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This paper reviews the literature on emergent technologies from the field of science education. In an effort to summarize the current state of research, and identify specific types of technologies that have recently “emerged” in K‐12 science classrooms, we review papers featured in leading science education venues in recent years. The reported trends suggest that, as a field, science education has become increasingly characterized by hermeneutic and alterity relations wherein the physical world is experienced indirectly through technological representations or has become secondary to students' experiences as it is “pushed aside” by emergent technological artifacts such as computer simulations, virtual labs, mobile devices, robots, games, and digital photography and drawing. As a result, science educators are faced with the challenge of helping students view technological instruments not as transparent and neutral devices that simply “depict reality” (naïve instrumentalism) and reveal what is “really” there (naïve realism), but as powerful epistemic tools that help co‐constitute the reality being investigated, often (re)shaping what counts as “real” in revolutionary ways. It is argued that new technologies do not actually emerge in sociocultural vacuum and that more attention needs to be been given to sociocultural aspects of technological innovation in science classrooms.

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