<p>Responses to Irrelevant and Alienating Science-Teaching of Urban and Other Youth </p><p>BACKGROUNG: Personal experiences in teaching science in different high-school contexts in Western Canada and a survey of recent relevant literature suggest that science-teaching that uses content, materials and laboratory practices that appear to be disconnected to the students’ daily lives may do little to reduce drop-outs in cases of the so-called “students at risk”. STUDY: Contrast science teaching strategies for at risk youth in selected Canadian cities and in urban areas of cities in Spain and (potentially) other countries, and make inferences about the science/biology-teaching strategies in those contexts that appear to respond to the problem of alienation of urban and other young students. RESEARCH QUESTION: In the context of the observed high schools with urban youth students, what pedagogic philosophical approach would adequately respond to the problematic disconnection between teaching materials, techniques & laboratory experimentation and the students’ everyday-life problems and events? IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY: The importance of responding to the research question is that the irrelevancy of science-teaching and inaccessibility of instrumentation used tend to alienate particular disenfranchised youth. This alienation is relevant to policies that aim at counteracting urban youth drop out.</p><p>Moreover, the insignificance of what is being lectured, demonstrated, or practiced in laboratory to urban youth in some main-stream schools could be translated into an epistemological and cultural domination, as students do not appear to gain control of their learning through that approach. This irrelevant teaching could be interpreted as responding to a social reproduction vision of education to which I propose an alternative critical, Freirean philosophical approach. PELIMINARY FINDINGS: Recent literature (discussing mostly North American data) has presented diverse science teaching approaches that are not only appealing but that also tend to increase the relevancy of the subject to the students and their participation level, modeled after the Inquiry and Constructivist concepts. However, in my experience and using Freirean analysis, this could be contested.</p>