Lessons Learned: Using Socioscientific Issues and Social Justice to Unsettle Environmental Science

This study explores the first year experiences of middle and high school science and math educators who participated in a two-year professional development (PD) focused on designing and implementing instruction based on the frameworks of socioscientific issues (SSI) and socio-transformative constructivism (sTc), an approach to justice-oriented science teaching.The goal was to support teachers in reframing the purpose of learning math and science away from traditional content to encourage students to view math and science knowledge and skills as a tool to promote change in their personal lives, schools, and communities.Teachers were able to choose their own topic for designing instruction, and this qualitative study focused on eight of the 14 teachers participating in the PD who developed and implemented an instructional unit focused on environmental studies.Two research questions guided this study: (a) How did teachers unsettle environmental studies by designing and implementing instruction using the SSI/sTc framework?(b) To what extent did teachers' reflections on their teaching indicate an unsettling of teaching environmental studies?The units designed by teachers focused on environmental SSI topics such as climate change, the use of plastic water bottles, access to clean water, flooding, fast fashion and water resources, and electricity generation and distribution.Findings indicate teachers designed units focused on resolving local, timely issues of environmental injustice, engaged students in reflecting on personal lifestyle choices, and engaged students in taking action.However, there was a discrepancy in teachers' planned units and their reflections, indicating that this unsettling of teaching environmental studies unsettled teachers' pedagogical proclivities.Specifically, 1) teachers considered the social and scientific aspects of the framework as distinctive rather than integrated across lessons; and 2) despite designing units including SSI/sTc, teachers maintained traditional science teaching mindsets and instructional goals that were evident in their enactment and reflections on their teaching.Findings indicate SSI/sTc provides a viable framework to "unsettle" environmental science, but teachers require more support.These findings can inform teacher educators to provide real-world SSI and social justice (SJ) PD workshops to pre-service and in-service educators.