Michel Foucault's theories and their relevance to ‘consumer culture’ and environmental degradation are considered. Specifically, Foucault's theory of power/knowledge and biopower are considered in light of current consumption rates among global consumer cultures and their link to trends in global environmental degradation. Lastly, Foucault's theory of resistance is suggested as a mechanism for environmental sustainability.

The National Science Education Standards (NSES) is one of the most influential documents in US science education. The NSES has been utilized by local schools and districts, state departments of education, and national curriculum groups to form the backbone for curriculum frameworks, programs, and assessment systems to guide science education. The NSES provides national biological evolution content standards for fifth grade through high school but not for kindergarten through fourth grade. This article presents K-4 biological evolution content standards that can be used in conjunction with the current NSES K-4 life science and earth science content standards, brief examples of integration activities using the K-4 biological evolution content standards, and supplemental teacher information for the K-4 biological evolution content standards. The biological evolution content standards and the additional materials can guide teachers when teaching biological evolution to K-4th grade students.

Spiders perform many essential ecological services, yet humans often experience negative emotions toward spiders. These emotions can lead to the avoidance of beneficial events. These emotions may affect beliefs about what should or should not be included in a science curriculum. This study investigated how activities with living spiders affected preservice middle school science teachers’ emotions and beliefs. Prior to the activities both groups (i.e., treatment and control) had moderate to extreme fear and disgust toward the spider. The teachers that participated in the spider activities (i.e., treatment group) had much lower levels of fear and disgust after performing the spider activities than the control group that did not participate in the spider activities. The control group continued to have elevated levels of fear and disgust toward the spider throughout the study. Before the spider activities neither group planned to incorporate information about spiders or information about the essential ecological services of spiders into their science classroom. After the treatment group participated in the spider activities, the teachers had definitive plans to teach their students about spiders and the essential ecological services that they provide. The control group remained unchanged and had no plans to teach this information to their students.

The National Science Education Standards (National Research Council 1996) was one of the most influential documents in the history of United States (U.S.) science education and guided science educators for well over a decade (Carin et al. 2005). In early 2010, experts in education and science came together to develop a new document that identified “the key scientific practices, concepts and ideas that all students should learn by the time they complete high school” (National Academies 2011). In July of 2011, this document entitled, “A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas” Henceforth referred to as the framework. Note that “A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas” can be download for free at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13165. (National Research Council 2011), was released (National Academies 2011). Henceforth referred to as the framework. Note that “A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas” can be download for free at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13165. “A key purpose for the framework is to serve as the basis for new sc

The National Science Education Standards have outlined flexible processes children perform when engaging in scientific inquiry. Cases narratives are a common component of many university science education courses but rarely are they used as a tool to evaluate the preservice teachers within these courses. This article describes the construction of a positive and negative science teaching case narrative. These case narratives can be used to evaluate the level of acceptance of scientific inquiry teaching in preservice elementary teachers.

There is a definitive need, at all science education levels, to strongly emphasize the central anthropogenic role humans now play in current evolutionary processes and biosphere impact. This article presents a brief overview of recent human activities; broad examples of the impact of human activities on biological evolution; a general overview and specific examples of incorporating human activities into evolution education; and further online anthropogenic resources that can be incorporated into educational settings.