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In-service teachers of science work with unique content and pedagogical experiences within a changing educational landscape. Understanding teacher agency in these circumstances will help researchers understand the actions that these teachers take. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to review how the agency of K-12 in-service teachers of science has been examined empirically in the science education research literature during the period of 2007-2020. Informed by grounded theory, we qualitatively analyzed 48 peer-reviewed articles, which we located using specific search criteria. We identified that science teacher agency is currently conceptualized largely paper-to-paper and without fully attending to the professional and lived experiences, and thus humanity, of science teachers; thereby, creating exciting opportunities for science education researchers to expand on both the breadth and depth around the theorization and operationalization of in-service science teacher agency. Recommendations are addressed.

There is extensive evidence showing that the climate system is warming and human behavior is linked to the change. Despite increasing attempts to integrate climate change into school curricula, teachers have challenges in preparing and implementing climate change lessons. The study aims to look at (a) the kinds of wondering questions middle school students construct after they are engaged in a climate change activity called 'It's a Gassy World' and (b) what teachers highlight in their reflections on these questions to improve their teaching. In this multi-case explorative study, the data comes from student artifacts, teachers' written reflections, and semi-structured conversational interviews with teachers. A constant-comparative analysis of students' wondering questions (N = 165) showed that the nature of the questions varies. These were grouped under three different categories: direct observation, interdisciplinary connections, and future projections questions. We then analyzed five teachers' written reflections and interviews from a cultural historical activity theoretical perspective. This analysis revealed that teachers paid particular attention to certain tools (physical and conceptual), norms (epistemic and teaching), emotions, and division of labor routines in classrooms. We discuss how students' wondering questions help teachers notice essential features of climate change learning such as spatiotemporal thinking.

Since most emotional regulation research is about teachers regulating their own emotions, this study sought to examine how teachers view emotions and respond to their students' emotions. Drawing from an interactional view of emotions and emotion regulation, five science teachers were interviewed for 60-75 minutes about the emotions experienced by their students, themselves, and scientists. They were also prompted to talk about how they respond to their students' emotions. Findings from the study include that the teachers limited their views of students' emotions along a positive/negative binary with a focus on academic emotions. These views were in contrast to their conceptions of their own emotions and those of scientists. In addition, the teachers described three teaching practices by which they implicitly and explicitly attempted to avoid student frustration: expressing their own excitement, downplaying students' expressions of frustration, and utilizing group work. To a lesser degree, the teachers shared how they acknowledged students' emotions in the classroom. It is concluded that the teachers' views of emotions were aligned with their practices to minimize student frustration since they viewed that emotion as an impediment to learning.

Although there is an interest in elevating youth voice within school settings, schools remain unprepared for the wide range of expression that may be included in soliciting youth voices, preferring polite expressions over overtly emotional or negative feelings expressed about school. This case study examines boundary setting in a youth voice initiative in a high school nationally known for their work around student voice. A critical incident of high emotion in the practice of student voice points toward the importance of recognizing the ways in which emotional expressions within and reactions to student voice shaped its acceptance and practice.

This methodological paper presents an approach for examining emotional expressions through discourse analysis and ethnographic methods. Drawing on trends in the current literature in science education, we briefly explain the importance of emotions in science education and examine the current research methodologies used in interactional emotion studies. We put forth and substantiate a methodological approach that attends to the interactional, contextual, intertextual, and consequential aspects of emotional expressions. By examining emotional expressions in the discourse in which they are constructed, emotional expressions are identified through semantics, contextualization, and linguistic features. These features make salient four dimensions of emotional expressions: aboutness, frequency, type, and ownership. Drawing on data from a large empirical study of pre-service elementary teachers' emotional expressions about climate change in a science course, we provide illustrative examples to describe what counts as emotional expressions in situ. In doing so we explain how our approach makes salient the nuanced nature of such expressions as well as the broader discourse in which they are constructed and the implications for researching emotional expressions in science education discourse. We suggest reasons why this discourse orientated research methodology can contribute to the interactional study of emotions in science education contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how the environment and environmental issues are conceptualized and positioned in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to examine underlying assumptions about the environment. The NGSS are a recent set of science standards in the USA, organized and led by Achieve Inc., that propose science education goals based on the National Research Council report, A Framework for K-12 Science Education. Drawing from critical discourse analysis, we present a detailed textual analysis of the NGSS to identify the positioning of the environment with respect to humans and human activity. This analysis shows patterns in the ways that the environment is conceptualized and inscribed in the standards as an entity separate from people through both exclusion and ambiguity. We also discuss findings about how agency is more often ascribed to actions or activities rather than people and when solutions to environmental issues are included, the focus is on technoscientific solutions. Finally, we provide implications for considering scientific and environmental literacy, education for action, and the role of standards documents in shaping educational practice.

Research on emotions illustrates a range of emotions that students and teachers experience, both individually and as a collective, in science learning settings. However, not as much attention has been given to how opportunities for emotional expressions are framed. Since emotions and their expressions are embedded in the discourse in which they are constructed, this research sought to describe the ways in which expectations for emotional expressions were constructed during an ecology course for education undergraduates. Utilising sociolinguistics, emotional expressions were examined across and within forms of discourse (discourse events, written artifacts) to make salient how cues informed the number of emotions expressed. Data sources were ethnographic field notes, video recordings, and written artifacts from an entire semester of the course. The specific features of the emotional frames in discourse events and on written artifacts are presented. Contrast points are utilised to showcase the ways different emotional frames were constituted by the members of the course under different conditions and across discourse forms. Implications for considering how to support learners' emotional expressions within a science classroom are discussed.

Due to emotions' evaluative nature, they provide a lens for understanding personal and urgent engagement with events and experiences. Grounding this work in ethnography and sociolinguistics, I utilized discourse analysis to study the emotions of 30 preservice elementary teachers expressed about climate change in a science course. I describe the emotional connections and disconnections within and across the three aspects of climate change that students engaged with most deeply: the impacts, lack of action, and causes of climate change. These emotional connections and disconnections provide new ways to understand preservice elementary teachers' emotional sense-making of this scientific issue. Implications for examining features of emotions to make salient emotional sense-making of climate change are discussed. This emotional engagement differs from other findings in which people typically distance themselves from climate change. In addition, the value of analyzing all emotional expressions ("positive" and "negative") in science learning settings is explained.

In-service teachers of science work with unique content and pedagogical experiences within a changing educational landscape. Understanding teacher agency in these circumstances will help researchers understand the actions that these teachers take. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to review how the agency of K-12 in-service teachers of science has been examined empirically in the science education research literature during the period of 2007–2020. Informed by grounded theory, we qualitatively analyzed 48 peer-reviewed articles, which we located using specific search criteria. We identified that science teacher agency is currently conceptualized largely paper-to-paper and without fully attending to the professional and lived experiences, and thus humanity, of science teachers; thereby, creating exciting opportunities for science education researchers to expand on both the breadth and depth around the theorization and operationalization of in-service science teacher agency. Recommendations are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geospatial technologies have emerged over the last 15 years as one of the key tools used by environmental scientists (NRC 2006). In fact, educators have recognized that coupling geospatial technologies with environmental science topics and scientific data sets opens the door to local and regional scientific investigations (McInerney 2006). In this article, the authors describe the use of geographic information system (GIS) technologies and computer modeling to engage students in determining the economic and ecological value of trees in their neighborhoods while participating in the Urban Tree Project. (Contains 2 figures.)

There is extensive evidence showing that the climate system is warming and human behavior is linked to the change. Despite increasing attempts to integrate climate change into school curricula, teachers have challenges in preparing and implementing climate change lessons. The study aims to look at (a) the kinds of wondering questions middle school students construct after they are engaged in a climate change activity called 'It's a Gassy World' and (b) what teachers highlight in their reflections on these questions to improve their teaching. In this multi-case explorative study, the data comes from student artifacts, teachers' written reflections, and semi-structured conversational interviews with teachers. A constant-comparative analysis of students' wondering questions (N = 165) showed that the nature of the questions varies. These were grouped under three different categories: direct observation, interdisciplinary connections, and future projections questions. We then analyzed five teachers' written reflections and interviews from a cultural historical activity theoretical perspective. This analysis revealed that teachers paid particular attention to certain tools (physical and conceptual), norms (epistemic and teaching), emotions, and division of labor routines in classrooms. We discuss how students' wondering questions help teachers notice essential features of climate change learning such as spatiotemporal thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe how the environment and environmental issues are conceptualized and positioned in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to examine underlying assumptions about the environment. The NGSS are a recent set of science standards in the USA, organized and led by Achieve Inc., that propose science education goals based on the National Research Council report, A Framework for K-12 Science Education. Drawing from critical discourse analysis, we present a detailed textual analysis of the NGSS to identify the positioning of the environment with respect to humans and human activity. This analysis shows patterns in the ways that the environment is conceptualized and inscribed in the standards as an entity separate from people through both exclusion and ambiguity. We also discuss findings about how agency is more often ascribed to actions or activities rather than people and when solutions to environmental issues are included, the focus is on technoscientific solutions. Finally, we provide implications for considering scientific and environmental literacy, education for action, and the role of standards documents in shaping educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]