Resonance and epistemic cultures in informal science: a Bildung perspective

Other conference contribution, 2026

Scientific literacy is key for participatory citizenship in a complex and accelerating techno-scientific society. Still, many people struggle to relate to formal science education and many informal science engagements are not recognised as scientific. In this presentation, we explore how non-scientists engage in unexpected science contexts, from youth’s out-of-school activities to adults’ citizen science engagement. Such participation can take many forms, ranging from contributing data to co-creation of all steps of the scientific process (Kloetzer et al. 2021). With inspiration from such unexpected science engagements, we seek to contribute to understandings about how science allows reflection on what it means to be human, a process of BIldung (Nicolaisen et al. 2023).

The new project “Resonating with sciences” explores adults’ voluntary science engagement in citizen science. In this paper, as a pilot for the project, we present reanalysis of data concerned with young people’s informal science engagements. In the analysis of timeline interviews with first year physics students, we advance an analytical pathway to how their involvement in informal science communities can be understood through the lens of resonance. Drawing on theories of resonance (Rosa, 2019) and epistemic cultures (Knorr-Cetina 1999), we analyse the affective and meaningful relationships formed between people, materials and ideas in voluntary science communities. Rosa’s theory of resonance – investigating the quality of relationships between self and world –  (2019) provides an analytical entrypoint for examining resonant relationships that people establish to the world through science, distinguishing between relationships along horizontal axes (with ‘science people’), diagonal axes (with science materials), and vertical axes (with scientific ‘worldviews’). 

In our previous research we have shown how informal science engagements serve as resources for enabling minoritized young people’s participation in selective university-science and enhance well-being (Nyström et al., 2024). This paper will demonstrate the epistemic, affective, and transformative qualities of those relationships to science. This analysis will build the foundation for a forthcoming analysis of citizen science contexts in which we expect to further the understanding of how informal science engagements can contribute to the development of critical scientific literacy, agency and Bildung. The end goal of the project is to explore the transformative and democratizing potential of citizen science in reshaping science learning, knowledge production, and its societal impact. The contribution to Nordic educational research is connecting Bildung and resonance in analysis of informal science engagement.

References

Kloetzer, L. et al. (2021). Learning in Citizen Science. In: Vohland, K., et al. The Science of Citizen Science. Springer.

Knorr-Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic cultures : how the sciences make knowledge. Harvard University Press.

Nicolaisen, L. B. et al. (2023). Why science education and for whom? The contributions of science capital and Bildung. International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 13(3), 216–229.

Nyström, A.-S., Johansson, A., Danielsson, A. T., & Gonsalves, A. J. (2024). Resonating with physics: Physics students’ stories about existential and affective relations to science in and beyond formal learning spaces. International Journal of Science Education, Part B. 

Rosa, H. (2019). Resonance: A sociology of our relationship to the world. Wiley & Sons.