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Spurred by a 2021 commitment by the European Union to adopt a carbon border adjustment mechanism to address carbon leakage in international trade, developed economies are giving such proposals serious consideration. This article considers the arguments for and against a border carbon adjustment (BCA) for Canada, considering the likely treatment of such measures by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and under Canada's major trade agreements with the European Union, the United States and Mexico, and Indo-Pacific partners. The authors analyze the likely impact of a BCA on carbon-intensive trade between Canada and these trading partners. They conclude that while a carefully designed Canadian BCA could be both WTO-legal and permissible under Canada's major trade agreements, serious political and economic challenges are likely to arise. Since BCAs are by nature protectionist, proponents must advance a stronger case for their effectiveness in addressing global carbon emissions if these mechanisms are to be widely adopted.

Adoption of evidence based instructional practices is not widespread in American institutions of higher education. This is due in part to reforms focusing on individual teaching practices rather than conditions for system reform. Since measurement of organizational conditions is critical for widespread change, we developed and validated the Survey of Climate for Instructional Improvement (SCII). SCII has 30 Likert-scale statements, 5 supplementary questions, and 9 demographic items. It is designed to measure five aspects of organizational climate in postsecondary settings: leadership, collegiality, resources, respect for teaching, and organizational support. The goal of this paper is to describe (a) our development process, (b) steps in validation, and (c) patterns in the data from 917 instructors at six institutions of higher education in the United States. Our results indicate that the instrument is reliable and has the potential to differentiate among institutions, disciplines, departments, and other demographic variables. Although the survey is interdisciplinary, we highlight notable organizational climate differences between STEM and non-STEM disciplines. We also identify organizational climate differences for cis-gender women and graduate student instructors, highlighting unique professional support needs for these groups. We expect our findings and the instrument to be useful for campus change leaders, faculty developers, higher education researchers, and discipline-based education researchers.

This chapter is designed to help you navigate common barriers that you may face in adopting active learning (or doing more active learning). Our commentary is a synthesis of the work done by STEM change researchers and a practical guide for STEM faculty and graduate students. We want to support you in seeking to adopt the best possible practices and to help you build a work environment in which you can feel valued and supported in using these practices. Implementing new teaching strategies is not easy. You may be changing what you have done for a long time. You may not have experienced these practices before. You may have tried and failed. But you are reading this chapter; you are taking a step in a new direction. As we discuss how to navigate common barriers to using active learning, we organize the barriers into one of three categories – personal attitudes and beliefs, social norms and values, and other features of the academic teaching setting that may impact practice. This is our conceptualization of the complex system in which college science teachers operate. As we navigate attitudes, norms, and context, we use illustrative quotes to demonstrate our ideas. Some of these statements are real quotes we have encountered ourselves in the battle to advocate for active learning, and others are dramatizations of the issue at play.

Researchers in various contexts have long struggled with an apparent disconnect between an individual’s level of understanding of biological evolution and their acceptance of it as an explanation for the history and diversity of life. Here, we discuss the main factors associated with acceptance of evolution and chart a path forward for evolution education research.

We validate the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) on undergraduate students using the Rasch model and utilize the MATE to explore qualitatively how students express their acceptance of evolution. At least 24 studies have used the MATE, most with the assumption that it is unidimensional. However, we found that the MATE is best used as two separate dimensions. When used in this way, the MATE produces reliable (α > 0.85) measures for (i) acceptance of evolution facts and data and (ii) acceptance of the credibility of evolution and rejection of non-scientific ideas. Using k-means cluster analysis, we found students express their acceptance of evolution in five distinct profiles: (i) uniform high acceptance; (ii) uniform moderate acceptance; (iii) neutral acceptance; (iv) acceptance of facts, but rejection of credibility; and (v) rejection of both facts and credibility. Furthermore, we found that knowledge of macroevolution moderately explains students’ acceptance profiles, corroborating previous claims that teaching macroevolution may be one way to improve students’ acceptance. We use these findings to express the first set of operational definitions of evolution acceptance and propose that educators continue to explore additional ways to operationalize evolution acceptance. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 54:642–671, 2017

Science practices play a central role in meaningful learning. We transformed a college introductory biology course to more practice-based learning environment, in which students constructed knowledge about evolution through explanation and argumentation. These practices, also known as mechanistic reasoning, are a form of scientific inquiry characterized in part by a shift toward reasoning about causal mechanisms. We posit that engaging in these practices may promote a cognitive and social approach to evolution, thereby engaging affective and logic-driven pathways to students’ evolution acceptance. In the intervention, we integrated multiple activities and technological tools to foster students’ explanatory, mechanistic reasoning. This approach was inspired in part by Robbins and Roy’s (2007) inquiry-based teaching unit that yielded improvements in college students’ explanations and acceptance of evolution. In particular, our investigation promoted sense making, evaluating, argumentation, and consensus building while providing rich, meaningful learning about natural selection. This data-driven strategy engaged students in evolutionary phenomena directly, another avenue to promoting conceptual change. This chapter presents results across a spectrum of evolution literacy components, including (1) conceptual change around natural selection, (2) mechanistic reasoning related to natural selection, and (3) engagement in argumentation around data.

Efficacy of the Measure of Understanding of Macroevolution (MUM) as a measurement tool has been a point of contention among scholars needing a valid measure for knowledge of macroevolution. We explored the structure and construct validity of the MUM using Rasch methodologies in the context of a general education biology course designed with an emphasis on macroevolution content. The Rasch model was utilized to quantify item- and test-level characteristics, including dimensionality, reliability, and fit with the Rasch model. Contrary to previous work, we found that the MUM provides a valid, reliable, and unidimensional scale for measuring knowledge of macroevolution in introductory non-science majors, and that its psychometric behavior does not exhibit large changes across time. While we found that all items provide productive measurement information, several depart substantially from ideal behavior, warranting a collective effort to improve these items. Suggestions for improving the measurement characteri...

The Postsecondary Instructional Practices Survey (PIPS) is a valid and reliable measure of self-reported instructional practices of postsecondary instructors, including individuals outside science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This paper describes the development and validation processes, scoring conventions and results outputs, and applications of the PIPS., Researchers, administrators, and policy makers need valid and reliable information about teaching practices. The Postsecondary Instructional Practices Survey (PIPS) is designed to measure the instructional practices of postsecondary instructors from any discipline. The PIPS has 24 instructional practice statements and nine demographic questions. Users calculate PIPS scores by an intuitive proportion-based scoring convention. Factor analyses from 72 departments at four institutions (N = 891) support a 2- or 5-factor solution for the PIPS; both models include all 24 instructional practice items and have good model fit statistics. Factors in the 2-factor model include (a) instructor-centered practices, nine items; and (b) student-centered practices, 13 items. Factors in the 5-factor model include (a) student–student interactions, six items; (b) content delivery, four items; (c) formative assessment, five items; (d) student-content engagement, five items; and (e) summative assessment, four items. In this article, we describe our development and validation processes, provide scoring conventions and outputs for results, and describe wider applications of the instrument.

Collecting data on instructional practices is an important step in planning and enacting meaningful initiatives to improve undergraduate science instruction. Self-report survey instruments are one of the most common tools used for collecting data on instructional practices. This paper is an instrument- and item-level analysis of available instructional practice instruments to survey postsecondary instructional practices. We qualitatively analyzed the instruments to document their features and methodologically sorted their items into autonomous categories based on their content. The paper provides a detailed description and evaluation of the instruments, identifies gaps in the literature, and provides suggestions for proper instrument selection, use, and development based on these findings. The 12 instruments we analyzed use a variety of measurement and development approaches. There are two primary instrument types: those intended for all postsecondary instructors and those intended for instructors in a specific STEM discipline. The instruments intended for all instructors often focus on teaching as well as other aspects of faculty work. The number of teaching practice items and response scales varied widely. Most teaching practice items referred to the format of in-class instruction (54 %), such as group work or problem solving. Another important type of teaching practice items referred to assessment practices (35 %), frequently focusing on specific types of summative assessment items used. The recent interest in describing teaching practices has led to the development of a diverse set of available self-report instruments. Many instruments lack an audit trail of their development, including rationale for response scales; whole instrument and construct reliability values; and face, construct, and content validity measures. Future researchers should consider building on these existing instruments to address some of their current weaknesses. In addition, there are important aspects of instruction that are not currently described in any of the available instruments. These include laboratory-based instruction, hybrid and online instructional environments, and teaching with elements of universal design.

Recent research suggests a relationship between understanding of macroevolutionary principles (such as phylogenetics) and acceptance of evolution in biology majors. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively investigate the relationship between ability to interpret phylogenetic trees (tree thinking) and acceptance of evolutionary theory for 92 university non-science majors before and after a general education biology course. We found that the majority of students taking the course held strong religious affiliations but were still open to having their mind changed and accepted evolution as a valid scientific theory. Students started and ended the course with a relatively high acceptance of evolutionary theory, but the nature of their acceptance changed significantly and we documented several such shifts. Additionally, we found a significant increase in students’ tree thinking understanding after instruction and a slight, but significant, correlation between evolution acceptance and tree thinking understanding. Our investigation demonstrated that targeted evolution instruction using a tree thinking approach may alter students’ acceptance of evolution, even if the students initially hold strong anti-evolution ideas. By learning how college students understand and develop ideas about evolution using a visual approach, we can better target areas of confusion and begin forming guidelines for effective evolution instruction.