Global environmental challenges brought on by over-consumption, limited resources, and climate change will task teacher education programs to prepare teacher candidates with new paradigms in problem-solving, collaboration, and innovation. Skills such as collaborating across cultures and borders, thinking critically and creatively, reflecting on…

In this study, an assessment tool was developed to measure the reasoning skills (RS) of preservice science teachers on socio-scientific issues (SSI). As a result of the literature review, the scale was developed based on five dimensions. These dimensions are complexity, questioning, having different perspectives, skeptical approach and the…

The purpose of the current study is to qualitatively explore how Thai preservice biology teachers make decisions on, and informally reason about, an agriculture-based socioscientific issue (SSI). The SSI arises mainly as a controversy between two social classes, namely the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, involving haze pollution.…

This study examines the beliefs of 33 preservice teachers (PSTs) from the U.S. have about using different types of real-world contexts in the mathematics classroom. Qualitative data about the participants' reactions to specially designed word problems that varied in contexts from "neutral" to controversial were collected. A thematic…

Because e-learning encompasses such a wide array of learning methods and tools, its components lend themselves to boundless applications. This study describes one such frontier of e-learning: its use in raising awareness of crucial social issues. Specifically, we describe the development of the first human trafficking awareness e-learning game…

Often working in multiple roles and operating at multiple scales, educational developers deal with layered tensions and a complex context that can be difficult for an individual or team to reconcile. In May 2020, the authors participated in a cross-institutional scholarly project, the Pandemic Educational Development Research Collaborative…

This correlational study investigates the relationship between mobile phone use among elementary school students in Iran during the COVID-19 epidemic, and its effect on emotional-behavioural functioning and academic and social competencies. A researcher-devised questionnaire, and the Achenbach Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL)-parental version, was…

This study explores a "design fiction" approach in an educational context by applying it to a third-year industrial design studio class. The "Food Futures" project is conducted with thirty students in the design studio. We approached the future of food using a design fiction approach since the combination of food and design is…

This article touches upon the many social, political, and economic issues that negatively and disproportionately impact Afro-Mexicans (Sanders 2020). While reading, students are asked to circle the geographic areas mentioned in the article on a map of Mexico; this not only acquaints them with Mexican geography but also focuses their attention on…

Purpose: In response to concerns about fake news (Allcott et al., 2019) and polarization (Wollebaek et al., 2019), youth media literacy interventions have emerged to teach strategies for assessing credibility of online news (McGrew et al., 2018) and producing media to mobilize others for civic goals (Kahne et al., 2016). However, in light of…

In this paper, we explore how science textbook authors reconciled their personal hopes with disciplinary and societal demands in their writing. Using a qualitative narrative storytelling research method, we interviewed four Canadian science textbook authors about their hopes and the challenges they encountered in their writing. To understand their…

In his book "Liberalism and Its Discontents" (2020), Fukuyama argues that classical liberalism is under severe threat today (p. vii). Although such a claim is alarming, since strongly stated cases are not unusual in academic writing (e.g., Fukuyama once argued (2012) that we had reached the end of history in the sense of arriving at the…

In a world of burgeoning societal issues, future scientists must be equipped to work interdisciplinarily to address real-world problems. To train undergraduate students toward this end, practitioners must also have quality assessment tools to measure students' ability to think within an interdisciplinary system. There is, however, a dearth of…

Lebanon is currently trapped in a full-scale emergency. Apart from the Syrian refugee mass influx of 2011, which had led the country to severe social and economic constraints, a civic uprising ignited in October 2019 against an incompetent government accused of sectarianism and corruption by the Lebanese people. Thousands of peaceful protesters…

Background: We explored whether school-based Cogmed Working Memory Training (CWMT) may optimise both academic and psychological outcomes at school. Training of executive control skills may form a novel approach to enhancing processes that predict academic achievement, such as task-related attention, and thereby academic performance, but also has…