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The purpose of this article is to examine how signifiers and empty signifiers may contribute to the mainstreaming of environmental and sustainability education in teacher education. We argue that the moniker of environmental and sustainability education is an empty signifier in that it fails to convey meaning about what it signifies. Tracing the history of the pre-sustainability, sustainability, and post-sustainability field signifiers, and their respective subfield signifiers (e.g., environmental education and education for sustainable development), we conduct a philosophical inquiry, augmented by a modified form of semiotic analysis, to expose the degree to which these signifiers are empty. The limitations and benefits of empty signification are explored through philosophical interpretation. Implications of empty signifier limitations are considered in teacher education and the manner in which they may contribute to the unsuccessful mainstreaming of environmental and sustainability education in teacher education. We conclude that a core or compulsory environmental and sustainability education course should be mandated in teacher education to ensure that all teacher candidates receive the education they require to educate future generations of children to live well on Earth.

This qualitative within-individual case design study involved six adolescents (age 10-14 years) engaging in a think-aloud observational protocol to read two texts on climate change from contrasting viewpoints. The participants completed a prior knowledge assessment and survey of technology used to assess potential mediating factors. Survey and observational data are presented as participant profiles. Results illustrated the effect of participants' background knowledge, emotional elicitation of text features, cognitive dissonance argument analysis due to the contrasting multimodal texts, and impact of visual images on participants' comprehension. Our data analyses revealed that there is an interconnected and nuanced relationship amongst many text and individual factors when adolescents engage in critical reading of SSI multimodal texts. This research provides direction for future science education research that support learners in critical reading of complex socioscientific topics as presented in multimodal texts with adolescent learners.

What insights emerge through researcher reflections on a Design-Based Research (DBR) curricular integration project that contribute to the professional learning of education faculty/researchers? To answer this question, two researchers captured their debriefing discussions and reflections after monthly meetings with participating teachers. The meetings familiarized the teachers with DBR methods and enhanced teachers' understanding of integrating literacy and science instruction. Data were open coded, collapsed into sub-categories and interpretations were then clustered into three themes. The first theme is our acknowledgement of the layers that needed to be peeled back to understand teacher participants' planning and assessment. The second theme is the realization that the teacher participants were novices with respect to understanding and practicing curricular integration. The final theme honors the value of DBR as a research and professional learning method. Findings are discussed in light of the scant literature that describes the experience of DBR educational researchers.

Science curriculum standards were mapped onto various texts (literacy readers, trade books, online articles). Statistical analyses highlighted the inconsistencies among readability formulae for Grades 2-6 levels of the standards. There was a lack of correlation among the readability measures, and also when comparing different text sources. Online texts were the most disparate with respect to text difficulty. These findings suggest implications for elementary teachers to support students who learn through reading online, science-based resources. As 21st-century learning through multi-modal literacies evolves, the readability of online, content-based text should be evaluated to ensure accessibility to all readers.

Over the past 50 years, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has increasingly influenced the nature and scope of education policies in primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors around the world. Policy suggestions in these sectors primarily stem from the results of their various international surveys such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), and the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). This paper discusses the etiology, key developments, and policy discussions associated with OECD's international surveys in compulsory and higher education settings within Canada and abroad. The authors examine the influence of the OECD on educational governance and the contested nature of international policy evidence in the educational policy sphere.

Set in the context of modeling-based learning (MBL), this research investigated the potential of epistemic frames as a theoretical and analytical framework for understanding teaching and learning practices used in classroom communities of practice. Epistemic frames are conceptualized as an orienting lens for a classroom community of practice that emerges out of how they organize knowledge structures and practices to support their ways of knowing. This research examined the types and organization of practices in the classroom where a MBL unit was implemented to understand what sense-making practices were used, and how these practices supported the classroom community's negotiation of understanding. Through this analysis, a sense of the viability of epistemic frames as a productive theoretical and analytical lens was revealed in terms of providing a better understanding of the nuances and context dependencies of what students and teachers do to make sense of real-world scientific phenomena in classrooms.

This research explores how explaining an anchoring phenomena and engaging students in investigations, as central designs of a model-based inquiry (MBI) unit, afforded or constrained the representation of scientific activity in the science classroom. This research is considered timely as recent standards documents and scholars in the field have highlighted the significance of identifying what features of scientific activity are important and how these can be represented for students in classrooms. Through taking advantage of qualitative research methods to closely examine the enactment of an MBI unit, both affordances and constraints were identified for each design. More specifically, explaining an anchoring phenomenon provided a context for more authentically framing the work of students, while investigations afforded students insight into the role these play in the refinement of models. Further, the teacher's attempts to support student reasoning and, at times, reasoning for students when they were found struggling were the most salient constraints identified connected to explaining an anchoring phenomenon and engaging students in investigations.

This paper provides a curricular critique of an environmental education policy framework called "Acting Today, Shaping Tomorrow" (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2009). Answers to the following two curricular questions: "What should be taught?" and "How it should be taught?" frame the critique. Scrutiny of the latter of the two questions through an examination of the conventional argument for integrated curriculum models and their relevance to K-12 environmental education comprises the first part of the critique. The second part of the critique examines utilization of a typology of integrated curriculum models to analyze an environmental education policy framework within the jurisdiction of Ontario, Canada. In conclusion, Ontario's environmental education policy framework tends toward an integrated curriculum model referred to as "selective infusion" illustrating a disconnect between curriculum theorists and designers. The implications for integrated curricular practice are identified, limitations of the critique are highlighted, and recommendations for improving the policy framework from a pragmatic curricular perspective are summarized.

While some students will pursue careers in science, all will engage with multimodal science-based texts. The effective use of language skills is essential to support sense making in science. The purpose of this study was to examine how elementary teachers integrated language within their science instruction, and how their instructional enactments impacted students' science and language outcomes. Our study utilized a mixed-methods research design based on a design-based research approach. Our findings draw upon a collaborative professional learning group involving (n=5) grade 5 teachers. Analyzing qualitative data produced instructional profiles documenting teachers' salient views and instructional practices regarding science and language integration. Furthermore, outcomes from science content, vocabulary, and language comprehension assessments demonstrated that effective science and literacy intervention significantly (p < 0.05) impacted student achievement. While integrated approaches were successful, the teachers varied in their enactment of the integrated curriculum unit, and thus impacted student achievement. We identified gaps in certain teachers' pedagogical views related to science and language integration. Our study recommends future research of integrated science and language instruction using design-based research as an innovative and pragmatic approach.

This research investigates the assumptions underlying the work of a research-practice partnership (RPP) made up of university science teacher educators and mentoring science teachers. With increased attention to what have been described as significant shifts proposed in science teaching and learning connected to recent standards documents in the United States, increased attention and possibilities exist for collaborative work with in-service mentoring teachers to not only focus on professional learning connected to these standards documents but to do so in ways that can increase the coherence between science teacher education programs and the local schools that preservice science teachers find themselves navigating as they learn to teach. Drawing on the design-based research paradigm connected to conjecture mapping, this current research articulated and tested, using qualitative methods, the design conjectures underlying mentor teachers' experience within professional learning as part of the RPP. In the end, design conjectures that supported teachers to take on "learner hat" experiences in early stages of the RPP followed by engagement in curriculum codesign and implementation supported mentor teachers in beginning to reconceptualize visions of their teaching and learning while also appropriating and tuning high-leverage tools to support a focus on student ideas in science classrooms. Finally, issues related to the complexity of teacher education programs were identified for needed increased attention into the future.

Science teachers struggle to implement and sustain new curricular ideas from professional development (PD) experiences. These PD opportunities are crucial for enacting real‐world changes to teaching practice and address pressing global challenges, such as the teaching and learning of socioscientific topics nested in school communities. Additionally, it is important to consider how school situative conditions are an important aspect in how science teachers learn, develop, and enact curricular practices in their classrooms. This paper is part of a special issue on Teacher Learning and Practice within Organizational Contexts. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to illustrate how researchers can frame research using the theory of practice architectures (TPA) as a lens to develop a dynamic socio‐material understanding of teacher learning within teachers' working environments and their local school communities. An ongoing multi‐year professional learning study with science teachers in an elementary school and secondary school was analyzed using TPA. Using a philosophical‐empirical approach, observations from PD sessions and collaborative meetings illustrated teachers' practices in the form of sayings, doings, and relatings and their changes over the duration of the observations with associated modifications in schools' practice architectures. Although specific school conditions, such as timetable restrictions and curriculum accountability, constrained teachers' practices they were still enabled to learn and develop their practices. Overall, TPA was found to be an insightful framework for theorizing changes in science teaching practices of teachers' saying, doings, and relatings at their school sites. Future research focused on PD within schools would benefit from using a TPA approach to theorizing science teacher learning and curriculum enactment practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We offer insights for using design-based research (DBR) as a model for constructing professional development that supports curriculum and instructional knowledge regarding science and literacy integration. We spotlight experiences in the DBR process from data collected from a sample of four elementary teachers. Findings from interviews, focus groups and researcher field notes elucidated: the value in establishing a collaborative foundation for professional discourse, the teacher participants developing nascent knowledge of curricular integration in science and literacy, and their apprehensions about using digital technology to support their professional development. Implications are presented for professional development facilitators and researchers using DBR as an innovative approach for teacher development.

This study examined the assessment literacy of primary/junior teacher candidates in all four years of their concurrent program. Candidates from each year of the program completed a survey pertaining to self-described level of assessment literacy, main purposes of assessment, utilization of different assessment methods, need for further training, and suggested methods for promoting assessment literacy in university and practice teaching settings. Levels of self-efficacy remained relatively low for teacher candidates across each of the four years of this program. Most candidates suggested summative purposes for assessment and only a minority expressed formative purposes. They favoured observational techniques and personal communication. (Contains 3 tables. Assessment Literacy Survey is appended.)

The science vocabulary from a science curriculum standards document (Ministry of Education Ontario, 2007) was classified by morphological developmental level and compared to the grade level topics of the curriculum (grades 1 to 8). Descriptive statistical analyses highlight the complex nature of science vocabulary and the incompatibilities between the conceptual nature of science vocabulary and the developmental reading levels of elementary students. These findings provide implications for teachers to encourage learning in science through scaffolded vocabulary instruction with multimodal, integrated resources. As learning through multiliteracies evolves in the twenty-first century, science-specific vocabulary acquisition should garner renewed interest to ensure that discipline-based texts are reflective of content standards and are accessible to all readers.

This article examines the influence of a practicum teaching experience on two pre-service science teachers. The research is focused on examining a practicum in a secondary science department that actively promotes the teaching and learning of science as inquiry. We investigated the process through which the pre-service science teachers integrated their practical knowledge, and examined this in the context of the quantified reformed instruction they enacted. Using a mixed methods design, we have quantified these pre-service science teachers' practice using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (Piburn et al. 2000), in concert with a narrative methodology drawn from in-depth interviews. Our analysis of the data indicates two important conclusions. The first is the importance of a consistently reformed image of science education being presented and practiced by both science teacher educators and cooperating teachers. The second is the recognition that a consistently reformed image may not be sufficient, of itself, to challenge pre-service teachers' views of science education. Pre-service teachers appear to be heavily influenced by their biographies and own science education. Consequently, it appears the extent to which a pre-service teacher identifies problems of teaching and learning, and then works toward possible resolution, influences their progress in shaping reformed views of science education.

This article considers the impact of scaffolding on pre-service science teachers' constitution of identities as teachers of inquiry. This scaffolding has consisted of 2 major components, a unit on current electricity which encompasses the inquiry continuum and an open inquiry which is situated in context of classroom practice. Our analysis indicates 2 major themes. The first is the importance of scaffolding inquiry as a strategy for engaging in the discourses, experiences, and emotions that are foundational to the constitution of identity from the post-structural perspective. The second theme is that the opportunity to conduct an open inquiry, while concurrently considering its pedagogical implications, provides our pre-service teachers with an appreciation of the value of inquiry.

Our study explored the professional characteristics and contexts of school-based environmental education (EE) leaders within elementary and secondary schools. Using complementary mixed-methods (surveys and focus groups) we detail the characteristics of EE leaders in these schools. Our analyses revealed that these leaders were predominantly classroom or subject-based teachers and experienced practitioners. They demonstrated the ability to negotiate the constraints of schools and implement school-wide EE initiatives due to their personal commitment to student learning about and for the environment. With our findings and using distributed leadership principles, we provide recommendations to support and enhance EE leadership in schools.

The purpose of this study was to explore environmental education (EE) practices within elementary and secondary schools. Using complementary mixed-methods (survey and focus groups), we detail these practices in schools ("n"?=?58) within one school district. Our findings are categorized according to classroom teaching conditions affecting EE, and whole-school perspectives of the supports and resources for EE in these schools. Our analyses reveal that while typical normative teaching and cultural constraints of schools are still evident (e.g. curriculum standards, school-level organization), there are identifiable practices involving administrators and teachers negotiating these challenges due to their personal commitment to schools and the environment. In particular was a provincial environmental certification program called "Ecoschools" supporting environmental educators' initiatives at their respective schools. We conclude with a discussion of recommendations based on an interpretation of our findings in relation to the school reform literature on how to enhance EE in schools and propose future research opportunities.

This article investigates the extent to which a science department script supports the teaching and learning of science as inquiry and how this script is translated into individual teachers' classrooms. This study was completed at one school in Canada which, since 2000, has developed a departmental script supportive of teaching and learning of science as inquiry. Through a mixed-method strategy, multiple data sources were drawn together to inform a cohesive narrative about scripts, science departments, and individual classrooms. Results of the study reveal three important findings: (1) the departmental script is not an artefact, but instead is an ongoing conversation into the episteme, techne and phronesis of science teaching; (2) the consistently reformed teaching practices that were observed lead us to believe that a departmental script has the capacity to enhance the teaching of science as inquiry; and, (3) the existence of a departmental script does not mean that teaching will be "standardized" in the bureaucratic sense of the word. Our findings indicate that a departmental script can be considered to concurrently operate as an epistemic script that is translated consistently across the classes, and a social script that was more open to interpretation within individual teachers' classrooms.