prospective dangers; Harmful effects; Threats to individuals | ● In light of the enormous cost and associated risks related…" |
| ● "The consumption of prescription drugs can be dangerous." |
Phase 2: Analysis of Interactions Around the Texts
To explore the frames that emerge in interactions between actors, we began with the same set of codes for exploring frames in static texts (Nisbet, 2009). We are able to use the Phase 1 codes for making sense of dynamic interactions because of our assumption that interactional frames are locally coherent sets of knowledge that people are familiar with from other similar contexts (MacLachlan & Reid, 1994; Redish, 2004; Hammer et al., 2005). The framings in our Phase 1 typology are the familiar storylines—or knowledge elements—that guide participants' interactional framing of the scientific research.
To check coding reliability, an additional researcher who was not a part of the original coding of the data was given a subset of the data to independently code. Using Cohen's Kappa, the framing typology yielded K = 0.907 for "very good" agreement among coders. Along with the coded transcripts, we reviewed the videos of the interactions and interviews to create content logs of the verbal and non-verbal evidence of framings. This technique is akin to that of interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995). Each viewing session resulted in an increasingly refined construction of conjectures about when and how the participants expressed framings of the focal research. Taking the content and interaction analysis together, we constructed the following analytical description of the case study to explain the dynamics of each actor's framing. This type of moment-by-moment analysis is consistent with the work of science education researchers.
A Case Study of Dynamic Framing Interactions in Science Communication
Below we explore how frames and framing of the PPI research move between actors and texts, shaping their in-the-moment interpretations and creating new frames that are passed along the path of science communication. Table 4 provides a frequency count of the frames present in each of the texts and interactions in the PPI research pathway. These frequencies are not normalized based on the length of the texts/interactions. As a result, the number of frames should not be taken as a measure of the importance of the frames but instead as a background against which to understand the interpretations of the actors and interactions between actors.
| Commonness | Social progress | Economic | Morality/ethics | Uncertainty | Runaway science | Public accountability | Risks | Totals | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Journal Article | 6 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 16 | 0 | 8 | 3 | 42 |
| University | |||||||||
| News Story | 5 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 17 |
| Popular News Story | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 11 |
| Interview with Shannon | 11 | 1 | 13 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 9 | 3 | 49 |
| Interview with Jacob | 12 | 0 | 10 | 3 | 9 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 49 |
| Interaction between Shannon and Jacob | 10 | 2 | 11 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 7 | 8 | 53 |
| Observation and Interview with Steven | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 17 |
| Totals | 48 | 5 | 31 | 4 | 59 | 2 | 49 | 27 |
In what follows, we dig deeper into framing by focusing not only on what frames are present in texts and in interactions between actors (Table 4), but also on how those frames are picked up, interpreted, and recapitulated by the actors and their texts. It is important to note here that, in describing the focal scientific research, our goal is to provide enough detail about the original study and journal article for the reader to comprehend the research. However, we are obliged to omit certain details and direct references to the publication to insure the anonymity of our participants per our IRB approval.
Content and Framing Analysis of the Journal Article
Before we present our analysis of frames present in the peer-reviewed journal article, it is important to note that there is a long history of analyzing such presentations of science and how they frame research. In particular, the field of science studies has demonstrated how scientific research presented for publication routinely whitewashes the complexity and social nature of research, in order to present findings as thoroughly objective, fact-based, agreed upon (Medawar, 1978; Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984; Latour & Woolgar, 1986; Ochs & Jacoby, 1997). While this is a very important aspect of the scientific process that deserves more attention, we follow the majority of science communication work in focus not on how these texts accurately represent the research as it was undertaken, but how this presentation affects the understanding of those who try to write and read about it in the public sphere.
The qualitative content analysis of the original peer-reviewed journal article reveals a range of frames in play throughout the article. However, the vast majority of frames are located in the article's abstract, introduction, and discussion section.
The abstract notes that despite the prevalence of PPI use, the patterns of initial prescription in the veteran population is unknown. This is an application of both the commonness frame—the prevalence of use—and the uncertainty frame—the lack of evidence about initial prescription amongst veterans. Together these frames constitute the initial motivation of the study. The combination of these two frames is a familiar motivating device in medical science journal articles (Nwogu, 1997; Li & Ge, 2009), which highlights the main research problem by positing a scientific uncertainty about commonly observed phenomena. The abstract also employs a risks frame that negatively highlights the observed high doses of PPIs and the public accountability frame that positively highlighting the study's findings as helpful toward the effort to guide optimal use of PPIs.
The article's introduction section similarly uses a quick succession of frames. The opening sentence of the introduction asserts that PPIs account for 50% of all prescriptions for digestive diseases and result in more than $11 billion in U.S. health care costs. This sentence uses a commonness frame followed by an economic frame. The next sentence uses a social progress frame by making the claim that PPIs have affected millions of people by improving their quality of life. These three frames together are used to provide a "big picture" motivation for the study of PPIs; essentially saying "these are worthy of study, because of they are common, successful, and have a large market share."
Several frames appear in the remainder of the introduction, including a commonness frame, public accountability frame, and additional economic and risks frames. In addition, the introduction contains several sentences relaying the background literature on veterans' PPI use. These sentences are followed by a statement of scientific uncertainty about PPI prescriptions in veterans with new diagnoses of GERD. Here the uncertainty frame references a gap in the scientific literature. The next sentence uses a combination of economic and risks frames as a warrant for this study to fill the gap in the literature expressed by the uncertainty frame. The remainder of the article mirrors many of the introduction's frames with extra focus on the study's utility in policy-making decisions, adopting a public accountability frame.
Our line-by-line analysis reveals the nuance and complexity of the framing within this research article. It is insufficient to characterize the article as adopting a risk frame or a commonness frame. Part of the power of the article as an argument for the importance of this research is precisely its multiple interwoven frames. Also, these multiple framings allow multiple entry points for readers and writers to make sense of the text. In what follows we will see bits and pieces of these frames taken up in the interactions surrounding the texts.
Framing in Interactions Around the Journal Article
The PPI research—codified in the research article—is repeatedly framed and reframed through interactions of the university news service employees and the authoring scientist. Jacob, a research fellow at the university's medical school, contacted Shannon, a writer and editor for the university's news service, to see if she would be interested in writing about the PPI research. Below we describe several examples of when and how framing is at work in the communication of this research.
Text Framings Echo in Interaction
As a result of prior success in writing about Jacob's research, Shannon expresses interest and brings a summary of the study to the news service's weekly meeting during which they discuss news stories about noteworthy research being conducted at the university. Toward the end of the meeting Shannon discusses a project she is wrapping up, pauses, and then starts to introduce Jacob's research. Before she begins, she taps her hands on the table and shakes her head. As she does this the exchange in Table 5 occurs.
| Time | Actor | Quote or [Action] |
|---|---|---|
| [00:23:43.28] | Shannon | And that… I don't really [waves her hands in front of herself] know much about about the study [looks to her colleague on her right, Paula] because I haven't looked into it, but that Prilosec s-study [raises her hands palm forward] whatever… |
| Paula | [opens her mouth as if to speak, but does not] | |
| Shannon | I'm gonna have that… | |
| Paula | [nods her head] | |
| Shannon | [faces forward again, away from Paula] for February, like… fourteenth or sixteenth. I've talked to the journal, they're actually holding it til I write it [makes eye contact with another colleague, Cindy, who is across the table] | |
| [00:23:56.09] | Cindy | Okay |
| [00:23:56.28] | Shannon | [laughs, nods her head, and pulls her lips tight] |
| [00:23:57.06] | Cindy | Is it a bad thing? |
| [00:23:57.12] | Shannon | I don't know [raises her hands up and shrugs] I haven't even looked into it [lets her hands fall to her sides]. I know nothing about it so… |
| [00:24:01.08] | Paula | [turns towards Shannon, who turns to face her] I think it's just overprescribed |
| [00:24:03.00] | Shannon | [puts her right hand in front of her and moves it in a counterclockwise arch as she turns to Cindy] It's over-prescribed. |
| [00:24:04.00] | Cindy | Ah! |
| [00:24:04.23] | Shannon | Yes |
| [00:24:04.27] | Cindy | Surprise, surprise |
| Paula | [nods and wordlessly mouths "yes"] |
In this exchange, Shannon expresses reluctance to talk in detail about the study—adopting an uncertainty frame, albeit one that expresses personal uncertainty (Elby & Hammer, 2001) rather than the scientific uncertainty expressed in the journal article. In response to Shannon's introduction, Cindy's asking, "Is it a bad thing?" can be seen as an adoption of the standard journalistic risk frame and a desire for Shannon to confirm this frame. When both Paula and Shannon say the study finds "it is over-prescribed," Cindy's response is a sarcastic note of surprise, which is an expression of a commonness frame. Cindy and Shannon's tacit use of these frames indicates that they must possess epistemic knowledge about uncertainty, risks, and commonality that they apply to this scientific text.
In this exchange we see an interesting echo of the risk framings from the article. First, despite the fact that neither the over-prescription itself nor the associated risks are actually the conclusion of the study, the news reporters express an interest in the negative implications of the study. In fact, the novelty of the study is not the overprescription per se, but rather the over-prescription in a population in which it had not been demonstrated previously—the veterans—and tracking the over-prescription from initial diagnosis to two years later. The detail of the veterans being the focal population has been entirely left out of this discussion among the news staff in favor of questions surrounding the risk framing. Second, although several sentences in the article express a risk frame, the article does not explicitly specify what those risks are. This lack of specificity may contribute to Shannon's and her colleagues' lack of clarity about whether "over-prescription" counts as the "bad thing" that Cindy asked about. Paula's use of the word "just" and Shannon's explanatory gesture may mean that they are rejecting the risk frame. Whether they are accepting or rejecting it, the reporters' interaction echoes the risk frame from the article.
Dynamic and Sticky Framings of the Text in Interaction
A week following this meeting and before she started writing her story, Shannon scheduled an interview with Jacob. Just before this interview took place, the first author interviewed Shannon about Jacob's research and her ideas regarding writing about it. Shannon explains her interpretations of the research (Table 6).
| Time | Actor | Quote or [Action] |
|---|---|---|
| [00:00:26.29] | Shannon | This study is about looking specifically at the VA population at this one VA hospital and… um… that hasn't been looked at before. So I'm going to ask him some questions about, you know, why the veteran community… I think… it's pretty expensive the taxpayers are paying for these prescriptions, so it's kind of, uh… an economic thing, um… |
| [00:00:32.23] | Interviewer | [nods] Uh huh |
| Shannon | ….how… um… they're prescribed what are called pr-proton pump inhibitors prescriptions, which is basically for like acid reflux disease… what do they call it… um… basically there's been a lot of studies done before that this type of prescription before. It's over-prescribed or too high of doses… People are taking it of too long, it's already sorta been established in the literature, but he wanted to look specifically at the veteran community… um… who when they are initially diagnosed for the first time and are given this prescription for the first time… | |
| [00:01:07.23] | Interviewer | [nods] Uh huh |
| Shannon | This study is about looking specifically at the VA population at this one VA hospital and… um… that hasn't been looked at before. So I'm going to ask him some questions about, you know, why the veteran community… I think… it's pretty expensive the taxpayers are paying for these prescriptions, so it's kind of… | |
| [00:01:11.14] | Interviewer | Yeah |
| Shannon | …an economic thing, um… |
As in the original scientific journal article itself, line-by-line analysis of this interaction reveals multiple dynamic framings over the course of this short excerpt. For example, Shannon's statement that the over-prescription of PPIs is well-established in the literature shows evidence of the commonness frame. She then explains that Jacob wanted to study veterans' prescriptions from initial diagnosis over time, because "that hasn't been looked at before." This is an example of the uncertainty frame that very much reflects the framing of the journal article's abstract and introduction.
In addition to these fleeting framings, in her interview Shannon references the veteran population of the study. She states a desire to follow up with Jacob about the choice of veterans, and posits that this choice has to do with tax money being paid for these prescriptions. Here Shannon infers the importance of this population based on economic framing—veterans' health care is paid by taxes, and thus the over prescription of PPIs would result in wasteful tax spending. When asked to describe the conclusion of the research, she again talks about the over-prescription of PPIs and says, "this has been shown before, but this is in the veteran population and I think the point of that is this is taxpayer money." Shannon's reliance on the economic frame for these inferences may stem from the fact that Jacob and his colleagues never offer a justification for this population beyond a gap in the research literature. Additionally, this economic framing is likely related to her identity as a journalist. She is inferring a relevancy to the data that has a direct impact on her audience. Shannon's inference suggests that in the absence of explicit frames for making sense of research findings, readers may default to their idiosyncratic frames.
Even when the interviewer introduces a risk framing of the research, Shannon persists in using an economic frame (Table 7).
| Time | Actor | Quote or [Action] |
|---|---|---|
| [00:04:29.21] | Interviewer | And what's the danger of being on it that long? Do you know? |
| [00:00:26.29] | Shannon | Well it's a cost problem, it's… |
| [00:04:32.23] | Interviewer | Oh. Uh huh. |
| Shannon | We're spending billions of extra dollars, um… and y-you know it's just an over-prescription problem… | |
| [00:04:38.17] | Interviewer | Yeah |
| Shannon | Why… you don't need to be on a medication why would you be on it if it's not effective at that point. You know, why are we still prescribing it. | |
| [00:04:45.06] | Interviewer | Yeah |
| Shannon | Um, I don't know if there is any, uh… actual side effects harm. There might be, like, uh… [reading from the fact sheet provided by Jacob] Yeah, there could be prolonged unnecessary side effects… uh, and I can ask him about that too. |
She immediately reframes the issue and forefronts aspects of the research she finds salient to her audience. After Shannon mentions the economic frame about veterans and taxpayer money two more times, the interviewer asks her if that frame is something worth writing about in her article. She responds "Yeah. I think that's worth playing up, since that's, I guess, an interesting part of this is, um… yeah we know this is over-prescribed in the general population, but now look this is, like, government dollars, our dollars…. So… I'll talk to [Jacob] and see what he thinks too." In her in-the-moment attempt to make sense of the research, Shannon draws on her ideas about her role as a reporter and what is of personal relevance to her audience to frame the study's findings about economics. Again, her tacit use of these frames suggests that she has resources for understanding knowledge as common, uncertain, risky, and/or economically-laden. Further, Shannon's focus on the economic frame may provide evidence for science communications research findings about intentional journalistic frames.
In addition though, Shannon's repeated references to the economic frame stands in stark contrast to the more fleeting commonness and uncertainty frames from early in her interview. In that way, this interview provides some evidence of what has been referred to in the science education research as the "inertia" or "stickiness" of frames (e.g. Russ & Luna, 2013). That is, some frames appear to have more traction for participants than others and are, thus, harder to change. Rather than conceptualizing Shannon as framing the entire article around the overarching economic frame, the moments when she adopts different frames in her interview helps us understand her as repeatedly negotiating information from the text, sometimes in the commonness, uncertainty, or risk frame, but often returning to the "sticky" economic frame.
Framing Mismatch in Interaction
When Shannon meets with Jacob to discuss the article, he first summarizes the study and mentions that his previous research showed PPI over-prescription in a different, non-veteran population. He goes on to say that there is a lot of interest in PPI overuse, but "no one has looked at how these prescriptions got started… so our main question was how are these prescriptions started in the veteran population and continued over time." Here Jacob is framing the research through scientific uncertainty—no one has looked at this issue, and so he wanted to fill the gap in the research literature. Later during the meeting, Jacob and Shannon have the discussion found in Table 8.
| Time | Actor | Quote or [Action] |
|---|---|---|
| [00:15:34.10] | Jacob | One of the things that is important is, I mean, PPI is the most widely prescribed drug in the U.S. There is no class that comes close, in terms of number of prescriptions and the amount of money. |
| [00:15:42.21] | Shannon | [Interjecting] This is a money thing too, yeah. |
| Jacob | If you look at the top… [sniffles] there's drug topics website that's really good. If you look at like the top medications they're like PPI is number one or number ten… I mean it is like 10 billion dollars a year. | |
| [00:15:56.28] | Shannon | Yeah. U.S. tax dollars too, right? |
| Jacob | What's that? | |
| Shannon | And this has to do with U.S. tax dollars going in to pay for these prescriptions too, right? | |
| [00:16:07.03] | Jacob | Uh, sure yeah… [7 second pause]… |
| I don't know what that number would be… |
Here, Jacob invokes a commonness framing about the near-ubiquitous nature of PPIs. Jacob's discussion of his work centers on the necessity of his work based on the prevalence and lack of knowledge of PPI use broadly speaking.
In contrast, Shannon adopts a different framing in her discussions with Jacob. In this excerpt she references money on three consecutive turns, thereby invoking the economic frame about veterans and taxpayer money. She brings up her idea—expressed in her interview with the researcher—that the importance of the veteran population has to do with their health care costs being supported by taxpayers. Jacob does not seem to know how to react to this suggestion, as this was not explicitly part of his research. As such he responds with mild confusion, pausing seven full seconds before attempting a response that begins with "I don't know." Jacob's hesitation suggests that he is surprised by Shannon's framing, and that it does not match well with his own understanding of his work.
This negotiation of frame mismatch (Hammer et al., 2005) is evident at other points in Shannon and Jacob's interaction as well. Early on Shannon specifically asks Jacob to articulate "how or why [he] got involved with the veteran population." This question suggests that Shannon is attempting reframe the research to replace her economic frame (Scherr & Hammer, 2009); she suspects that the choice of veterans is intentional, but she is now unclear about the reasoning. However, Jacob responds that his colleague—the fourth and "senior" author of the journal article—has an appointment at the VA hospital at which the study was conducted. For him, there is no specific motivation for the choice of the veteran population beyond the ongoing involvement of one of his co-authors with this population. It is merely a convenience sample. In these moments, Shannon and Jacob appear to be talking past one another as a result of their mismatch in framings. The mismatch plays out in their moment-to-moment interactions.
Why does this mismatch of framings occur? One possibility is that Shannon lacks the epistemic knowledge necessary to understand Jacob's framing. This explanation is consistent with the suggestion made by Bromme and Goldman (2014) that the public bring different epistemic stances to science than do scientists. But that cannot be because in other interactions (with Cindy and with the interviewer), Shannon uses the commonness frame, indicating that she has the knowledge necessary to understand science as framed as an investigation of common phenomena. Another possibility is that Shannon has misinterpreted the science as a result of her inappropriate framing. Still another possibility is that Shannon as the writer of the news story has overstepped her boundaries and imposed something on the story that was not intended. However, these explanations are unsatisfying as they place the burden entirely on Shannon. Since framing is a mutual negotiation among participants, we must also make sense of Jacob's role in the mismatch.
Jacob's framing of his study is relatively stable. In an interview with the first author after the publication of research in both scientific and popular press articles, Jacob provides an overview of the research and its most important features (see Table 9).
| Time | Actor | Quote or [Action] |
|---|---|---|
| [00:05:25.24] | Interviewer | So, I know this might sound redundant because you covered some of this, but how would you describe the most important part of this research for you? |
| [00:05:32.02] | Jacob | I mean, for me the most important part is… is that it gives…um…an.. it gives insight into… how these prescriptions are initiallyprescribed… and continued over time… and that had never been looked at… um… |
| Interviewer | Okay | |
| [00:05:52.23] | Jacob | um… you know people look at overuse all the time, but really in my view we wanted to know… if you want to look at overuse you still… you have to first look at… wh-when when do they get started. |
In this description, Jacob again adopts an uncertainty frame by saying that PPI prescriptions over time "had never been looked at." Throughout the interview, he never invokes the risks, economics, and public accountability frames that are present in the journal article and his interview with Shannon. Instead, he frames this whole research around the gap in the literature and hardly mentions the veteran population as the context of the study. We do not suggest that Jacob lacks knowledge of these frames, only that he does not use them in this context. When he does mention the veterans, it is as a weakness—not strength—of the study (see Table 10).
| Time | Actor | Quote or [Action] |
|---|---|---|
| [00:06:36.26] | Interviewer | Um, what would… what would you say are the weaknesses of this research? |
| [00:06:42.14] | Jacob | Well, it was a single-center study done at [name of specific hospital omitted] VA which, um… It was, you know for that purposes it-it's a smaller number medications |
| Interviewer | Uh huh | |
| [00:06:51.24] | Jacob | It was also done at a VA which, um… is one strength because they have really good data, but it can be a disadvantage too…. because, you know, 95% of the patients are men…um… It doesn't apply to necessarily… privately insured patients… there's always that criticism… |
| Interviewer | Okay | |
| [00:07:06.28] | Jacob | Those are kind of the main two big ones |
Here Jacob finally provides the motivation for enrolling veterans: VA hospitals provide good data. As in all science research, Jacob and his colleagues have made a trade-off of choosing a limited population with more complete data source over a more representative (potentially) population with a less complete data source. However, either because Jacob sees this point as a weakness of the study or because such trade-offs are so common in the daily work of science, the article does not provide any explicit explanation for his choice of veterans at all.
Jacob and his co-authors' failure to make clear why they chose veterans as a study population places the responsibility of justifying this detail and evaluating the validity of claims solely on the audience. It is then not surprising that Shannon feels the need to make an inference about this detail. In the absence of strong framing cues by the authors of a text, readers fill in their own framings.
Even more though, Jacob's references to the large amount of money spent on these prescriptions—which he uses to invoke a commonness frame—can be easily interpreted by Shannon as part of an economic frame. The first sentence of the journal article makes a direct statement about the health care costs of PPIs. In this sense the article (and her conversation with Jacob) does include some framing cues, but those cues allow for multiple interpretations of the frame. Shannon is confronted with an unexplained detail (the veteran population) and an economic framing of cost, and so she reasonably tries to reconcile these details to make sense of the research, using personal knowledge about this population and health care costs. Her framing of taxpayer money, while certainly consistent with journalistic norms, is just as much the result of Jacob's, and the journal article's, underdetermined explanations. These multiple interpretations give rise to the framing mismatch that is evident between Shannon and Jacob.
Content and Framing Analysis of the University News and Popular News Stories
We now turn to a brief content analysis of the university news story written by Shannon and a news story based on Shannon's story, published two days later on the website of a popular news magazine. After her interview with Jacob, Shannon writes a news story about his research, which she shares with him for fact checking before publication. Other than his interview with Shannon and his approval of her story, Jacob did not play any role in the creation of either the university or popular press articles. We present the analysis of these two stories in conjunction as the stories are nearly identical. In fact, the popular news story (PNS) appears to be a slightly edited and reworded version of Shannon's university news story (UNS). This is not surprising as a great deal of research has shown that much of the science reporting in the popular press is based on news statements released by a stakeholder in that research (i.e., the university employing the researcher or the journal publishing the article) (e.g., McInerney, Bird, & Nucci, 2004). Further, research has demonstrated that news statements from medical centers routinely fail to provide key facts or direct relevance to generalizable human health (Woloshin, Schwartz, Casella, Kennedy, Larson, 2009), which may help explain the lack of warrants provided for the veteran population. Additionally, despite many news statements of this sort being directed at a mainstream press audience (Nelkin, 1998), Shannon explicitly envisions her audience as the general public.
Both the UNS and PNS open with a framing focused on risks. Both highlight the overuse of PPIs and use language that expresses a general sense of hazard. Again, the language both employ is remarkably similar. The headline of the UNS uses the language of "prescription problems" for veterans on PPIs and the PNS's headline describes how PPIs are "taken for too long, at too-high doses." Both articles claim that the study population was "kept on the drug(s) far too long." They both also use variations of the phrase "higher than recommended," invoking a risks frame while alluding to a public accountability frame. Here again though, the specifics of the risks are not mentioned. The UNS then switches to a commonness frame to explain the prevalence of PPI prescriptions, while also mentioning the economic frame of the total health care cost of PPIs mentioned in the original journal article's first sentence. In fact, the first two paragraphs of the UNS adhere quite closely to the framing of the journal article's introduction. The PNS also adopts a dual risks and commonness frame, although not quite in the same order as the UNS. A major divergence between the two texts is that the UNS highlights the novelty of the research by claiming it is the "first study to examine initial prescriptions" as an example of an uncertainty frame. As in the original research article, we see a multiple different frames in each of these versions of the text.
While both stories make mention of the veterans as the population of study, neither provides any sort of justification. In fact, the PNS, in particular, frames the research as about general PPI use. The subheading of both stories mentions the study being about veterans, but the overall impression does not express this fact as a caveat or limitation of the study. In other words, neither story presents the use of veterans in an uncertainty frame. Although we cannot say for sure, it is possible that Shannon chose to navigate the mismatch between her economic frame centered on the veteran population and Jacob's commonness frame centered on prominence of prescriptions by simply deemphasizing the population.
The Publics' Framing of the Research
What and how can the public learn from the stories that emerge from the process described above? Prior research suggests that free-choice learning experiences, like choosing to read a science news story, are excellent predictors of a person's science knowledge and interest (Falk & Needham, 2013). But what are people learning during these experiences? How do the complexities of framing that play out in the texts and interactions constrain or afford learning for lay people? To explore this issue, the first author conducted think alouds (Ericsson & Simon, 1980) and follow-up interviews with lay people—adult, non-scientist participants—about how they made sense of and framed Jacob's research while reading about it in the popular news story. Given Shannon's explicit attempts to write for a lay audience, and the publication venue of the PNS (U.S News and World Report), we suspect that any members of the general public who are interested in science-related news would have easy access (both physical and intellectual) to the article and its contents. Here we focus on how one member of the general public—Steven, a 24-year-old Mexican, American high school graduate—understands the research. Steven did not study science beyond high school, but expresses some interest in learning about science news in his daily life.
Importing Framings from Outside the Text. Early in his reading of the PNS, Steven frames the research through both commonness and risks: "'chronic heartburn'… hm… I've never had heartburn before in my life, but… I understand a lot of people do… Does seem to be problematic to be taking… taking these heartburn pills for so long…" In this quote, Steven points out that it is common for people to suffer from heartburn and risky to be on pills for an extended period of time. Following this, he reacts to the length of time the veterans were kept on the medication by saying, "Really? Wow… that's crazy. I guess, uh… I guess these drug companies really want people to buy up, uh, this heartburn medicine." This statement provides evidence for the runaway science frame, a fatalistic interpretation of the research that in our data tend to focus on the corruption of science by corporations. During the follow-up interview, when asked about the most important part of the research, Steven says, "there is a lot of overmedication in the science community and we need to address that." Steven invokes this framing despite the fact that it is not evident in the original article or Jacob's and Shannon's interactions, observations, or interviews. One value (or in this case, a potential challenge) of framing is that people regularly use frames developed in one context to make sense of others (Berland & Hammer, 2013). Steven's imposition of this frame on the research is consistent with Nisbet's (2009) claims that it is a common frame in public discourse about science; Steven may be drawing on a set of epistemic knowledge from his interactions with other popular science texts.
Despite importing a framing not used by the researcher or writer, Steven is able to accurately make sense of the research. During the follow-up interview, the first author asked Steven to describe the research. He correctly remembers the number of patients involved in the study, the length of observation, the name of the journal, and the university where the research was conducted. He even bemoans the fact that the article did not explain what percentage of the patients constitutes the description of "many are kept on the drugs far too long." Steven is perfectly capable of making sense of the details of the research even when he adopts frames, such as runaway science, that do not match those of the scientist or the reporter. Steven's ability to make sense of the text through his personalized framing might suggest that the vocal debate about the efficacy and ethics of conscientiously framing science (see Nisbet & Mooney, 2007; Holland, 2007) is too focused on the communicator end of the spectrum. The debate does not account for the interpretive abilities of the receiver and what information they want and need in order to make sense of science for themselves.
Searching for a Frame. While reading the article, Steven demonstrates attention to the veteran population. While thinking aloud he says: "Ooo… veterans in particular, huh?" It is not clear what he makes of this fact, but he seems to express some confusion. Later on during the interview, he is asked about what he felt was the least important part of the study (see Table 11).
| Time | Actor | Quote or [Action] |
|---|---|---|
| [00:35:30.00] | Interviewer | So what would you say is the least important part of this research? |
| [00:35:37.04] | Steven | felt like there was a lot of emphasis on the patients being veterans for some reason. I didn't really understand that… |
| [00:35:46.08] | Interviewer | Why do think that is? |
| Steven | I guess to garner sympathy? | |
| [00:35:52.22] | I mean veterans are sympathetic characters, but, um… I really don't see any-any difference in, I guess, heartburn… why someone would need more heartburn medication if they were a veteran or if they weren't. It was a very strange portion of the article. I'd say that was the least important. | |
| [00:36:12.13] | Interviewer | Okay |
In this exchange, Steven's initial confusion persists and he cannot find a reason for the study's emphasis to be placed on veterans. To resolve this confusion, he suggests a possible morality/ethics frame that the story is trying to garner sympathy for an at-risk population. This attempt at resolution resembles Shannon's initial attempts to frame the veteran population as an economic issue. Here, Steven demonstrates that he has knowledge for understanding science in relation to morality and ethics. Steven ends up rejecting this inference, and simply decides that the choice of population does not make sense. He is unable to imagine a frame in which that detail of the research is important. From the perspective of the researchers, this detail is important to both the uncertainty frame—the veterans PPI usage is part of the literature gap the study is filling—and to the overall ability to judge the validity and generalizability of the work—Jacob sees this detail as the main limitation of the study. However, without an available framing for including the detail, Steven dismisses it.
Steven also expresses frustration about the lack of clarity in the information provided about the risks. When asked if the article raised questions for him, Steven responded "I didn't take away from it the effects of using too much heartburn medication…I understand the conclusion is that yeah people are taking too much heartburn medication, but I didn't take away… why heartburn medication when taken in huge amounts like this is harmful." Steven appears to know that he should apply a risk frame to the article's conclusion, but feels he lacks specifics to appropriately implement or use that frame for sense making. He is confused, yet he knows exactly what he is confused about—he interprets the presence of a framing, but is not provided with the information needed to evaluate the framing.
Discussion
Overall, what lessons does this case study of framing hold for those of us interested in how people (or students) come to understand (or learn) science? We suggest that our analysis highlights aspects of the nature of framing that extend the default views adopted by both science education and science communication. Specifically, our work examines the ways in which the dynamic, tacit, and overlapping nature of framing can play a role in how people understand science with and through texts.
Dynamic Nature of Frames
First, drawing on theory from science education our work provides further evidence that in addition to exploring frames— the noun—we can also learn a lot about how people understand science by exploring framing— the verb. Our micro-genetic approach to the data reveals that frames, both within a single text and within a single interaction around a text, can be dynamic rather than static. One text can have multiple framings, as can one interaction with a text. For example, Steven adopts a risks, commonness, and runaway science framing at varying points in his reading and subsequent interview around a single text. By explicitly designing our data collection and analysis to have access to these moment-to-moment framings, we are able to see how people shift between different types of knowledge and beliefs when attempting to understand scientific research. For example, in conjunction with his multiple framings, Steven draws on beliefs about over-prescription caused by drug companies and veterans as an at-risk population, as well as knowledge of conventions of scientific studies to make sense of the focal research at different times.
The dynamic nature of framing has substantial implications for science education. It suggests that we may need to teach students the flexibility in framing. Sophistication in learning from texts might involve the ability to switch between frames quickly and easily, thereby bringing a variety of different types of knowledge and beliefs to the text rather than just one "correct" frame. In this view of sophistication, we can talk about Shannon "learning" when her interaction with Jacob prompted her to shift from adopting a solely economic frame to adopting multiple other frames (commonness, risks, etc.). However, as we will discuss in the next section, this dynamic framing is also often tacit, and students may need practice in moving between different framings. Teachers then might encourage and support students in fluidly moving between frames rather than in adopting and "sticking with" a single frame. For example, students might benefit from multiple opportunities to interact with one another around texts—or multiple texts—in order to gain comfort and confidence in shifting frames.
For science communicators, the dynamic nature of framing suggests the potential of writers leveraging multiple framings within single texts to deal with dynamic reactions to the research they present. Rather than needing to frame science texts in the (singular) appropriate way, communicators might consider employing a range of frames for different parts of the text—each of which highlights different features of the focal science in a way that manages the reader's reaction. For example, based our analysis we can reasonably suggest that research that deals with veterans may result in responses that lead people adopting economic, risk, or moral/ethics frames. Had Jacob been aware of this, and known that these frames might result in confusion for the public, he could have planned ahead to explicitly apply his own frames that, while not replacing the public's ability to frame research for themselves, would guide their dynamic framing in more productive ways. Alternatively, the dynamic nature of framing suggests that if there is a case in which science communicators want readers to maintain a single frame for an extended time, they may need to repeatedly cue that framing throughout the text. Science communicators can map out the possible "territory" of dynamics frames and reactions that the public might have to specific aspects of the research, and plan their framing in ways to avoid pitfalls. Our case here does not provide guidance as to whether these transitions or stabilities within the text should be explicit or tacit, but it does suggest that communicators may be able to exploit readers' abilities to move fluidly between framings.
Tacit Nature of Frames
Second, our case highlights that frames can be tacit both within texts and within interactions (Goffman, 1974). It is not always the case that writers explicitly choose a frame to adopt in their work; writers and readers may not even be aware of the frames they are adopting (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). For example, Cindy's asking of Shannon, "Is it a bad thing?" implies a risks frame that she might not consciously adopt. This tacit nature of framing makes them all the more powerful with regards to understanding. If people are not aware of the frames they bring to writing or reading science, then they can neither evaluate the utility of those frames nor choose to select one that is more fruitful or appropriate for their own understanding—their framing is unconscious and automatic.
This lack of awareness may be precisely what drives science communicators' concerns about the distinct set of discourses and representations that are associated with each of the different categories of actors involved as science moves from scientists to the public. They argue that the practice of professional science uses particular rhetorical forms (Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984; Latour & Woolgar, 1986), which are much different than popular coverage of scientific research that follows journalistic rather than scientific norms (Dunwoody, 2008). These different practices are particularly concerning if people are not aware of the practices they use; if they don't adopt the "right," frame they cannot accurately understand the text.
However, what this case study shows is that putting people into interaction with one another can make tacit frames explicit. For example, when Shannon interviewed Jacob, her economic framing became visible (both to her and to Jacob) because of its contrast to Jacob's framing. Further, this mismatch forced her to to examine other aspects of the research that she may not have attended to had she maintained her initial framing. This suggests that mismatching framings can in some cases serve the productive purpose of highlighting hidden assumptions.
The tacit nature of framing has implications for both science education and science communication. Rather than conceiving of sophistication in reading science texts as involving explicitly learning the "correct" frames of scientists or journalists, we can conceptualize one component of sophistication as becoming aware of the ways in one's own frames constrain or afford understanding the text. This view of sophistication could be used across populations that are typically the purview of each of the fields separately. Lay people, journalists, scientists, and students can all "learn" by gaining metacognitive awareness of their framing choices.
For science educators in schools, this suggests designing learning environments in which students have opportunities to see framing mismatches and to explicitly compare the utility of each interpretation. Teachers might provide the multiple interpretations themselves by drawing on multiple versions of the text, or they might have students build their own interpretations individually and then use groups to build consensus models of the text (in much the same way that science educators advocate for building consensus models of phenomena). Either way, scaffolding students to interact with multiple interpretations may allow framing mismatches to come to the fore, catalyzing conversations about the affordances and constraints of each framing.
From the perspective of science communication, this work has implications for our understanding of the roles of scientists and texts in learning. In the previous section, we argued that communicators might benefit from anticipating lay people's likely responses to the research. Recognizing the tacit nature of frames reiterates this lesson, and underscores Nisbet and Mooney's (2007) call for scientists to be active (i.e., not tacit) in their framing to their research. For example, Nisbet and Mooney (2007) argue that scientists should be deliberate in their framing, and even suggest avoiding technical details of research. However, their advice provides little in the way of practical guidance—if scientists cannot recognize their tacit frames, how are they meant to deliberate on them? This might explain many of the negative reactions it received from some scientists (Holland, 2007). While our work is preliminary, we believe it begins the process of developing practical guides for framing science for the public. For example, Jacob's rejection of Shannon's efforts to frame the veteran population around economics is based on his on tacit framing of the importance of the research being the commonness of PPI use regardless of the exact population. Had Jacob actively reflected of this tacit framing—even within conversation with Shannon—he may not have so easily dismissed her framing, and instead made more conscious decisions on how best to talk about his research with reporters. Recognizing the tacit nature of frames may allow science communicators to build more general strategies for reflecting on their framing so that it is meaningful to the public and avoids pitfalls in the public understanding of science.
Overlapping Nature of Frames
Finally, our analysis suggests that at least some frames are shared across the different actors. The discourses of scientists, journalists, and lay people (or students) are not entirely separate from one another. For example, Shannon's framing conforms to Jacob's after their interaction, despite their initial mismatch. In this way, the frames (or framings) of the different actors overlap with one another.
By highlighting the overlapping nature of frames, we are not arguing that members of each group adopt similar frames by default. We agree with the substantial body of work in science communication suggests that lay people, journalists, and scientists bring different framings to their understandings of scientific texts (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Nisbet et al., 2003; Nisbet & Mooney, 2007; Nisbet, 2009a,b). Instead we are suggesting that while their typical framings might be different, each actor— sometimes through interaction with the other actors—is at least capable of making sense of the science text using framings typical of the other groups.
This aspect of framing is significant because it allows us to move beyond a deficit model of lay people and students. Part of gaining sophistication in learning from science texts may not be the acquisition of new frames but instead the productive application of existing frames. Rather than thinking of people as needing to be taught the "right" frames, we can think about them as already knowing the "right" frames but just needing guidance in using them at the appropriate times. This shift in understanding the framing is similar to shifts within science education away from thinking of students as having misconceptions that need to be fixed and toward thinking of students as having a multiplicity of resources that they need to activate in new contexts (Clement et al., 1989Clement, Brown, & Zietsman, (1989); Smith et al., 1993Smith, diSessa, and Roschelle 1993; Sherin, 2006), or the shift in science communication toward valuing the utility of lay knowledge (Irwin & Wynne, 1996; Wynne, 1992).
For science educators, the challenge for classroom practice may be to create contexts (both science and non-science) in which productive framings are activated and then encourage students to apply those same framings to science texts. So, for example, one frequently used formula for framing in scientific contexts observed in this case study is the combination of commonness frame—introducing a commonly observed phenomenon—and the uncertainty frame—positing a scientific uncertainty about some aspect of this phenomenon (Nwogu, 1997; Li & Ge, 2009). We may want students to become familiar with this framing device and recognize it in scientific texts, but these frames often deal with abstract ideas or phenomena at timescales difficult to imagine. Therefore, teachers might start by invoking this device in a different context—say, by asking students to discuss various sports balls (common objects) and then introducing specific uncertainty about them (why is a golf ball dimpled?, why does a baseball have seams?, etc). With that framing active or primed, teachers might move into having them read the science text, suggesting that they use a similar discourse or way of thinking that they used in the previous context to talk about sports balls to talk about more abstract phenomena. This argument is an extension of Ryder's (2001) claim that a functional scientific literacy that encompasses the knowledge, practices, or abilities that are necessary for people to make sense of science (Ryder, 2001) must be understood within the contexts of people's lives. Specifically, our case of framing suggests that what we draw on from the everyday is not only knowledge, practices, or abilities, but also potentially productive framings that students can apply to science texts.
For science communicators, the challenge becomes reevaluating which frames can be productive and which can be harmful for science understanding. For example, Nisbet (2009) describes efforts by a group of Evangelical leaders concerned with shifting the discourse on climate change away from the uncertainty framing used by the Bush administration to undermine efforts cap carbon emissions toward morality/ethics frames that promote common ground and communicate a sense of urgency to their Evangelical peers. In order for this shift to have worked, the Evangelical leaders concerned with climate change had to be confident that people were capable of using the morality/ethics frame but merely were not doing so in this controversial science context. This reframing suggests that some everyday framings (like morality/ethics) that may not be traditionally part of the scientists' discourse can be productively leveraged to support lay understanding. We suggest similar mechanisms are at work in the case here. For example, Steven's initial reaction to the research is to adopt a runaway science frame, which would generally be seen as problematic from the scientists perspective; however, this early framing does not hinder his later adoption of frames that overlap both Jacob's and Shannon's and allows him to make sense of the research, even while questioning why it focused on veterans. The overlapping nature of frames suggests that science communicators may benefit from employing frames outside of the standard science discourse, even though those frames may seem "unscientific." Our case here further suggests that communicators may not be able to identify which frames are productive and which are unproductive in the absence of interactions with lay people. This extends work that argues that the skills used in formal scientific practices are not the only productive skills used when people successfully make sense of science in their daily lives (Wynne, 1992; Irwin & Wynne, 1996; Feinsten, 2011; Feinstein, Allens, & Jenkins, 2013; Sandoval, Sodian, Koerber, & Wong 2014).
Each of these aspects of framing—dynamicness, tacitness, and overlappingness—suggests alternatives for how we conceptualize sophistication and learning with and from science texts. Based on our work here, we can only speculate about what that sophistication might look like and how best to foster it in classrooms and within the public at large. However, the very existence of these aspects of framing—these particular phenomenon associated with framing—is at least suggestive of new ways of understanding and learning that further work can systematically pursue.
Conclusion
In this paper, we have endeavored to bridge the fields of science communication and science education by studying a context familiar to science communication at a scale typical to science education. We have drawn the divergent fields together by focusing our attention on the concept of framing that is common to both fields but used in differing ways. To illustrate the utility of this hybrid view of framing, we presented a case study that analyzed how a piece of scientific research moved from scientist to reporter and eventually to the public, and highlighted the frames emerging in text and interaction to show how scientific knowledge is continuously built and inferred through participants' framing of the research.
In the discussion section, we explored the implications of this work for science communication and science education in terms of how they view and promote science learning across the pathways of science communication. But when fields are "brought together," we expect not only insights for practice but also for the research endeavor itself. So, what are some potential implications of this work for science education and science communication research?
From the perspective of science education, this work broadens traditional conceptions of the sites, components, and participants of science learning. This work highlights that a functional scientific literacy—which encompasses the knowledge, practices, or abilities that are necessary for people to make sense of science (Ryder, 2001)—can be best understood within the daily contexts of people's lives. Specifically, despite the fact that reading popular science news articles is a widespread practice, few studies have directly investigated learning in this context (Bell, Lewenstein, Shouse, & Feder). The work that has studied popular science articles generally focuses solely on the text itself (e.g., LaFollette, 1990; Hansen & Dickinson, 1992; Jiménez-Aleixandre & Federico-Agraso, 2009;) or the after effects of reading the texts (e.g., Norris & Phillips, 1994; Corbett & Durfee, 2004; Ainley, Corrigan, & Richardson, 2005). Instead, we have adopted a perspective of framing often used to investigate classroom interactions between teachers and students to explore the in-the-moment interactions between an adult reader and a text. Thus, we have captured sense-making around texts by a variety of lay people as it happens during reading. In doing so, we broaden where science educators explore learning (sites), what they take to be learned (components), and who is involved (actors).
For those conducting research in science communication, our work suggests that alternative analytic methods that are sensitive to these types of framings may be useful for studying how people learn with and from science texts. The focus on interactional framing adds a layer of complexity to the long history of studying frames in the public debate around scientific issues or in science textbooks at the storyline level (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Dimopoulos et al., 2003; Nisbet et al., 2003; Nisbet & Mooney, 2007; Nisbet, 2009). Specifically, our work looks beyond the storyline level to document the ways in which understanding is built, shaped, made evident, and rebuilt many times over through interactions between the actors and texts (e.g., Solomon, 1987; Lemke, 1990; 2001; Brown, Reveles, & Kelly, 2005; Roth, 2008; Roth & Middleton, 2006; 2014). While storyline level frames are still a vitally important research focus, without looking at this smaller grain size, we may miss some important phenomena that shape how people understand scientific texts. Capturing fine-grained frames allows researchers to see how moment-to-moment framings in interactions work together to create or challenge the frames seen at the storyline level.
Stepping back from the specifics of our case, this work suggests that the fields of science education and science communication can productively inform each other's practice and research within the same problem space. However, it also demonstrates that translating across two communities is non-trivial even when they use similar theoretical constructs. Much theoretical work is done on the front end of the research to identify nuance in interpretation, much methodological work is done in the middle to understand what sort of data are needed and how best to collect it, and much analytic work is done on the back end to articulate "what's new" for each field. To construct valid arguments, researchers may need to rely even more than usual on one another's knowledge and insight to move iteratively between the two fields and data and analysis. For example, our work in this manuscript alone went through countless cycles of iteration, prompted by our own stitching together of the fields, our informal conversations with researchers in both fields, and by the interpretations of the reviewers and editors representing each field. This iterative, collaborative movement necessitates coming to the table with mutual respect and curiosity. With that stance, we can begin to move forward our collective understanding of the phenomenon of interest through the systematic exploration of overlapping theory, methods, and analytic techniques.
References
- Aikenhead, G. S. ( 1973). The measurement of high school students' knowledge about science and scientists. Science Education, 57, 539– 549.
- Ainley, M., Corrigan, M., & Richardson, N. ( 2005). Students, tasks and emotions: Identifying the contribution of emotions to students' reading of popular culture and popular science texts. Learning and Instruction, 15, 433– 447.
- Bauer, M. W. ( 2009). The evolution of public understanding of science—discourse and comparative evidence. Science Technology & Society, 14, 221– 240.
- Bazerman, C. (1983). Scientific writing as a social act.InP. Anderson, R. Brockman, & C. Miller (Eds.).
- Bazerman, C. ( 1985). Physicists reading physics: Schema-laden purposes and purpose-laden schema. Written Communication, 2, 3– 23.
- Bell, P., Lewenstein, B., Shouse, A., & Feder, M. E. ( 2009). Learning science in informal environments: People, places, and pursuits. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
- Benford, R. ( 1997). An insider's critique of the social movement framing perspective. Sociological Inquiry, 67, 409– 430.
- Benford, R., & Snow, R. ( 2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 611– 639.
- Berger, C., Roloff, M., & Ewoldsen, D. E. ( 2010). The handbook of communication science. Sage.
- Berland, L., & Hammer, D. ( 2012). Framing for scientific argumentation. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 49, 68– 94.
- Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. ( 1999). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Washington DC: National Academy Press.
- Brewer, P., & Gross, K. ( 2005). Values, framing, and citizens' thoughts about policy issues: effects on content and quality. Political Psychology, 26, 929– 948.
- Bromme, R., & Goldman, S. R. ( 2014). The Public's Bounded Understanding of Science. Educational Psychologist, 49, 59– 69.
- Brown, B. A., Reveles, J. M., & Kelly, G. J. ( 2005). Scientific literacy and discursive identity: A theoretical framework for understanding science learning. Science Education, 89(5): 779– 802.
- Bucchi, M., & Trench, B. E. ( 2008). Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology. London: Routledge.
- ( 1907). A consideration of the principles that should determine the courses in biology in the secondary schools. School Science and Mathematics, 7, 241– 247.
- Chen, S., Chang, W. H., Lieu, S. C., Kao, H. L., Huang, M. T.,& Lin, S. F. ( 2013). Development of an Empirically Based Questionnaire to Investigate Young Students' Ideas About Nature of Science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 50, 408– 430.
- Chittenden, D., Farmelo ,G., & Lewenstein, B. V. E. ( 2004). Creating connections: Museums and the public understanding of current research. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
- Chong, D., & Druckman, J. ( 2007). Framing theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 10, 103– 126.
- Clement, J., Brown, D. E., & Zietsman, A. ( 1989). Not all preconceptions are misconceptions: finding "anchoring conceptions" for grounding instruction on students' intuitions. International Journal of Science Education, 11, 554– 565.
- Cloître, M., & Shinn, T. ( 1986). Enclavement et diffusion du savoir [Restriction and diffusion of knowledge]. Information sur les Sciences Sociales, 25, 161– 187.
- Cobb, M. ( 2005). Framing effects on public opinion about nanotechnology. Science Communication, 27, 221– 239.
- Collins, H. M. ( 1987). Certainty and the public understanding of science: Science of television. Social Studies of Science, 17, 689– 713.
- Corbett, J. B., & Durfee, J. L. ( 2004). Testing public (un) certainty of science: Media representations of global warming. Science Communication, 26(2): 129– 151.
- D'Angelo, P. ( 2002). News framing as a multiparadigmatic research program: A response to Entman. Journal of Communication, 52, 870– 888.
- Dimopoulos, K., Koulaidis, V., & Sklaveniti, S. ( 2003). Towards an analysis of visual images in school science textbooks and press articles about science and technology. Research in Science Education, 33, 189– 216.
- Dimopoulos, K., Koulaidis, V., & Sklaveniti, S. ( 2005). Towards a framework of socio-linguistic analysis of science textbooks: The Greek case. Research in Science Education, 35, 173– 195.
- Driver, R., Leach, J., Millar, R., & Scott, P. ( 1996). Young people's images of science. Buckingham, UK: McGraw-Hill International.
- Dunwoody, S. ( 2008). Science journalism. In M Bucchi & B. Trench (Eds.), Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology. London: Routledge.
- Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. ( 1980). Verbal reports as data. Psychological review, 87, 215.
- Einsiedel, E. ( 2007). Of publics and science. Public Understanding of Science, 16, 5– 6.
- Elby, A., & Hammer, D. ( 2001). On the substance of a sophisticated epistemology. Science Education, 85, 554– 567.
- Entman, R. ( 1993). Framing: toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43, 51– 58.
- Falk, J. H., & Needham, M. D. ( 2013). Factors contributing to adult knowledge of science and technology. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 50, 431– 452.
- Feinstein, N. ( 2011). Salvaging science literacy. Science Education, 95, 168– 185.
- Feinstein, N. W., Allen, S., & Jenkins, E. ( 2013). Outside the pipeline: Reimagining science education for nonscientists. Science, 340, 314– 317.
- Gamson, W. A., & Modigliani, A. ( 1989). Media discourse and public opinion on nuclear power: A constructionist approach. American journal of sociology, 95, 1– 37.
- Gilbert, G. N., & Mulkay, M. ( 1984). Opening Pandora's Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists' Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Goffman, E. ( 1974) Frame Analysis. New York, NY: Harper Colophon Books.
- Hammer, D., Elby, A., Scherr, R., & Redish, E. ( 2005). Resources, framing and transfer. In: J. P. Mestre (Ed.), Transfer of learning from a modern multidisciplinary perspective (pp. 89– 120). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.
- Hansen, A., & Dickinson, R. ( 1992). Science coverage in the British mass media: Media output and source input. Communications, 17(3): 365– 377.
- Jiménez-Aleixandre, M. P., & Federico-Agraso, M. ( 2009). Justification and persuasion about cloning: Arguments in Hwang's paper and journalistic reported versions. Research in Science Education, 39, 331– 347.
- Jordan, B., & Henderson, A. ( 1995). Interaction analysis: Foundations and practice. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4, 39– 103.
- Khishfe, R. ( 2014). Explicit Nature of Science and Argumentation Instruction in the Context of Socioscientific Issues: An effect on student learning and transfer. International Journal of Science Education, 36, 974– 1016.
- Klopfer, L. E., & Cooley, W. W. ( 1963). The history of science case for high-schools in the development of student understanding of science and scientists—A report on the HSOC instruction project. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 1, 33– 47.
- LaFollette, M. C. ( 1990). Making science our own: Public images of science, 1910–1955. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Latour, B. ( 1987). Science in Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. ( 1986). Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Lederman, N. G. ( 1992). Students' and teachers' conceptions of the nature of science: A review of the research. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 29, 331– 359.
- Lederman, N. G., Abd-El-Khalick, F., Bell, R. L., & Schwartz, R. S. ( 2002). Views of nature of science questionnaire: Toward valid and meaningful assessment of learners' conceptions of nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39, 497– 521.
- Lederman, N. G., Bartos, S. A., & Lederman, J. S. ( 2014). The Development, Use, and Interpretation of Nature of Science Assessments. In International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching (pp. 971– 997) Netherlands: Springer.
- Lederman, J. S., Lederman, N. G., Bartos, S. A., Bartels, S. L., Meyer, A. A., & Schwartz, R. S. ( 2014). Meaningful assessment of learners' understandings about scientific inquiry—The views about scientific inquiry (VASI) questionnaire. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 65– 83.
- Lehrer, A. & Kittay, E. ( 1992). Frames, Fields, and Contrasts: New Essays in Semantic and Lexical Organization. New York: Routledge.
- Lemke, J. L. ( 1990). Talking science: Language, learning, and values. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
- Lemke, J. L.( 2001). Articulating communities: Sociocultural perspectives on science education. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38, 296– 316.
- Levin, D. Hammer, D., & Coffey, J. ( 2009). Novice teachers' attention to student thinking. Journal of Teacher Education, 60, 142– 154.
- Levine, R., Calabrese, S., & Barton, A. ( 2012). Should Great Lakes City build a new power plant? How youth navigate socioscientific issues. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 49, 541– 567.
- Lewenstein, B. V. ( 1992). The meaning of "public understanding of science" in the United States after World War II. Public Understanding of science, 1, 45– 68.
- Lewenstein, B. ( 2011). Changing our ideas. International Journal of Science Education, 1, 17– 21.
- Li, L. J. & Ge, G. C. ( 2009). Genre analysis: Structural and linguistic evolution of the English-medium medical research article (1985–2004). English for Specific Purposes, 28, 93– 104.
- Lichtman, M. ( 2011). Understanding and evaluating qualitative educational research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Luntz, F. ( 2007). Words that work: it's not what you say, it's what people hear. New York: Hyperion.
- MacLachlan, G. L., & Reid, I. ( 1994). Framing and Interpretation. Melbourne University Publishing.
- Maxwell, J. ( 2012). Research Design: An Interactive Approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Maxwell, J. A. ( 2004). Causal explanation, qualitative research, and scientific inquiry in education. Educational Researcher, 33, 3– 11.
- Mayring, P. ( 2000). Qualitative content analysis. Forum: Qualitative social research, 1.
- Medawar, P. B. ( 1978). Is scientific paper fraudulent-yes-it misrepresents scientific thought. Current Medicine for Attorneys, 25, 8– 12.
- McComas, W. F., Almazroa, H., & Clough, M. P. ( 1998). The nature of science in science education: An introduction. Science & Education, 7, 511– 532.
- McCright, A. M., & Dunlap, R. E. ( 2003). Defeating Kyoto: The conservative movement's impact on US climate change policy. Social Problems, 50, 348– 373.
- McInerney, C., Bird, N., & Nucci, M. ( 2004). The flow of scientific knowledge from lab to the lay public: The case of genetically modified foods. Science Communication, 26, 44– 74.
- Meek, B. ( 2007). Framing indigenous languages as secondary to matrix languages. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 38, 99– 118.
- Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. ( 1994). Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- National Science Board. (2014). Science and Engineering Indicators: 2014. Washington, D.C.: National Science Board
- Nelkin, D. ( 1995). How the Press Covers Science and Technology. New York: Freeman.
- Nisbet, M. (2009). Communicating climate change: Why frames matter for public engagement. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 51, 12– 23.
- Nisbet, M., Brossard, D., & Kroepsch, A. ( 2003). Framing science the stem cell controversy in an age of press/politics. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 8, 36– 70.
- Nisbet, M., & Mooney, C. ( 2007). Policy Forum: Framing Science. Science, 316, 56.
- Norris, S. P., & Phillips, L. M. ( 1994). Interpreting pragmatic meaning when reading popular reports of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 31, 947– 967.
- Nwogu, K. N. ( 1997). The medical research paper: Structure and functions. English for specific purposes, 16, 119– 138.
- Ochs, E., & Jacoby, S. ( 1997). Down to the wire: The cultural clock of physicists and the discourse of consensus. Language in Society, 26, 479– 505.
- Oliveira, A., Cook, K., & Buck, G. ( 2011). Framing evolution discussion intellectually. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48, 257– 280.
- Rogoff, B., Paradise, R., Arauz, R., Correa-Chávez, M., & Angelillo, C. ( 2003). Firsthand learning through intent participation. Annual review of psychology, 54, 175– 203.
- Roth, W. M. ( 2008). The nature of scientific conceptions: A discursive psychological approach. Educational Research Review, 3, 30– 50.
- Roth, W. M. ( 2014). Science language wanted alive: Through the dialectical/dialogical lens of Vygotsky and the Bakhtin circle. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 1049– 1083.
- Roth, W. M., & Lee, S. ( 2002). Scientific literacy as collective praxis. Public Understanding of Science, 11, 33– 56.
- Roth, W. M., & Middleton, D. ( 2006). Knowing what you tell, telling what you know: Uncertainty and asymmetries of meaning in interpreting graphical data. Cultural Studies in Science Education, 1, 11– 81.
- Russ, R., Lee, V., & Sherin, B. ( 2012). Framing in cognitive clinical interviews about intuitive science knowledge: Dynamic student understandings of the discourse interaction. Science Education, 96, 573– 599.
- Russ, R., & Luna, M. ( 2013). Inferring teacher epistemological framing from local patterns in teacher noticing. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 50, 284– 314.
- Ryder, J. ( 2001). Identifying Science Understanding for Functional Scientific Literacy. Studies in Science Education, 36, 1– 44.
- Sadler, T. D. ( 2004). Informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues: A critical review of research. Journal of research in science teaching, 41, 513– 536.
- Sandoval, W. A., Sodian, B., Koerber, S., & Wong, J. ( 2014). Developing children's early competencies to engage with science. Educational Psychologist, 49, 139– 152.
- Scherr, R., & Hammer, D. ( 2009). Student behavior and epistemological framing: Examples from collaborative active-learning activities in physics. Cognition and Instruction, 27, 147– 174.
- Scheufele, D. ( 1999). Framing as a theory of media effects. Journal of Communication, 49, 103– 122.
- Sherin, B. ( 2006). Common sense clarified: The role of intuitive knowledge in physics problem solving. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 43, 535– 555.
- Smith, J. P. III, Disessa, A. A., & Roschelle, J. ( 1994). Misconceptions reconceived: A constructivist analysis of knowledge in transition. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3 115– 163.
- Solomon, J. ( 1987). Social influences on the construction of pupils' understanding of science. Studies in Science Education, 14 63– 82.
- Stewart, C., Dickerson, D., & Hotchkiss, R. ( 2009). Beliefs about science and news frames in audience evaluations of embryonic and adult stem cell research. Science Communication, 30, 427– 452.
- Sturgis, P., & Allum, N. ( 2004). Science in society: re-evaluating the deficit model of public attitudes. Public understanding of science, 13, 55– 74.
- Swanson, L. H., Bianchini, J. A., & Lee, J. S. ( 2014). Engaging in argument and communicating information: A case study of english language learners and their science teacher in an urban high school. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 31– 64.
- Tewksbury, D., Jones, J., Peske, M., Raymond, A., & Vig, W.( 2000). The interaction of news and advocate frames: Manipulating audience perceptions of a local public policy issue. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 77, 804– 829.
- Tewksbury, D., & Scheufele, D. ( 2009). New York: Routledge pp. 17– 33.
- Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. ( 1981). The Framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211, 453– 458.
- Woloshin, S., Schwartz, L., Casella, S., Kennedy, A., & Larson, R. ( 2009). Press releases by academic medical centers: Not so academic?. Annals of Internal Medicine, 150, 613– 618.
- Wynne, B. ( 1992). Misunderstood misunderstanding: social identities and public uptake of science. Public Understanding of Science, 1, 281– 304.
Citing Literature
What Does It Mean to Say Science Is Dynamic
Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/tea.21189
0 Response to "What Does It Mean to Say Science Is Dynamic"
Post a Comment