Although science, technology, society and environment (STSE) education has gained considerable force in the past few years, it has made fewer strides in practice. We suggest that science teacher identity plays a role in the adoption of STSE perspectives. Simply put, issues-based STSE education challenges traditional images of a science teacher and science instructional ideologies. In this paper, we briefly describe the development of a multimedia documentary depicting issues-based STSE education in a teacher's class and its subsequent implementation with 64 secondary student-teachers at a large Canadian university. Specifically, we set out to explore: (1) science teacher candidates' responses to a case of issues-based STSE teaching, and (2) how science teacher identity intersects with the adoption of STSE perspectives. Findings reveal that although teacher candidates expressed confidence and motivation regarding teaching STSE, they also indicated decreased likelihood to teach these perspectives in their early years of teaching. Particular tensions or problems of practice consistently emerged that helped explain this paradox -including issues related to: control and autonomy; support and belonging; expertise and negotiating curriculum; politicization and action; and biases and ideological bents. We conclude our paper with a discussion regarding the lessons learned about STSE education, teacher identity and the role of multimedia case methods.

Recent policy documents from the Ontario Ministry of Education called for teachers to present a more authentic view of the nature of scientific practice at all levels of education. Sadly, this call for substantial curriculum change coincided with severe cuts in the education budget. The authors describe how two teachers collaborated with a university-based researcher/teacher educator to design and implement more authentic science in a Grade 7 classroom. The ways in which the teachers changed their views about science and science teaching, the anxieties they experienced, and the institutional constraints that impacted on their practice are discussed, and some more general features of the action research experience are described.

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The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were designed to address poor science and math performance in United States schools by inculcating globally competitive science, technology, engineering, and mathematics literacies relevant to participation in future society. Considering the complex network of influences involved in the development of the NGSS, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate how educational values are embedded in the discourse of the standards. Using critical discourse analysis and content analysis, we evaluated how themes related to (i) performance, (ii) accessibility, and (iii) innovation and creativity are discursively constituted in the NGSS. Our analysis indicates the NGSS prioritizes: measurable and reproducible performances; the standards appear to be based on a conception of accessibility closely aligned with equality, and self‐investment, and; innovation and creativity are discursively constituted as attributes that can be developed through specific, prescribed practices. We discuss these findings in relation to the goals of the NGSS and potential teaching and learning outcomes resulting from education based on the standards.