Discussing dialogue: perspectives on the value of science dialogue events that do not inform policy
Resource type
Journal article
Creator (person)
Davies, Sarah
McCallie, Ellen
Simonsson, Elin
Lehr, Jane L.
Duensing, Sally
Date published
May 2009
Abstract
While theoretical work and empirical research have examined science policy-informing “dialogue events,” dialogue events that do not seek to inform public policy are under-theorized and under-researched, even though they are common and growing in popularity in the UK. We describe how, from a critical perspective, it may initially appear that such events cannot be justified without returning to the deficit model. But with this paper, we seek to open up a discussion about these non policy-informing events by arguing that there are in fact further ways to understand and frame them. We deliberately draw on different literatures and seek to make use of practitioner expertise within our discussion, in order to display several perspectives on the value of non-policy dialogue on science as sites of symmetrical individual or small-scale learning —rather than institutional learning—through social processes .
Journal title
Public Understanding of Science
Volume
18
Issue
3
Publisher
SAGE Publications
ISSN
0963-6625
eISSN
1361-6609
Official URL
Rights statement
In Copyright
Keywords