There is a compelling need to ensure that the points of view and preferences of stakeholders are fully considered and incorporated into natural resources management strategies. Stakeholders include a diverse group of individuals in several sectors that have an interest in how natural resources are managed. Typically, stakeholders with an interest in groundwater resources include groups who could be affected by the manner in which the resource is managed (e.g., farmers who need water for irrigation; municipalities and individuals who need drinking water, agencies and organizations that want to maintain in-stream flows to support ecosystems, etc.) Refugio County in South Texas provides an interesting case study since several groups of water users in the region are working with researchers at Texas A&M University-Kingsville (TAMUK) to develop decision-support models that incorporate stakeholder concerns. The focus of this paper is to provide a series of arguments and approaches about the ways in which stakeholder issues have recently been incorporated into environmental models, to briefly describe some of the TAMUK efforts to develop groundwater models that incorporate stakeholder inputs, and to present and discuss a method in which communication research can be used to obtain stakeholder preferences input into modeling efforts.

The knowledge deficit model with regard to the public has been severely criticized in the sociology of the public perception of science. However, when dealing with public decisions regarding scientific matters, political and scientific institutions insist on defending the deficit model. The idea that only certified experts, or those with vast experience, should have the right to participate in decisions can bring about problems for the future of democracies. Through a type of "topography of ideas", in which some concepts from the social studies of science are used in order to think about these problems, and through the case study of public participation in the elaboration of the proposal of discounts in the fees charged for rural water use in Brazil, we will try to point out an alternative to the deficit model. This alternative includes a "minimum comprehension" of the scientific matters involved in the decision on the part of the participants, using criteria judged by the public itself.

The importance the Brazilian government has given in the last few years to the dissemination of science points out the necessity of a more discerning analysis about the establishment of this subject on the public agenda and the related public policies undertaken. This work tries to contribute to the debate as an inquiry about the policies to popularize and disseminate Science and Technology (S&T) established by the Science and Technology Popularization and Dissemination Department, which was created in 2004. In order to do so, theoretical references from Public Policy Analysis, the Studies of Science, Technology and Society (SSTS), and Public Communication of Science are used. Furthermore, we analyze some of the results from research on Science and Technology Understanding carried out in Brazil in 2006. As a final point, this associated approach aims at identifying some of the limiting factors related to science dissemination actions in Brazil.

In 2007 the Life Long Learning Programme (previously Socrates) of the European Commission has started. The programme offers to teachers, educators and policy-makers of the education sector the opportunity to be funded for participating at various training courses organized in all EU countries by international networks and projects. The SEDEC course will be included in that list in 2008. The article shortly present how to ask for a grant.

Probably among the first to deal with it, nearly sixty years ago, Norbert Wiener, the founding father of cybernetics (The human use of human beings. Cybernetics and Society, Houghton Mifflin Company, London, 1950), prefigured its opportunities, as well as its limitations. Today, it is a quite common belief. We have entered (are entering) a new, great era in the history of human society: the age of information and knowledge.

If one of aims of science today is to respond to the real needs of society, it must find a new way to communicate with people and to be acquainted with their opinions and knowledge. Many science museums in Europe are adopting new ways to actively engage the public in the debate on topical scientific issues. The Museum of Science and Technology "Leonardo da Vinci" in Milan (partner of the SEDEC project) has thus experimented some formats for dialogue with teachers and with the public in general. Our experience shows that museums can be places where science and the public on the one hand and democracy on the other meet.

To design teaching materials starting from the subject matter in Science field, from the contents of textbooks or by studying the syllabuses are regular practices within schools. The SEDEC project proposes concrete and innovative modalities of conceiving teaching materials starting from teachers perception of science and by talking with them about their ideas and needs regarding teaching Science. A deep discussion of the relationships between science education and European citizenship has been another important ingredient of this new process of didactic design.

The first step of the SEDEC project has been a survey on teachers and pupils perception of science, scientists, and the European dimension of science. Different research actions have been organized for the different targets, and have been held in the six countries involved in the project: Czech Republic, France, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Romania. This article will present the results of a questionnaire distributed between European teachers. A research on the scientific imagery should have an opposite perspective to the one of a teacher at school; whereas the latter, the keeper of a knowledge, has the usual task of transferring and checking the knowledge in their students, a researcher has to record and describe their interior world relating to science – the information, but especially the images, the expectations, the emotions related to it.

IUFM is a centre for the in-service training of teachers and the development of didactic research. IUFM contribution to the SEDEC project is essentially built on a reflexion on educational implications of the links between science and European citizenship. We are convinced that European citizenship may be developed in scientific activities in school, by the introduction of communication moments, where pupils have to express and defend their ideas, and also to understand and accept the others’ ones. We have implemented two activities using the results of the SEDEC survey on science perception, that make the pupils get a better view on scientific research, especially in the knowledge of two scientific “jobs”, astronomer and botanist. Our approach consists of allowing the children express their conceptions of these jobs, of organising a debate to clarify these ideas, and of confronting them with other pupils’ opinions in Europe, with the history of the involved science and with direct testimonies of scientists. The project should be pursued in allowing classes in Europe to communicate about a scientific problem and so, to live their European citizenship.

The first step of the SEDEC project has been a survey on teachers and pupils perception of science, scientists, and the European dimension of science. Different research actions have been organized for the different targets, and have been held in the six countries involved in the project: Czech Republic, France, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Romania. This article will present the analysis of more then 1000 drawings realized by 9 and 14 years old pupils and representing "a scientist". Form the drawings emerge stereotypes, fears, desires, expectations and more, a whole imaginery that has to be taken in account for an effective educative adn communicative action.