Although science, technology, society and environment (STSE) education has gained considerable force in the past few years, it has made fewer strides in practice. We suggest that science teacher identity plays a role in the adoption of STSE perspectives. Simply put, issues-based STSE education challenges traditional images of a science teacher and science instructional ideologies. In this paper, we briefly describe the development of a multimedia documentary depicting issues-based STSE education in a teacher's class and its subsequent implementation with 64 secondary student-teachers at a large Canadian university. Specifically, we set out to explore: (1) science teacher candidates' responses to a case of issues-based STSE teaching, and (2) how science teacher identity intersects with the adoption of STSE perspectives. Findings reveal that although teacher candidates expressed confidence and motivation regarding teaching STSE, they also indicated decreased likelihood to teach these perspectives in their early years of teaching. Particular tensions or problems of practice consistently emerged that helped explain this paradox -including issues related to: control and autonomy; support and belonging; expertise and negotiating curriculum; politicization and action; and biases and ideological bents. We conclude our paper with a discussion regarding the lessons learned about STSE education, teacher identity and the role of multimedia case methods.

Recent policy documents from the Ontario Ministry of Education called for teachers to present a more authentic view of the nature of scientific practice at all levels of education. Sadly, this call for substantial curriculum change coincided with severe cuts in the education budget. The authors describe how two teachers collaborated with a university-based researcher/teacher educator to design and implement more authentic science in a Grade 7 classroom. The ways in which the teachers changed their views about science and science teaching, the anxieties they experienced, and the institutional constraints that impacted on their practice are discussed, and some more general features of the action research experience are described.

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The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were designed to address poor science and math performance in United States schools by inculcating globally competitive science, technology, engineering, and mathematics literacies relevant to participation in future society. Considering the complex network of influences involved in the development of the NGSS, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate how educational values are embedded in the discourse of the standards. Using critical discourse analysis and content analysis, we evaluated how themes related to (i) performance, (ii) accessibility, and (iii) innovation and creativity are discursively constituted in the NGSS. Our analysis indicates the NGSS prioritizes: measurable and reproducible performances; the standards appear to be based on a conception of accessibility closely aligned with equality, and self‐investment, and; innovation and creativity are discursively constituted as attributes that can be developed through specific, prescribed practices. We discuss these findings in relation to the goals of the NGSS and potential teaching and learning outcomes resulting from education based on the standards.

It is apparent that many of us live in a hyper-economized world, in which personal identities and routine practices are significantly oriented towards production and consumption of forprofit goods and services. Extreme consumerism resulting from this orientation often is associated with many personal, social, and environmental problems. Implicated as an agent, among many, in this problematic hyper-economized process is science education. Briefly, our literature reviews suggest that, under influences from apparently hegemonic forces of neoconservatism and neoliberalism, school science often functions to generate knowledge producers, including engineers, scientists and other theoretical workers-who, in turn, may develop and manage mechanisms of production of goods and services on behalf of global economic elite. At the same time, it also is apparent that school science generates a large class of citizens who are prepared, essentially, to serve as consumers-both in terms of faithfully following labor instructions from the aforementioned knowledge producers (who may be accountable mainly to their financiers) and also enthusiastically engaging in repeating cycles of consumption of goods and services. Such a use of education seems undemocratic, at the very least, and highly problematic, assuming an association between school science and many personal, social, and environmental problems. To perhaps bring about a more just and sustainable world, we offer a theoretical framework, along with a more pragmatic version of it, for organizing science and technology education in many contexts. Although based on principles like holism, altruism, realism, egalitarianism, and dualism that we suggest may help school science generate a citizenry willing and able to proactively contribute to the common good, we also urge readers to use it as a basis for further research and development. ß

Student-directed, open-ended scientific investigations and invention projects may serve to deepen and broaden students' scientific and technological literacy and, in so doing, enable them to succeed in democracies greatly affected by processes and products of science and technology. Science fairs, events at which student-led projects are evaluated and celebrated, could contribute to such positive personal and social outcomes.Qualitative data drawn from a national science fair over succeeding years indicate (after analyses of largely qualitative data, using constant comparative methods) that, apart from positive outcomes regarding science literacy, there may be some significant issues about the fair that warrant critical review. It is apparent from these studies that there are issues of access, image and recruitment associated with the fair. Qualification for participation in the fair appears to favour students from advantaged, resource-rich backgrounds.Although these students do benefit in a number of ways from the fair experience, it is apparent that science fairs also greatly benefit sponsors -who can, in a sense, use science fairs for promotional and recruitment purposes. These findings and claims raised, for us, some important questions possibly having implications for science education and for society more generally.

In many educational contexts throughout the world, increasing focus has been placed on socio-scientific issues; that is, disagreements about potential personal, social and/or environmental problems associated with fields of science and technology. Some suggest (as do we) that many of these potential problems, such as those associated with climate change, are so serious that education needs to be oriented towards encouraging and enabling students to become citizen activists, ready and willing to take personal and social actions to reduce risks associated with the issues. Towards this outcome, teachers we studied encouraged and enabled students to direct open-ended primary (e.g., correlational studies), as well as secondary (e.g., internet searches), research as sources of motivation and direction for their activist projects. In this paper, we concluded, based on constant comparative analyses of qualitative data, that school students' tendencies towards socio-political activism appeared to depend on myriad, possibly interacting, factors. We focused, though, on curriculum policy statements, school culture, teacher characteristics and student-generated research findings. Our conclusions may be useful to those promoting education for sustainability, generally, and, more specifically, to those encouraging activism on such issues informed by student-led research.

Future elementary school teachers often lack self-efficacy for teaching science and technology. They are particularly anxious about encouraging children to carry-out student-directed, open-ended scientific inquiry and/or technological design projects. Moreover, because this often also is the case with practising elementary school teachers, it is difficult for student-teachers to gain practical experience facilitating student-led project work during practicum sessions. To provide student-teachers with expertise and motivation for promoting student-directed, open-ended project work, therefore, a group of future elementary teachers were taken through a constructivism-informed 'apprenticeship' during their university-based teaching methods course and then invited to make project work the subject of the action research that they were required to complete during their practicum. In this paper, successes that one student-teacher (out of 78 studied) experienced in promoting student-directed, open-ended technological design projects are reported. Although she judged children's designs to be modestly successful, data indicate that her self-efficacy for promoting project work increased significantly. Analyses of qualitative data collected during the methods course and practicum also indicate that aspects of the curriculum, teachers, students and milieu appeared to contribute to this success. Such findings suggest that teacher educators should focus on helping future elementary teachers to develop expertise and motivation that would enable and encourage children to conduct technological design projects before conducting scientific inquiries. Such a tack may be the most pragmatic-and, arguably, epistemologically-sound-approach for helping 'science-and technology-phobic' student-teachers to move from the periphery to the core of practices in science and technology education.