Public Understanding of Local Lead Contamination

Residents of Herculaneum, Missouri have been influential in shaping the management of contamination challenges resulting from the community’s proximity to the last primary lead processing plant in the United States. This paper provides a nuanced examination of two perspectives of resident activist groups involved in lead-related controversy in Herculaneum. Ethnographic data collection and storyline analysis were used to trace the evolution in local views from resembling an industrialist–environmentalist dichotomy to more compromising positions associated with ecological modernization. Implications for characterizing public environmental perspectives in the US as beginning to entertain certain aspects of the ecological modernist paradigm are discussed

The Impacts Of Lead Contamination On The Community Of Herculaneum, Missouri

Lead contamination in Herculaneum, Missouri presents a complex context where the long history of a large lead processing plant has created an environmental health hazard. Local residents have been forced to balance their interest in promoting a clean and healthy local environment against their desire to preserve community identity and honor the history of their city and its most prominent industry. Additionally, contamination and related controversy has substantively impacted this community and its citizens on multiple levels--e. g., education, health, and financial well-being. The study presented in this dissertation explores not only the impact of contamination upon the community, but also the influence of the community upon local lead management. The study crosses disciplinary boundaries and is situated at the intersection of science education literature with environmental policy and public understanding of science research. The research questions guiding the project focused on: 1) the approaches taken in applying regulatory tools to the management of local lead contamination, and: 2) the ways that local stakeholders describe the problem of lead contamination in Herculaneum. Accordingly, the findings of this project reflect two primary themes. First, a policy cycle in which the understandings of lead contamination and management is described. The influence of this local policy cycle on the revision of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for lead in 2008 is discussed as a second policy cycle in which the definition of lead contamination on the national scale was expanded and refined. Second, two activist perspectives that have dominated local lead controversy over the past decade are characterized and changes in their activist strategies are traced. Community Health Activists advocated for increased regulation and restrictive measures to protect the health of local community members from lead industry activities. Community Preservation Activists fought restrictive regulatory measures and advocated instead for initiatives that would support community prosperity and growth. The dissertation concludes with a secondary analysis of the findings in terms of environmental policy learning, defined here as the adaptation of stakeholder perspectives and approaches in response to changes in physical or political conditions. The ways that environmental policy learning influenced changes in both policy approaches and stakeholder perspectives with regard to lead management in Herculaneum provide insight into educational dimensions of the context of lead contamination in Herculaneum in terms of changes in the perspectives and approaches of local stakeholders. Implications for research in science studies, interpretive policy research, and science education, as well as for environmental regulatory representatives and citizen activists are explored. The dissertation concludes with a brief outline of two research studies stemming from this dissertation as directions for further work

Exploring the Development of Core Teaching Practices in the Context of Inquiry-based Science Instruction: An Interpretive Case Study

This paper describes our reflection on a clinical-based teacher preparation program. We examined a context in which novice pre-service teachers and a mentor teacher implemented inquiry-based science instruction to help students make sense of genetic engineering. We utilized developmental models of professional practice that outline the complexity inherent in professional knowledge as a conceptual framework to analyze teacher practice. Drawing on our analysis, we developed a typography of understandings of inquiry-based science instruction that teachers in our cohort held and generated a two dimensional model characterizing pathways through which teachers develop core teaching practices supporting inquiry-based science instruction

Reframing Understandings of Cultural Influences on Learning Science

This review essay addresses issues raised in Valerie Frède’s paper entitled: Comprehension of the night and day cycle among French and Cameroonian children aged 7–8 years

Field Experience as the Centerpiece of an Integrated Model for STEM Teacher Preparation

The purpose of this study was to provide a descriptive account of one pathway for preparing high-quality STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) teachers for work in high-need urban schools. In this account, we discuss the supports that STEM majors need in learning how to think about the content that they know well, through an educational perspective that focuses on teaching and learning. We also describe the approach that we use that integrates content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and three extensive teaching co-op experiences to facilitate the transition from successful STEM undergraduate students to effective teachers of STEM content. We suggest that by using the teaching co-op experiences to both filter and reflect on content and pedagogical content knowledge, the STEM undergraduates develop a particularly strong foundation of knowledge for teaching

‘All policy is local\u27: Punctuated Equilibrium Theory and the Politics of US Lead Regulation

Substantial changes in US policy regarding lead are explored through a punctuated equilibrium theory-based consideration of scientific advance reflected in environmental policy. Despite the century-long presence of the US’s oldest lead processing plant in Herculaneum, Missouri, the extent of local contamination identified in the early 2000s surprised residents, industrial representatives, and environmental regulators alike. Conditions in Herculaneum revealed disparities between current understandings of health protection from lead exposure and potential hazards associated with local conditions. A substantial disconnection between developments in the scientific understanding of toxic substances and regulation to protect the community appropriately from identified threats inspired a punctuation in the regulatory framework for managing lead contamination. Analysis of policy change in Herculaneum provides the basis to extend punctuated equilibrium theory in environmental policy contexts to incorporate scientific advances

Understanding Scientific Literacy Through Personal and Civic Engagement: a Citizen Science Case Study

Citizen science programs, which engage volunteers in varied aspeicts of scientific research projects, have been widely touted as a promising avenue for enhancing public scientific literacy and scientific civic engagement. The meanings volunteers make of citizen science experiences can influence the ways that scientific information is translated into action. This paper develops a conceptual framework for understanding scientific literacy in terms of personal and civic engagement with science. The framework is explored through a case study of citizen scientists’ reflections on their experiences in an ecologically focused citizen science program. Findings describe ways that participants drew on their citizen science experiences to use and produce science in and for personal and civic contexts. Implications for enhancing connections between citizen science and personal and civic engagement are discussed

Strange Bedfellows in Science Teacher Preparation: Conflicting Perspectives on Social Justice Presented in a Teach for America--University Partnership

Teach For America (TFA), a widespread and well-known route into the teaching profession, frequently partners with university-based education programs to prepare and certify its corps members. However, university-based teacher education programs frequently emphasize very different understandings of socially just education and priorities for training teachers from those of TFA. Accordingly, science teachers trained through TFA-university partnerships encounter conflicting understandings of science education, justice, and urban communities as they are introduced to teaching practice. In this ethnographic case study we explored the experiences and reactions of a cohort of TFA corps members in a science methods course as they engaged with TFA’s perspective focused primarily on enhancing students’ social mobility and the methods course emphasizing democratic equality through scientific engagement. The study considers intersections between TFA’s approach to teacher preparation and sociocultural perspectives on equitable science teaching. The study also lends insight into the contradictions and challenges through which TFA science teachers develop understandings about their role as science teachers, purposes and goals of science education, and identities of the students and communities they serve