Astrid Steele

Our Practice, Their Readiness: Teacher Educators Collaborate to Explore and Improve Preservice Teacher Readiness for Science and Math Instruction

Since many preservice teachers (PTs) display anxiety over teaching math and science, four PT educators collaborated to better understand the PTs’ background experiences and attitudes toward those subjects. The research project provided two avenues for professional learning: the data collected from the PTs and the opportunity for collaborative action research. The mixed method study focused on: the relationship between gender and undergraduate major (science versus non-science) with respect to previous and current engagement in science and math, understanding the processes of inquiry, and learning outside the classroom. A field trip to a science center provided the setting for the data collection. From a sample of 132 PTs, a multivariate analysis showed that the science major of PTs explained most of the gender differences with respect to the PTs’ attitudes toward science and mathematics. The process of inquiry is generally poorly interpreted by PTs, and non-science majors prefer a more social approach in their learning to teach science and math. The four educators/collaborators reflect on the impacts of the research on their individual practices, for example, the need to: include place-based learning, attend to the different learning strategies taken by non-science majors, emphasize social and environmental contexts for learning science and math, be more explicit regarding the processes of science inquiry, and provide out-of-classroom experiences for PTs. They conclude that the collaboration, though difficult at times, provided powerful opportunities for examining individual praxis.

Troubling STEM: Making a Case for an Ethics/STEM Partnership

Set against the backdrop of a STEM-based (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) activity in a teacher education science methods class, the author examines the need for ethics education to be partnered with STEM education. To make the case, the origin of the STEM initiative, undertaken and strongly supported by both US government and corporate sources, is briefly recounted. The STSE initiative (science, technology, society and environment) is posited as a counterpoint to STEM. Also considered are: (a) an historical perspective of science and technology as these impact difficult individual and social decision making; (b) STEM knowledge generation considered through the lens of Habermas’ threefold knowledge typology; and (c) the experiences of the teacher candidates working through the STEM activity when an ethical challenge is posed. The author demonstrates the need for a moral component for science education and makes the case for a partnership between STEM and ethics education. Further, such a partnership has been shown to increase student enjoyment and motivation for their science studies. Three possible ethical frameworks are examined for their theoretical and practical utility in a science classroom.

The Seventh Current: A Case for the Environment in STSE Education

The author compares two frameworks, one proposed by Sauvé (2005) for environmental education (EE) and the other prepared by Pedretti and Nazir (2011) for Science, Technology, Society and Environment (STSE) education. With the aim of investigating the utility of the two frameworks as tools for analysis of science teaching practice, the author applies the two frameworks to a series of lessons designed and delivered by two secondary science teachers. The results indicate that the STSE framework might be useful, but only if a seventh current is added to the six currents already existing in the framework.RésuméL’auteur compare deux cadres, l’un proposé par Sauvé (2005) pour l’éducation à l’environnement (EE), et l’autre par Pedretti et Nazir (2011) pour l’enseignement des sciences, technologies, société et environnement (STSE). Dans le but d’évaluer leur utilité en tant qu’instruments d’analyse des pratiques d’enseignement des sciences, l’auteur applique les deux cadres à une série de leçons conçues et appliquées par deux enseignants des sciences au secondaire. Les résultats indiquent que le cadre STSE pourrait s’avérer utile, mais seulement si un septième courant est ajouté aux six courants qui figurent actuellement dans ce cadre.

Practising Environmental Citizenship in Egypt: Hopes and Challenges Encountered

This article examines the work of pre-service teachers in a new environmental education course at an Egyptian faculty of education, when they are given the assignment to investigate and take action with respect to an environmental issue in their community(s). Their explorations take us from apartment houses, through the farming countryside, past roadside canals and to city store fronts. Using a theoretical framework provided by critical place-based pedagogy, we analyze their work in (re)inhabitation and decolonization to further identify the challenges to, and the supports for environmental citizenship in Egypt. The Arab Spring resonates as the political backdrop for the research.

An Improbable International Collaboration: Finding Common Ground

Consider this a story about scholarly collaboration with a twist. The scholars live and work on opposite sides of the globe – one in Canada, the other in Egypt – and they have only ever communicated via digital media. Nonetheless, they have discovered a shared passion that fuels their work: to prepare teacher candidates to bring curiosity, wonder, dedication and a sense of caring for people and for natural environments into their classrooms. Presented in three parts, the authors share the circumstances and development of their initial collaborative environmental education project, and they reflect on the benefits and obstacles of their continued partnership. Finally, they discuss how they each interpret environmental education in their two different educational spheres.

I'm Just Going to Buy That!: Confronting Consumerism in Teacher Education.

Abstract As educators at a faculty of education, the authors found that teacher candidates (TCs) invariably purchased new materials whenever they had an assignment requiring some form of construction activity. They were concerned about this learned, consumer behavior; lessons of moderation in using the Earth’s resources are important elements of sustainability education. Humans are consumers in both a natural and an anthropological sense, but are capable of sustainable consumerism. Therefore, the authors wanted to promote moderation/sustainable consumerism through an educational intervention in their teacher-education classes. Inspired by Selby’s (2011) third proposition for education for sustainable contraction, they revised an existing art/science integration project where constructions would be created from recycled and/or natural materials. The TCs’ constructions, process work, and Reflection papers provided insight into their creative thinking, and learning, regarding sustainable consumerism.

Stories of learning: Inquiry-based pathways of discovery through environmental education

Abstract In our work in environmental education (EE) as part of formal schooling we partnered with local schools to explore the practice of embedding, or integrating EE within formal school curriculum using inquiry-based pedagogies. In this paper we report on and discuss our growing understanding of the practice of pedagogical documentation and the subsequent creation of learning stories within the context of EE. Our thinking is focused on how teacher practice in the use of learning stories might strengthen student self-determination in inquiry-based environmental education opportunities. We describe the E4E (Educating for Environment) school project, and provide samples of learning stories as evidence for analysis and discussion. Working with a grounded theory approach, we propose that student thinking in inquiry-based contexts might follow one or more of five thinking/learning pathways (reasoning, propositional, action-oriented, metacognitive and emotive). We close with comments on the benefits to students and educators alike, when we merge EE with learning stories.