{"id":85087,"date":"2023-04-21T15:13:45","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T19:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=85087"},"modified":"2023-04-21T21:24:15","modified_gmt":"2023-04-22T01:24:15","slug":"education-profs-new-book-redefines-science-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2023\/04\/education-profs-new-book-redefines-science-curriculum\/","title":{"rendered":"Education prof’s new book redefines science curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Xavier Fazio\u2019s lifelong love of science led him to a career as a science and environmental science teacher and teacher educator for kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12) students. Now a Professor in Brock\u2019s Faculty of Education, he\u2019s working on research to help fellow educators tackle climate change in science classes.<\/p>\n

His latest book, Science Curriculum for the Anthropocene<\/em><\/a>, offers a framework for rethinking the way researchers, educators and policy-makers develop K-12 science curriculum in light of the ecological crises facing communities around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m hoping that it will change the way we think about developing science curriculum and, more importantly, how we re-orient our curriculum to the Anthropocene,\u201d says Fazio, who is an affiliate member of Brock\u2019s Environmental Sustainability Research Centre.<\/p>\n

Brock researchers are part of\u00a0global efforts to confirm a new epoch in Earth\u2019s\u00a0geological time scale\u00a0called the Anthropocene<\/a> by examining evidence of human activities preserved in the geologic record. While\u00a0Earth is officially in the Holocene, the scientific community has identified the mid-20th century as being the start of the Anthropocene.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fazio\u2019s goal with the book is to provide a hopeful perspective on the potential for science to play a leading role in humanity\u2019s response to climate change and related ecological crises in the Anthropocene.<\/p>\n

He believes that work starts in the classroom with science education that helps all students become more scientifically literate citizens, regardless of the pathways they take in school or their future careers, because each of them will play a role in the way their community handles climate challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an opportunity to re-orient our learners to the environmental realities that we currently face and even realities that we cannot yet forecast,\u201d says Fazio. \u201cI think building hope is critical for youth and I think the science curriculum offers a place to do that. It\u2019s not the only place, but it is a place to start.\u201d<\/p>\n

A central pillar of Fazio\u2019s framework is to weave sustainability science throughout the entire science curriculum and to put sustainability perspectives at the forefront of educators’ and policy-makers’ thinking about curriculum in general.<\/p>\n

Rooting science curriculum in communities is another pillar of Fazio\u2019s proposed approach.\u00a0<\/span>Fazio draws on complexity and systems theories to examine ways teachers and curriculum developers can navigate the complex structures of classrooms, schools and school boards in their local contexts and environments. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think teachers will be surprised. They have a lot more flexibility than they realize, but it can be easy to get caught up in the system of what you’ve done before in the school or what has been done in the school district before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Science Curriculum for the Anthropocene<\/em> is the first in a two-volume set, with the second scheduled for release later this year. The book is informed by Fazio\u2019s ongoing Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded research on connecting science education to local communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Xavier Fazio\u2019s lifelong love of science led him to a career as a science and environmental science teacher and teacher educator for kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12) students. Now a Professor in Brock\u2019s Faculty of Education, he\u2019s working on research to help fellow educators tackle climate change in science classes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":85090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[40,7,1,5],"tags":[4424,296,2262,98,12610,1058,9560],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85087"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85087"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85114,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85087\/revisions\/85114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}