Publications

We co-designed a bee sequence with a specialist primary science teacher at an Australian government school. Year 6 students learned about European honeybees and Australian native bees, including through Cli-Fi. In this paper, we explore the pedagogical power of providing students with opportunities to create Cli-Fi about bee futures in the Anthropocene. We present and thematically analyse examples of students’ bee Cli-Fi to argue that they generated these narratives to express how we ought to value bees and how we ought to conduct ourselves towards bees to realise more desirable futures. We propose that these students were futuring as normative myths. Students generated dystopian views of bee futures in adopting a human perspective, but also present were glimmers of hope for a more positive outlook that embraced more-than-human perspectives. We adopt a pragmatist semiotic approach to propose that these young people’s bee Cli-Fi constituted normative claims about the future of bees, as they outlined the aesthetics (how and what we ought to value) and ethics (how and in what way we ought to act) of humans caring for bees in an epoch of polycrisis. We suggest that Cli-Fi ought to be an integral part of climate change education in empowering students to assert their agency.   

While the socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene are complex and interdisciplinary in nature, contemporary science is profoundly implicated in understanding and responding to them. The latest Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Development (PISA) 2025 Science Framework has responded by expanding the scope of science education to prepare students for the decision-making and action-taking required of all citizens in the face of these contemporary challenges. Yet, mainstream science education has historically been dominated by a program of introducing students to the conceptual products and associated practices of science. In this manuscript we briefly trace the history of science-society-environment advocacy in science education to argue that the dimensions needed for this revitalisation are in many senses a natural extension of historical movements, but that some dimensions, particularly the need to develop decision-making skills and action focusing on developing student agency and calls for consideration of diverse ways of knowing and social justice framings, require a substantive extension of traditional practice. We explore the history of how agency has been framed in science education research, and apply theory and practice developed within the field of environmental education to explore ways forward for engaging students in the substantial agentic practices implied by the PISA Science Framework. In particular, we examine the construct of agency as a useful extension to earlier constructs attempting to capture critical action-oriented educational purposes. We draw on existing practices in both the science and environmental/climate change education literature to suggest classroom practices that represent this expanded vision of science education.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the integration of socioscientific issues (SSI) into educational practices, which are recognized for enhancing higher-order thinking, scientific literacy, ethical considerations, and civic engagement. SSI teaching equips students to tackle global challenges, although they are complex challenges for in-service teachers. Addressing the need for professional knowledge and skills in SSI teaching is vital for meeting future societal demands. Studies have shown that engaging teachers in co-design practices within teaching communities enhances their SSI teaching proficiency, yet empirical evidence supporting these collaborative interactions is limited. This study investigates the professional learning of five in-service teachers involved in community activities, focusing on their development of SSI-based lesson plans. Through convenience sampling, participants’ lesson plans and discourse relevant to SSI teaching were analyzed using descriptive analysis, epistemic network analysis (ENA), and context analysis. Results indicated that these plans incorporated essential SSI teaching elements, and discourse during community activities fostered epistemic frames conducive to SSI teaching. Reflective discourse notably enhanced both implicit and explicit aspects of these frames, with teachers’ identity development significantly shaped by practical experiences. These findings suggest that practical engagement in professional communities may effectively foster teachers’ SSI teaching skills, offering insights for crafting professional development programs in SSI education.

In this chapter, we will highlight the current status, the potential challenges and learning opportunities afforded by socioscientific issues (SSI)) to deal with sustainability education within the science curriculum. As such, we have collected and reviewed studies related to SSI to provide the background for and a possible lens through which we can view the discussions that follow in this book. Then, innovative approaches will be described that provide opportunities for further developing research and practice in this field.  

Research in education uses evidential processes to develop and validate pedagogies and to generate and/or validate theoretical perspectives. The nature of evidence can be varied, however, and subject to contestation depending on views about purposes, about the focus of the evidence (development, validation or comparison; small scale or system wide effects), and on epistemological perspectives on evidence per se. In design-based research (DBR), there is an acknowledgment of the contingency’s attendant on complexity of classrooms and purposes, and an associated valuing of emergent constructs and practices that have a pragmatic rather than a universalising force. In this chapter we describe co-design processes with a primary school science teacher, supporting student learning of physical science constructs and scientific epistemic practices related to climate change. We argue that the evidence generated through DBR that can capture/speak to teachers’ and students’ intersecting experience is powerful for informing system-level improved learning in ways not possible with more positivist methodologies. We discuss the strengths and limitations of different forms of evidence to inform system policy regarding classroom practice.

The construct of ‘agency’ has become popular in educational research but its nature is contested. In this chapter, we outline the methodological issues associated with co-designing learning sequences with middle years teachers that focus on developing student agency in relation to responses to climate change challenges. The research uses a Design-Based Research methodology (DBR), with teacher learning and practice and student learning tracked using multiple data sources. We argue that the construct of agency is not a decontextualised, measurable competency outcome, but rather is best viewed as entailing a complex of features: as fundamentally situated; as discursively produced within the classroom context; as potentially broadly dispositional as a habit; and as necessarily viewed in relation to purposes and values. We consider the key literature on agency, linking student agency also to teachers’ agency and with teachers’ epistemological and pedagogical perspectives. We then explore the implications of this multi-faceted perspective on agency for: a) design features of learning activities that support student agency in relation to scientific ideas and futures thinking; b) teacher professional learning to establish agentic classroom settings; and c) tracking student agency within classroom activities, across learning sequences, and in relation to prospective agency beyond classroom settings. We critically discuss each of these methodological issues with examples from existing or proposed design features. 

The pressures of the Anthropocene, including a rising tide of student activism around climate change (White et al., Agency on the Anthropocene. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2023), create a need for school science curricula to move beyond traditional knowledge dissemination to engage with students’ knowledge of scientific epistemic processes, societally-entangled ‘post-normal’ science (Funtowicz and Ravetz, Post-normal science. In N. Castree, M. Hulme & J.D. Proctor (Eds.), Companion to Environmental Studies (pp. 443–447). London: Routledge, 2018) that is uncertain and entangled with societal imperatives, and competencies for negotiating complex futures. This chapter describes an approach to science curricula in which scientists’ research and development (R&D) in climate science-linked contexts is translated into learning sequences that enhance students’ engagement with contemporary science understandings and data-driven epistemic practices to develop the knowledge, values and agency needed for prospering in the Anthropocene (Vamvakas et al., Contemporary science practice in the classroom: A phenomenological exploration into how online curriculum resources can facilitate learning. International Journal of Science Education. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500693.2021.1952333, 2021; White et al., Exploring models of interaction between scientists and pre-service teachers. In S. Dinham, R. Tytler, D. Corrigan & D. Hoxley (Eds.). Reconceptualising Maths and Science Teacher Education (pp. 92–110). Camberwell: ACER Press, 2018). The approach draws on traditions in teaching, reasoning, and learning around socioscientific issues (Hsu et al., Innovative Approaches to Socio-Scientific Issues and Sustainability Education—Linking Research to Practice. Learning Sciences for Higher Education. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1840-7, 2022; Morin et al., Engaging with socially acute questions: Development and validation of an interactional reasoning framework. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 54(7), 825–851, 2017; Sadler, Socio-scientific issues in the classroom: Teaching, Learning and Research. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1159-4_1, 2011), to engage students directly with scientists’ climate-related practices. We describe resources that represent contemporary climate-related Australian research, highlighting socioscientific controversies. In this chapter, we argue for an approach to science curricular resources that depart from textbook traditions focused on the rehearsing of established knowledge to represent contemporary scientific R&D in climate change and societally related contexts and to promote science competencies and values relevant for the Anthropocene.   

This chapter covers a range of key science concepts through three major sections. Section 1 explores the impacts humans are having on all ecosystems resulting in the multiple climate crises and biodiversity loss that has become iconic of the Anthropocene. Socially acute questions and socio-scientific issues are strategies that are explored in this section. Section 2 focuses on biodiversity through the context of plants. Section 3 deals with climate change education including considerations of student agency, hope and efficacy that enables students to have a voice and to take action. Throughout the chapter we draw on the cross-curriculum priorities and general capabilities in framing approaches and activities.

Conference Program | AAEE Biennial Conference 2025

Climate Change Education leading to Agency for Year 10s
Peta White, Russell Tytler, Joe Ferguson, Amrita Kamath, Fernanda Rezende, and Shefali Sharma-Wallis    

The Enacting Climate Change Education (ECCE) project engages with students from years 5 – 10. Initial approaches to the year 10 cohort indicated that students were often disinterested in discussing climate change. We interpreted this as possibly being due to: 1) eco-anxiety and feeling despondent about their ability to influence change; 2) that young people are not experiencing climate “change” as the climate emergency has been a constant backdrop to their lives; and 3) they may be influenced by family perspectives. Alerting to the possibility that we failed to engage these year 10 students in the pedagogy and focus of the materials we designed, we changed strategy.  Our interviews with students and teachers revealed interest in local socio-ecological challenges around diverse topics, so we expanded this into the development of a case-study/future-focused scenario structure. Specific competencies are developed through case studies with a local, often socio-ecological, focus involving contemporary science and engineering input. The thinking is then brought together to inform decision making and action in a relevant (local) scenario that privileges critical thinking and individual and collective agency. In this presentation, we will discuss examples of this approach.   

ASERA56 Conference 2025

Enacting Climate Change Education in School Science: Challenges, Approaches, and Successes 
The symposium reports approaches and findings from the international ARC Discovery project: Enacting Climate Change Education – Building student and teacher agency through representing scientists’ practices in classrooms. The three presentations will explore approaches to embedding climate change education in the science curriculum, the ways contemporary science research and practices are mobilised in learning sequences, and findings to date concerning student awareness, agency and attitudes including valuing more-than-human perspectives. The first presentation outlines the project’s methodology and overall design and intent, leading to a case description involving the embedding of climate change education into a whole year upper primary school curriculum and the subsequent student outcomes. The second paper discusses the different approaches needed to engage Year 10 students involving strategies based around case studies and futures scenarios. The third paper outlines an upper primary learning sequence on bees, showing how students were supported through the science to shift their aesthetic framing of bees, a relational shift aligned with Climate Change Education (CCE) advocacy  

Paper 1: Shaping a Climate-change Focused Science Curriculum at Upper Primary School
by Russell Tytler, Amrita Kamath

This presentation describes the international project: Enacting Climate Change Education which has a focus on science curriculum redesign to develop students’ ‘Agency in the Anthropocene’ in line with the PISA 2025 Science Framework. We outline our approach to the generation of learning sequences using a co-design based research (DBR) methodology that includes activities linking science educators, researchers and teachers in exploring the situating of contemporary science content in socio-ecological challenge contexts. We report on the nature and findings from a collaboration developing -whole year Climate Change Education (CCE) embedded science program for years 5&6. We describe the structure of different learning sequences to explore how CCE can be productively embedded in most topics and discuss the variety of activities through which student agency is a focus, including the generation of futures scenarios, design tasks and controversy explorations. We present findings from interviews, and a reflective survey, indicating students’ views about their engagement with learning in CCE activities over the year, demonstrating the relevance of the agenda to students’ wider concerns.

Paper 2: Agency and Planning for Year 10s (case study and scenarios)
by Peta White, Fernanda Rezende, Shefali Sharma-Wallis

The Enacting Climate Change Education (ECCE) project engages with students from years 5 – 10. Initial approaches to the year 10 cohort indicated that students were often disinterested in discussing climate change. We interpreted this as possibly being due to: 1) eco-anxiety and feeling despondent about their ability to influence change; 2) that young people are not experiencing climate “change” as the climate emergency has been a constant backdrop to their lives; and 3) they may be influenced by family perspectives. Alerting to the possibility that we failed to engage these year 10 students in the pedagogy and focus of the materials we designed, we changed strategy. Our interviews with students and teachers revealed interest in local socio-ecological challenges around diverse topics, so we expanded this into the development of a case-study/future-focused scenario structure. Specific competencies are developed through case studies with a local, often socio-ecological, focus involving contemporary science and engineering input. The thinking is then brought together to inform decision making and action in a relevant (local) scenario that privileges critical thinking and individual and collective agency. In this presentation, we will discuss examples of this approach.

Paper 3: Bees and Values about Kin
by Fernanda Rezende, Joseph Ferguson, Russell Tytler, Peta White

This study explores how Year 6 students’ engagement with bee science, blending Western scientific knowledge and First Nations’ perspectives, led to a shift in how they valued and conducted themselves towards bees in the context of human-induced climate change. Undertaken in an Australian government school in collaboration with a primary science specialist teacher, the learning sequence focused on bee anatomy, habitat, species diversity, and the human-bee relationship. The research is significant as it examines how integrating scientific and aesthetic learning can foster students’ ethical relationships with the natural world through shifts in values. Using thematic and narrative analysis, we explored interview data to investigate how students’ engagement with scientific knowledge and skills during the learning sequence influenced their relationships with bees. Findings suggest that students began to relate to bees with greater care and compassion, reflecting a biophilic shift in their values. We argue, by sharing selected examples of students’ reflections on their learning experiences, that engaging students both scientifically and aesthetically can nurture their biophilic connection to nature and cultivate more respectful relationships with the more-than-human.

Note: This symposium was also presented at the School of Education Research Conference 2025, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Victoria

2024 CAR Conference

Capturing complexity: The nature of evidence arising from the DBR co-design process 
by Russell Tytler, Joseph Ferguson, Amrita Kamath, Peta White, Shefali Sharma-Wallis, Fernanda Rezende

Research in Education uses evidential processes to develop and validate pedagogies and to generate and/or validate theoretical perspectives. The nature of evidence can be varied, however, and subject to contestation depending on views about purposes, about the focus of the evidence (development, validation or comparison; small scale or system wide effects), and on epistemological perspectives on evidence per se. In experimental designs for instance, there is an emphasis on universality of findings concerning objective constructs. In design-based research, there is an acknowledgment of the contingencies attendant on complexity of classrooms and purposes, and an associated valuing of emergent constructs and practices that have a pragmatic rather than a universalising force. In this presentation we describe co-design processes with a teacher of primary school science, to support student learning of physical science constructs and scientific epistemic practices related to climate change, in which there was a dual focus on supporting teacher professional learning, and student learning. We describe the varied ways in which the research team worked with the teacher to identify and establish subtleties in approaches to supporting students’ material and representational practices. We argue that the evidence generated through DBR that can capture/speak to teachers’ and students’ intersecting experience is powerful for informing system level improved learning in ways not possible with more positivist methodologies.  

CONASTA 71 2024 – Melbourne – STAV

Enacting Climate Change Education through representing scientists’ practice
by Russell Tytler & Assoc. Prof. Peta White

The climate crisis places a burden on how we should prepare young people for a challenging future that encompasses changed social practices associated with the energy transition, endangered materials, biodiversity crises, and big data. Contemporary science is at the forefront of these transitions/challenges, and school science needs to represent scientific knowledge and practice in a way that prepares students as active agents in this future. In this session we will explore how in our research project we work with Years 5-10 teachers to introduce contemporary climate science research such as climate monitoring, energy transitions, biodiversity, and mitigation strategies into classroom sequences. We make a case for extending school science curriculum and practice to include activities that focus on student decision making and agency in relation to socio-ecological challenges. We will share some teaching and learning sequences and activities and invite participants to consider how these might be adapted to their own context.

ASERA55 Conference 2024

Innovation in science education: Responding to climate crises
by Russell Tytler, Maija Aksela, Peta White, Ying-Shao Hsu, Chris Eames

Anthropogenic Climate Change is the challenge of our times. The burden of the Anthropocene falls heavily on young people currently in school who will live their lives in a world characterised by multiple socio-ecological crises. In responding to these, students need knowledge, a critical perspective that informs decision making and action, and an enlightened disposition towards environmental and social justice. Climate Change Education (CCE) is a response to the urgent need to rethink the fundamental purposes of science education curriculum processes that currently emphasise abstract knowledge, decontextualised problem solving and value free approaches to scientific practices. This symposium will present the research of an international project – “Enacting Climate Change Education: Building student and teacher agency through representing scientists’ practices in classrooms”– that focuses on contemporary scientific knowledge and practice, critical thinking, futures thinking and student agency. The three presentations will focus on the project’s response to three major challenges to CCE in science education: 1. The challenge for teachers of developing confidence in knowledge about CC; 2. The lack of resources that support approaches to CCE; and 3. The challenge of developing content and pedagogies that represent contemporary scientific practices and their entanglement with complex societal values and processes

Paper 1: Science teachers’ perspectives on climate change education
Teachers, their knowledge and beliefs, are crucial to the implementation of CCE within science education or the humanities (Tytler & Freebody 2023). This presentation will report on the findings of a survey of science and humanities teachers in Australia, Finland and Taiwan concerning their perspectives on teaching about climate change. The survey probed teachers’ knowledge, confidence and self-efficacy concerning a range of aspects of climate change teaching, their current practice including their approach to student concerns and values and the inclusion of human values and practices, their professional learning strategies and support structures, and beliefs about purposes. The survey was translated for each country. We report on preliminary analyses of the patterns of results for each country, and cross-country analyses of difference on the different categories of response, in order to ascertain differences in teacher knowledge and commitment, practices, self-efficacy and professional learning processes for teachers of science compared to those of humanities. The results will be interpreted in the light of the researchers’ familiarity with the culture of curriculum and teaching in their country, with implications for trajectories of climate change education in science education

Paper 2: Textbook representations of climate change across three countries
In any country, teachers’ knowledge and practice is strongly shaped by the resources at their disposal. In Australia, secondary school curricular are strongly patterned on textbook writers’ interpretation of the curriculum. In different countries, textbooks have a differing place in subject teaching and learning cultures. In Taiwan, for instance, ratified textbooks dominate primary science curricular practice, unlike in Australia. For any curricular change, textbook writers are influential in interpreting this for classroom realities. Recently, in Australia Climate Change has appeared in the national curriculum at Year 9 and 10 levels but not elsewhere. In Taiwan and Finland different patterns are evident. This presentation presents a comparative analysis of textbook content in relation to a range of aspects of climate change including scientific modelling practices, science content, a sense of urgency with the issue, the role of science in mitigation and adaptation, effects on the environment and on human life, and implicit values and possible human actions. We discuss the methodological approach to coding and comparative analyses and interpret the comparative results in terms of the different cultures of science and humanities teaching in the three countries. Implications are drawn for the shaping of resources to support innovation in CCE within science

Paper 3: Co-designing with teachers learning sequences that represent scientific research on CCE and support student agency The development of science curricula and pedagogies focusing on Climate Change present significant challenges for teachers and students, given the fast changing scientific research in CC, the complexity and interdisciplinary nature of the knowledge, the socio-ecological entanglements involved in mitigation and adaptation practices, the competing values, and the need to focus on student decision making and agency for Anthropocene challenges. This presentation will describe the processes of co-design of learning sequences and pedagogies with teachers in Finland, Taiwan and Australia as part of this international CCE project that includes interactions with the contemporary science research community. We will present the approach taken to the co-design process in each country and the challenges and variations in how we work with teachers and support their learning, illustrating this with examples of learning sequences and activities, and student learning outcomes. We argue for this co-design process as a model for curriculum innovation in CCE/school science and canvas the different ways that this proceeds in the different teacher learning cultures in the three countries.

AARE Conference 2023

Future-focused Science Education by Russell Tytler and Peta White

The major crises associated with the Anthropocene – climate change, mass extinctions, AI and the fourth industrial revolution – pose challenges for education generally, and science education in particular, given the pivotal role science plays in these challenges on both sides; cause and response. This presentation asks the question: how can school science prepare students for these future challenges. We will use our experience on the Science Expert Group for PISA 2025 to identify current global perspectives on the role of science education for the future, unpacking the processes by which new directions were negotiated and represented. In particular, we unpack the support document for the Science Framework; ‘Agency in the Anthropocene’ to highlight a shift in thinking about how to frame science education in ways that acknowledge these uncertain futures. We then draw on examples from a current ARC project focused on ‘Enacting Climate Change Education through representing scientists’ practice’ to investigate how these directions might be operationalised. This Design Based Research is working with scientists and teachers to translate contemporary research focused on climate-related socio-ecological challenges into classroom practices that emphasise scientific epistemic practices, socio-scientific thinking, and student agency. We describe the scope of the project which involves three countries, the different approaches to representing scientific practices, the underpinning pedagogy, the research methods used to generate, then analyse teacher professional learning and student learning outcomes.

AAEE Conference 2023 | Biennial national Conference 2023 Wollongong

Climate Change Education: Engaging scientists in student learning for agency by Russell Tytler and Peta White

The PISA 2025 Science Framework argues for embedding student agency in learning science to address the socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene. This positions environmental education as central to the purposes of a contemporary science education in schools internationally. We will describe the development of this framework and explore its implications for environmental educators across Australia. In this presentation we showcase an approach to science education that draws on contemporary climate science related research. Working collaboratively with scientists, teachers, and students we develop and refine teaching and learning sequences designed to increase students understandings and agency with respect to climate impacts. We will illustrate the approach using two examples: one focussed on alternative energy sources and one on biodiversity.