Critical Voices In Science Education Research

This book is a collection of narratives from a diverse array of science education researchers that elucidate some of the difficulties of becoming a science education researcher and/or science teacher educator, with the hope that through solidarity, commonality, and “telling the story”, justice-oriented science education researchers will feel more supported in their own journeys. Being a scholar and teacher that sees science education as a space for justice, and thinking/being different, entry into this disciplinary field often comes with tense moments and personal difficulties. The chapter authors of this book break into many painful, awkward, and seemingly nebulous topics, including the intersectional nuances of what it means to be a researcher in the contexts of epistemic rigidness, white supremacy, and neoliberal restructuring. Of course these contexts become different depending on how teachers, students, and researchers are constituted within them (as racialized/sexed/gendered/disposable/valued subjects). We hope that within these narratives readers will identify with similar struggles in terms of what it means to desire to “do good in the world”, while facing subtle and not-so-subtle institutional, personal cultural, and political challenges.

We live in dangerous times when educational policies and practices are debated largely in terms of how they fit with the needs of the free market. This volume is a collection of writing by teacher-educators that draws on their unique biographies, experiences and perspectives to denounce these misguided norms. It explores what it means—practically and intellectually—to teach for social justice in conservative times. In a globalised world where the power of capital holds sway, the purposes of social institutions such as universities and schools is being refashioned in ways that are markedly instrumental and technicist in nature. The consequence is that teachers’ work is increasingly constrained by regimes of control such as standardised testing, accountability, transparency, and national curricula. In the meantime, large numbers of students and teachers are disengaging physically, emotionally and intellectually from learning. The contributors to this edited volume present both a powerful critique of these developments and a counter-hegemonic vision of teacher education founded on the principles and values of social justice, democracy and critical inquiry. Teacher education, they argue, involves a commitment to critical intellectual work that subjects some deeply entrenched assumptions, beliefs, habits, routines and practices to closer scrutiny. The contributing authors expose how ideology and power operate in seemingly blameless, rational ways to perpetuate social hierarchies based on class, gender, sexuality, race and culture.

This open access edited volume invites transdisciplinary scholars to re-vision science education in the era of the Anthropocene. The collection assembles the works of educators from many walks of life and areas of practice together to help reorient science education toward the problems and peculiarities associated with the geologic times many call the Anthropocene. It has become evident that science education—the way it is currently institutionalized in various forms of school science, government policy, classroom practice, educational research, and public/private research laboratories—is ill-equipped and ill-conceived to deal with the expansive and urgent contexts of the Anthropocene. Paying homage to myopic knowledge systems, rigid state education directives, and academic-professional communities intent on reproducing the same practices, knowledges, and relationships that have endangered our shared world and shared presents/presence is misdirected. This volume brings together diverse scholars to reimagine the field in times of precarity.

Volume III of this landmark synthesis of research offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art survey highlighting new and emerging research perspectives in science education. Building on the foundations set in Volumes I and II, Volume III provides a globally minded, up-to-the-minute survey of the science education research community and represents the diversity of the field. Each chapter has been updated with new research and new content, and Volume III has been further developed to include new and expanded coverage on astronomy and space education, epistemic practices related to socioscientific issues,design-based research, interdisciplinary and STEM education, inclusive science education, and the global impact of nature of science and scientific inquiry literacy. As with the previous volumes, Volume III is organized around six themes: theory and methods of science education research; science learning; diversity and equity; science teaching; curriculum and assessment; and science teacher education. Each chapter presents an integrative review of the research on the topic it addresses, pulling together the existing research, working to understand historical trends and patterns in that body of scholarship, describing how the issue is conceptualized within the literature, how methods and theories have shaped the outcomes of the research, and where the strengths, weaknesses, and gaps are in the literature. Providing guidance to science education faculty, scholars, and graduate students, and pointing towards future directions of the field, Handbook of Research on Science Education Research, Volume III offers an essential resource to all members of the science education community.

This open access book features contributions from a multidisciplinary team of leading and emerging scholars focused on democratization of risk assessment, management, and communication. The volume identifies and sheds light on key risk governance dilemmas related to public trust, risk perception and public participation. The first part of the book articulates the relationship among science, expertise, deliberation and public values, featuring an in-depth analysis of the concept of ‘motivated reasoning,’ and the role of trust, values and worldviews in understanding and addressing contemporary controversies over risk decision-making. The volume’s second part features eight case studies from three policy fields – energy, genomics, and public health – and a special section dedicated to vaccine decision-making for Covid-19. Chapters analyze the level, nature and mechanisms of public involvement in risk decision-making, assessing its contribution to the effectiveness and legitimacy of decisions. The case studies focus predominantly on Canada, but they draw on global scholarship and are of direct relevance for scholars and practitioners of risk governance in any country.

Addressing underlying issues in science education and teacher training, which contribute to continued underrepresentation of racial and ethnic minority students in STEM and STEAM subjects and careers, this timely volume illustrates how a critical postmodern science pedagogy (CPSP) can be used effectively to raise awareness of diversity issues amongst preservice teachers. Using a case study design consisting of class observations, interviews, content analysis, questionnaires, and instructional interventions in preservice teacher training, the volume bridges science and multicultural education and investigates how curricular development and teacher preparation can be used to ensure that science education itself promotes diversity within STEM, and throughout education. Chapters also examine the intersections of science education and science literacy for both students and teachers and, in doing so, promote the importance of positive and accurate representation of diversity within science and research discourse. The book attempts to raise awareness regarding the need for meaningful curricular reform that creates real opportunities to address historical and scientific misinformation, while increasing diversity and inclusion in schools and society. This important text will be of interest to postgraduate students, researchers, scholars, and preservice teachers in the fields of science and mathematics education, STEM, multicultural education, teacher education, urban education, and the sociology of education.

Bringing together a range of perspectives from tertiary language and culture teachers and researchers, this volume highlights the need for greater critical engagement with the question of language teacher identity, agency and responsibility in light of an ever changing global socio-political and cultural landscape. The book examines the ways in which various moral, ethical, and ideological dimensions increasingly inform language teaching practice for tertiary modern/foreign language teachers, both collectively as a profession but also at the individual level in everyday classroom situations. Employing a narrative inquiry research approach which combines brief autobiographical reflections with semi-structured interview data, the volume provides a comprehensive portrait of the processes ten teacher-researchers in Australia working across five different languages engage in as they seek to position themselves more purposefully within a critical, political and ethical framework of teaching practice. The book will serve as a springboard from which to promote greater understanding and discussion of the impact of globalisation and social justice corollaries within the field, as well as to mediate the gap between language teaching theory and practice, making this key reading for graduate students and researchers in intercultural communication, language teaching, and language teacher education.

The Routledge International Handbook of Autoethnography in Educational Research presents diverse and rigorous contemporary research at the intersection between autoethnography and educational research. The handbook investigates the bidirectional connection between autoethnography and educational research in relation to four themes: enhancing teaching and teacher education with autoethnography; enlarging doctoral study and supervision with autoethnography; conducting identity work and relationship-building via autoethnography; and promoting social justice through autoethnography. In addition to the synthesising introduction and conclusion chapters, the 27 main chapters in the handbook cover current research from Africa, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Venezuela. The chapters present novel applications of several key concepts and research methods, including activism, arts-based research, critical reflection, decolonising feminism, doctoral study and supervision, hybrid identities, Indigenous research, migrant education, racism, researcher self-efficacy, teacher identity, visual autoethnography and writing as voice. This book will be of use to all researchers, and doctoral and Masters students, using qualitative and autoethnographic methods in Education and related fields.