Abstract
Science education policy is an example of public policy in the sense that it is developed through negotiation and compromise among relevant stakeholders with different value orientations. Although a theory called "Deliberative Democracy" has been popularized as one of the new trends in public policy research since the 1990s, a very similar approach was developed and adopted in Canada in the early 1980s in the field of science education policy development; specifically the Science and Education Study Project administered by the Science Council of Canada. To describe this project, the paper aims at deciphering (1) the origin and nature of the ideas, "Deliberative Inquiry" and "Deliberative Conference, " (2) the structure and concrete procedures in a Deliberative Conference, and as a case in point, (3) the Deliberative Conference held in the Canadian province of Alberta. After identifying similarities between Deliberative Democracy and Deliberative Conference, the paper concludes that Deliberative Conferences and Deliberative Inquiry in the Canadian project emerged independently from the theory of Deliberative Democracy developed in the area of public policy research, even though the essence of their rationales or philosophies was quite similar in principle. Finally, the paper discusses some implications of Deliberative Conferences for the process of science education policy making.
