Towards a viable response to COVID-19 from the science education community

This is the final version. Available on open access from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto via the DOI in this recordThe COVID-19 pandemic has touched almost every corner of the planet and continues to impact on lives, livelihoods, economies and cultures. It is both a human and a global phenomenon. Making sense of what is happening requires an understanding of a number of scientific ideas including viruses, transmission, incubation and vaccination. These are life and death issues and yet the public and their political leaders often display a deliberate mistrust of the science and scientists. How might the science education community respond? We pose a series of questions designed to provoke a strong response to COVID-19 from our community and our colleagues: “How well has the science curriculum prepared the world’s public for COVID-19?”; “How much science education should be online from now on?”; “Are we learning from the current situation?”; “Is science education research producing knowledge that protects society from catastrophic events?”; “How should our working practices change to make science education more resilient, more useful and more transparent?”; “What are the ethics and politics of social distancing and how do they affect science education?”; “What pedagogies might we need to turn to in the future?”; and, “What role should business and industry play in funding science education research and development?” In our attempt to stimulate the development of a vision for science education in the postpandemic era, we offer initial thoughts about moving forward. What we offer is a departure point, an invitation for the community to engage with pressing issues in science education. The main question we pose is the following: What can be done, and what can be done differently? We envision that this paper will provide some guidance to the readers to re-think the complex systems and socio-political contexts within which people come to learn and practice science and to conceptualize these processes through a social justice lens. We argue that a social justice informed approach towards shaping a vision for science education in the post-pandemic era is of paramount importance and that failure to do so will only serve as a way of perpetuating existing inequalities

“I am a young immigrant woman doing physics and on top of that I am Muslim”:Identities, intersections, and negotiations

Framed within intersectionality and using science identity as a unit of analysis, in this single case study I explore the barriers, difficulties, and conflicts that Amina, a young Muslim woman, immigrant in Western Europe confronted throughout her trajectory in physics and the ways in which her multiple identities intersected. The main sources of data consisted of three long biographical interviews, which were analyzed through a constant comparative method. The analysis of the data provided insights into how intrapersonal, interpersonal, sociocultural factors, alongside a myriad of experiences nurtured Amina's intersectional identities and what this may mean for Muslim women's participation in physics. The findings are summarized in two main assertions: (a) Amina was confronted with various barriers across her journey in physics with the intersection of religion and gender being the major barrier to her perceived recognition due to cultural expectations, sociopolitical factors, and negative stereotypes and (b) Amina's social class, religion, gender performance, and ethnic status positioned her as Other in various places throughout her trajectory in physics, and consequently hindered her sense of belonging. These findings suggest the urgency and importance of: (a) examining the intersection of science identity with other identities, especially, religion, gender, and ethnicity for the purpose of extrapolating a more comprehensive understanding of how minoritized groups participate in science; (b) rethinking recognition through an explicit intersectionality lens across various geographical and sociopolitical contexts; and (c) transforming physics into a diverse world where multiple ways of being are recognized, where minoritized groups will not have to compartmentalize parts of their identities to exist, and where they can perform their authentic and intersectional identities

'It is not the time for intifada': a framing and semiotic analysis of televised representations of the 2013 cypriot protests

The study of the media–protest relation ‘is perhaps the oldest and most-travelled trail in studying the media/social movement dynamic’ (McCurdy, 2012, p. 244). Yet although ‘social movements and the protests they launch are essentially visual phenomena’ (Mattoni and Teune, 2014, p. 876), scant attention has been paid so far to the visual as a site of semiotic struggle over media representations by protest movements (exceptions being Corrigall-Brown and Wilkes, 2012; Doerr et al., 2013; Phillips, 2011). Television, as a prime site for visual rhetoric, has been shown to be deeply ambivalent towards protest, oscillating between delegitimising and legitimising practices (Fahlenbrach, 2014). The Cypriot protests in March 2013, addressed in this chapter, failed to evolve into a robust anti-austerity protest movement (Charalambous and Ioannou, forthcoming). As mainstream media constitute an important ‘opportunity structure’ for social movements (Cammaerts, 2012) and define, along with other factors, their dynamics, it is important to study media representations of the Cypriot protests

Quantifying the Environmental Benefits of a Solvent-Based Separation Process for Multilayer Plastic Films

Food packaging often appears in the form of multilayer (ML) plastic films, which leverage the functional properties of different polymers to achieve specific food protection goals (e.g., oxygen, water, and temperature barriers). These properties are essential to enable long shelf lives, reduce refrigeration usage, mitigate food waste, and increase food accessibility. However, ML f film production processes generate large amounts of plastic waste that cannot be mechanically recycled. Recently, we have proposed a process, which we call solvent-targeted recovery and precipitation (STRAP), that enables the separation and recycling of the constituent polymers of ML films. This technology uses a series of solvent washes that selectively dissolve and precipitate target polymers. Quantifying the environmental benefits of STRAP over virgin resin production is essential for the commercial deployment of this technology. This work uses life cycle assessment (LCA) methods to evaluate these impacts in terms of carbon footprint, energy use, water use, and toxicity. We analyze three STRAP process variants that use anti-solvent and temperature-driven precipitation and that target different types of ML films. Our analysis reveals that a couple of STRAP process variants can provide environmental benefits over virgin film production and also provides valuable insight into the key components of ML films and of the STRAP process that are responsible for the highest impacts. Ultimately, we believe that the proposed analysis framework can lead to the design of more environmentally-friendly ML films and recycling processes