A Story of Bodying In Science Education

In poetic dialogue with BecomingAlivewithinScienceEducation(Research):ThinkingwithLifeHistory(ies),BodiesandStickiness, stories of bodying and body(ies) of work are playfully explored

In Conversation With Fikile Nxumalo: Refiguring Onto-Epistemic Attunements For Im/possible Science Pedagogies

This chapter elucidates critical concepts of place in relation to Black-feminist and more-than-human geographies in the context of early childhood education. This conversation helps get at pressing political contexts for science education that are often excluded in white educational spaces. Our conversation with Dr. Nxumalo offers practical starting points for researchers interested in playing with the messy intersections of materiality, settler-colonialism, white supremacy, Indigenous knowledges, and more-than-human kin

The Science-Ethics Nexus: A Speculative Posthumanist Examination of Secondary School Science

School science curricula habitually encourages students to develop science knowledge alongside ‘ethical understanding’, the moral theory of right and wrong. Drawing from the ideas of Karen Barad, Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti, this paper critically examines the ‘science-ethics nexus’ in Australian secondary schooling. In doing so, it offers a renewed definition of ethics that negates humanism’s anthropocentrism and problematises humanist dualisms by centring a relational world. While posthumanism and new material feminism directly and critically engages with science and ethics, there is limited attention to how it might renew our understanding of these ideas in schools. Thus, the research question driving this study is, How does posthumanism help renew thinking about the science-ethics nexus in secondary schooling? A thinking-feeling-doing diffractive practice is utilised to analyse two data sources: the Science and Ethical Understanding streams within the Years 7–10 Australian Curriculum and a speculative short story by the first author, The Beforetimer. ‘Plugging in’ concepts of posthumanist ethics and relationality, this alternative methodological approach mobilises the power of diffractive forces to help illuminate how the science-ethics nexus in schools can reproduce onto-epistemological traditions of ‘Euro-Western’ cultural and masculinist hegemony. This hegemony restricts diverse cultural approaches to understanding the science-ethics nexus by (a) giving credence to reason, as divorced from emotions, and objectivity; (b) defining ethics as separate from knowledge production; and (c) undermining ethical responsibility by merely associating it with specific topics/issues. In contrast, integrating posthumanist ethics in school science requires those implicated to explicitly attend to cultural hegemony and relationality and to place ethics at the centre of knowledge production. Pursuing a posthumanist ethics in science education must do more than critique anthropocentrism/humanism broadly but also interrogate and unsettle this Euro-Western hegemony over diverse ways-of-knowing-being

‘It’s All There.’: Entanglements of Teacher Preparation and Induction

Teacher preparation and induction are two notable hallmarks of teacher-becoming commonly presumed to be detached from one another, forcing teacher candidates to transition linearly from one phase to another. Our study challenges this notion through one newly developed teacher residency programme where participating teacher residents are positioned to navigate the simultaneous entanglement of concepts. Using critical posthumanist theories alongside poetic inquiry, this study works at the speculative middles of teacher preparation and induction. We examine a small slice of data from a larger study to zoom into individual interviews with undergraduate teacher residents to explore the question: What does the entanglement of teacher preparation and induction reveal about becoming a teacher? Through our analysis we found that becoming a teacher is (a) fraught with multidimensional relations of obligation; (b) disrupts linear conceptions of space and time; and (c) functions as a co-constitutive property to the production of practices. Furthermore, these findings illuminate ways a critical posthumanist lens might render new questions thinkable for teacher education practice and research. Examining how one residency programme works at the ‘speculative middles’ of multiple concepts produces an abundance of reverberating implications for expanding a non-linear engagement with research on teacher becoming

Conclusion: Another Complicated Conversation

This edited collection is not just a conventional “body of work,” but a living-breathing community of more-than-human potential. Writing, researching, questioning, and yes, even, feeling; perhaps another science education is actually possible

Introduction

This edited volume invites transdisciplinary scholars to re-vision science education in the era of the Anthropocene. The collection encompasses the works of educators from many walks of life and areas of practice together to help reorient science education toward the problems and peculiarities associated with the geologic times many call the Anthropocene

Catalyzing red list assessments of underrepresented Taxa through partner networks and student engagement

Global biodiversity decline is continuing largely unabated. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species (hereafter, Red List) provides us with the gold standard for assessments, but taxonomic coverage, especially for invertebrates and fungi, remains very low. Many players contribute to the Red List knowledge base, especially IUCN Red List partners, IUCN-led assessment projects, and the Specialist Groups and Red List Authorities (RLA) of the IUCN Species Survival Commission. However, it is vital that we develop the next generation of contributors and bring in new, diverse voices to build capacity and to sustain the huge assessment effort required to fill data gaps. Here, we discuss a recently established partner network to build additional capacity for species assessments, by linking academia directly into the assessment processes run by Specialist Groups and RLAs. We aim to increase Red List “literacy” amongst potential future conservationists and help students to increase publication output, form professional networks, and develop writing and research skills. Professors can build Red List learning into their teaching and offer Red Listing opportunities to students as assignments or research projects that directly contribute to the Red List. We discuss the opportunities presented by the approach, especially for underrepresented species groups, and the challenges that remain