Ecocritically (Re)Considering STEM Integrated Ecological Inquiry in Teacher Education

Overview & Synopsis

The acronym STEM is a ubiquitous term for seemingly anything in--or related to--the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and the current dominant educational STEM discourse in teacher education is often organized around questions of how to integrate math and science into the other content areas or vice versa. The purpose of this article is to pose a different question: "How can an ecological model for subject inquiry become the organizing focus for an integrated ecological inquiry?" In this article, the author provides a glimpse of where educators are currently in their thinking and writing as they put theory to work in teacher education. For the past few years, educators have been working on a number of exciting endeavors in teacher education, ranging from theoretical explorations to more practitioner-based projects that attempt to outline how PK-12 educators might utilize ecocritical frameworks in their Common Core State Standards (CCSS) aligned lesson plans. However, in efforts to develop and apply an ecocritical framework for examining deeply rooted cultural assumptions with/in teacher education, they keep ending up involved with--and too often boxed in by--STEM. In response to this dilemma, this paper takes up what the authors feel is a key next step in a rather non-linear conceptual work to challenge modernist, Western, industrial dualisms and their associated discursive influences that shape and maintain superior/inferior value-hierarchized dichotomies in teacher education. More specifically, they are interested in how it is that these dualistic habits of mind all too often map an Either/Or onto how they--as educators and educational researchers--interpret the differences between dominant STEM content and moving toward an ecocritical framework for teaching for social justice and sustainability.