Inspired by Freire's principle of dialogue, in this article we present a series of dialogues and critical syntheses between a science teacher-researcher with 35 years of experience and an early-career science teacher-researcher. We explore being in-between academic research in science education and high school teaching. Following Anzaldúa's…

This is a story of becoming. In this creative non-fiction essay, I share a case study of an informal science program for high school aged youth that took place over 5-weeks one summer in an urban park in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. I conducted observations, interviews, and artifact analysis to explore how youth environmental interest and identity…

In this paper, we--a participatory action group--use the tenants of critical pedagogy to articulate how youths developed relationships for and with STEM disciplinary practices through participation in spaces outside of the official scripts of their high school STEM classrooms in the United States. Spaces included their robotics team, a hybrid…

The exploitation of animals for human purposes raises several ethical concerns in the educational realm that ought to be carefully dealt with. Derived from the content analysis of sample of 39 Portuguese secondary and high school textbooks, this study aims to understand how factory-farmed animals are represented within the following themes: food…

In this paper, we present our study into how teaching practices in chemistry are socially stratified under the center-suburban divide in a medium-sized city, located in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The paper mainly draws upon the Bourdieusian-inspired concepts of institutional habitus and symbolic capital to examine how institutional discourses…

Native Americans are the least represented population in science fields. In recent years, undergraduate and graduate level summer research programs that aimed to increase the number of Native Americans in science have made some progress. As new programs are designed, key characteristics that address science self-efficacy and science identity and…

What affect does female participation in the Training Future Scientist (TFS) program based on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and Maslow's Hierarchies of Needs have on achievement levels in science and their attitude toward science and interest in science-based careers? The theoretical framework for this study was developed through a…

Despite acknowledging issues of inequity within science education, practices, standards, and reform-guiding documents like the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) still fall short in actions that result in substantive and sustained progress in achieving their expressed goals and expectations. Issues of inequity in science…

Amid a broader sociopolitical milieu of division, disagreement, and uncivil debate, this study investigates instances of disagreement among students in a high school science classroom as they attempt to answer the civic question of "what should we do" about climate change, a long contentious topic in the USA. Using a theoretical…

In this article, we wade through the muckiness of ethics in science, teaching, and teacher education, in the form of a generative metalogue. Grounded in Sara's experience with preservice teachers learning about ethics through a case study of a high school dissection, we contend with what it means to shift away from colonial and masculinist…

Developing and integrating culturally aligned curriculum models which promote use of resources, such as indigenous artefacts, has been a challenge in science curriculum reforms. The study focused on the development of an integrated indigenous-pedagogical model for use in high school physics curriculum. The views of elders, teachers and learners in…

This article considers science teaching and learning as may be understood through the integration of indigenous artefacts into physics curriculum in Zimbabwean schools. It comments significance of and elaborates on the issues raised in Nadaraj Govender and Edson Mudzamiri's paper entitled: Incorporating indigenous artefacts in developing an…

Informal learning organizations such as museums, zoos, aquaria, gardens, and community-based organizations are often positioned as having programming that fill a void that may exist in the lives of youth participants. Often these institutions do not recognize the assets that youth gain from their own homes and communities and bring to bear in…

Hydraulic fracturing ('fracking'), like other complex social and environmental issues, is a controversy about science which raises educational questions about how best to prepare young people to understand, respond to and, where necessary, act (or not) in response. It raises political questions. We present a state-of-the-art review of research…

In this forum, we discuss the need for multicultural education that is supported by culturally relevant pedagogy to fashion science teaching that intimately connects science content to students' sociocultural and linguistic experiences. In Nepal, teacher education programs and teachers' pedagogical practices view students' multiple cultural and…