Beyond the Lab: Using genre history to teach critical scientific literacy

As Maria Gigante describes in this journal, a significant gap in science education exists in which students are not learning critical scientific literacy or how scientific facts are structured, argued, and ultimately agreed upon. Inspired by Gigante’s work, we describe the collaborative efforts of a rhetorician and a biologist to deliver an undergraduate course on the history of the scientific research article (SRA). Combining rhetoric, genre theory, and history of science and comparing the SRA in English and in French, the course illustrates the roles of forces like culture, sponsorship, and national ambitions in shaping how the SRA has evolved in its role in advancing scientific knowledge. Our paper reflects on how undoing the seeming arhetoricity of the SRA may prepare both scientists and citizens for productive conversations around scientific claims and the role of science in society. The course employed a chronological structure, beginning with contemporary SRAs and working backwards to the 1600s, engaging students through experiential learning activities and independent inquiry-based projects. Seven "forces for stability and change" were used as lenses for collective inquiry, though we found this ambitious within a single semester. Student reflections suggest that genre history proved a useful lens for understanding "how things work" in science as dynamic and changeable. We argue that this approach, combining genre theory with historical perspective, creates powerful lessons on science as a dynamic social enterprise and on the role of its epistemic genre (the SRA) in both the stability and change of that enterprise.