Initial Publication Date: April 21, 2023

Allan Feldman

Emeritus Professor of Science Education, University of South Florida

About Me

I am an Emeritus Professor of Science Education in the College of Education at the University of South Florida (USF). Before arriving at USF I was a professor of science education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass), where I began in 1993 as an assistant professor. Until recently I was Associate Director for Educational Innovation of the David C. Anchin Center, and while a faculty member at UMass I was Associate Director of the university-wide STEM Education Institute. Before receiving my doctorate in 1993, I taught middle and high school science for 17 years in public and private schools in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

My scholarship includes a focus on the ways in which people learn to engage in science and engineering practices in apprenticeship situations, including middle and high school science classes, and research experiences for teachers (RETs) and for undergraduates (REUs). I also study how inservice science teachers learn from their practice in a variety of subjects including physics, environmental education, and education for sustainability in formal and informal settings. I have been a PI and co-PI of 18 NSF projects, many of which have been in collaboration school districts, and with colleagues in the sciences and engineering. These include environmental studies of acid mine drainage, arsenic in the environment, algal biofuels, and water and wastewater treatment. I've published 114 peer reviewed articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings. In addition, I am the lead author of the book "Teachers investigate their work: An introduction to action research across the professions", which was published by Taylor & Francis in 2018. I am also co-editor of the book "Educating Science Teachers for Sustainability", which was published in 2015 by Springer. I currently have a book titled "Dialogic Collaborative Action Research in Science Education" in press with Taylor and Francis. His co-authors are three of his former doctoral students from USF.

Focus of current FEW-Nexus-based education work

Although it is only recently that I have been explicitly using the idea of the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus, it has been an integral part of my work during the past 10 years and more. Much of that is due to collaborations with faculty in environmental engineering at the University of South Florida. These collaborations centered on taking their research foci and methods, and modifying them to design and implement authentic research experiences for secondary students. These projects included growing algae in wastewater to produce lipids for biofuels (Chapman & Feldman, 2017); the use of biosand filters to produce potable water (Alsultan, Henderson, et al., 2021; Alsultan, Rice, et al., 2021); and the biodigestion of food waste to produce biogas and fertilizer (Vicario et al., in review). The three projects include aspects of the foundational elements of FEW nexus based education laid out in the visioning document. First, all are interdisciplinary. Second, they have moved toward putting the nexus in the forefront, with that being done explicitly in the biodigester project. I also did this in a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) that had the students engage in one of the three projects in relation to the nexus (Ortiz & Feldman, in review). All the projects have highlighted the complex nature of their connection to the real world. Finally, as the students engaged in the research activities, they needed to make decisions about potential outcomes by considering how water, energy, and food are related. The challenges laid out in the visioning document can be seen as issues related to equity, knowledge democracy, and the "wickedness" of educational problems. It has also been part of my work as I've explored issues of knowledge democracy and wicked educational problems in relation to action research. I have primarily worked in the area of equity in science education through support of my doctoral students, and in my teaching at the university (e.g., Bradley & Feldman, 2021; Chapman & Feldman, 2017; Feldman & Bradley, 2019). More recently I have explored the idea of knowledge democracy (the lack of it) as part of the inequities in schooling, both in terms of the non-recognition of local knowledge, and in the deprofessionalization of teachers' work (Feldman, 2022; Feldman & Bradley, 2019; Feldman & Rowell, 2019; Rowell & Feldman, 2019). Wicked problems are those that are multidimensionally complex that cannot be succinctly defined. They have no clear cut solutions, and attempts to solve them often become symptoms change the conception of the original problem (Rittel & Webber, 1973). The challenges laid out in the visioning statement strongly suggest FEW-based education is a wicked problem. I am the lead author of a book in press with Routledge that focuses on science teachers' use of action research to mitigate wicked problems in their practice (Feldman et al., in press). In addition, I am working with a group of science teacher educators on a proposal for an edited book on wicked problems in science education.

FEW-Nexus-based education experience, expertise and interests

I see myself taking an active role in the development of FEW-Nexus-based cases. This would include identifying potential cases, recruiting collaborators and convening writing teams, and engaging in formative and summative evaluation of their effectiveness. Of course, I am willing to contribute in any way to support the effort. I believe I have a number of strengths that I can bring to the workshop to help make it a success. In essay 1 I referred to some of what I would bring. Specifically, they include my expertise in action research and the learning of research practices in the context of the FEW nexus, and my growing involvement in finding ways to mitigate wicked problems in science education related to knowledge democracy and equity. In addition, I have taken the lead in several curriculum development projects. One was the Climate Change Narrative Game Education (CHANGE) project (https://climatechange.usf.edu/), which was funded by NSF. The curriculum materials were developed so that they could be embedded in an existing Florida science course, Marine Science. In collaboration with a group of Marine Science teachers we identified topics in each of the course's units that we modified to focus on climate change. In this way it solved several of the limitations of existing educational structures described in the visioning statement. More recently I have been the co-PI of the projects that developed curriculum materials for engaging secondary students in authentic research activities using biosand filters and anaerobic biodigesters, the latter of which has an explicit FEW focus. The materials for these projects can be found at https://www.usf.edu/nsf-ires/research/index.aspx.

Collaboration with various stakeholders is important to produce case-based education research examples of FEW-Nexus-based education in practice. In the projects described above, I worked with practicing science teachers, district science supervisors, and university and college science, engineering and education faculty. For these types of collaborative efforts to be successful, it is important for trust to be developed among the partners. This is especially needed for the school partners because they have too often been relegated as "junior partners" in these types of endeavors. I have two research studies in which I've looked at the development of trust in online groups. One was of a group of high school science teachers working to incorporate argumentation, discussion, and inquiry into their online lessons during the COVID pandemic. The other was of my online teaching of a graduate seminar on action research. My co-authors and I have draft manuscripts about the studies. One study was presented at the 2022 ASTE meeting. The findings from these studies can be used to help engender trust among participants in collaborative groups developing the cases for FEW-Nexus-based education.

Publications, presentations, and other references

  • The Climate Change Narrative Game Education (CHANGE) project
  • Teaching authentic science with biosand filters and anaerobic digesters
  • Alsultan, J., Henderson, M., Feldman, A., Rice, M., Yang, X., Kahler, J., Ergas, S. J., & Ghebremichael, K. (2021). Participation of High School Students in Authentic Science and Engineering Experiences with a University-Based Water Research Team. Water, 13(13), 1745. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/13/13/1745
  • Alsultan, J., Rice, M., Feldman, A., Nkrumah, T., Ergas, S., & Ghebremichael, K. (2021). Biosand Filters for Water Purification. The Science Teacher, 88(4), 41-46.
  • Bradley, F., & Feldman, A. (2021). The problematic use of urban, suburban, and rural in science education. Cultural Studies of Science Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-020-10015-7
  • Chapman, A., & Feldman, A. (2017). Cultivation of science identity through authentic science in an urban high school classroom [journal article]. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 12(2), 469-491. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-015-9723-3
  • Dobson, A., Feldman, A., Nation, M., & Laux, K. (2019). Red Tide
    Harmful algal blooms and global climate change. The Science Teacher, 87(1), 35-41. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26899186
  • Feldman, A., & Alsultan, J. (2022). Self-Study of Dialogic Collaborative Educational Action Research in an Online Environment. SAGE Publications, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529600520
  • Feldman, A., Alsultan, J., Laux, K., & Nation, M. (in press). Dialogic Collaborative Action Research: Collaborative Conversations for Improving Science Teaching and Learning. Routledge.
  • Feldman, A., Altrichter, H., Posch, P., & Somekh, B. (2018). Teachers investigate their work: An introduction to action research across the professions (3rd ed.). Routledge.
  • Feldman, A., & Nation, M. (2015). Theorizing sustainability: An introduction to science teacher education for sustainability. In S. K. Stratton, R. Hagevik, A. Feldman, & M. Bloom (Eds.), Educating science teachers for sustainability (pp. 3-13). Spinger.
  • Feldman, A., Nation, M., & Laux, K. (2021). The effects of extended action research-based professional development on the teaching of climate science. Educational action research, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2021.1981417
  • Feldman, A., & Pirog, K. (2011). Authentic science research in elementary after-school science clubs. Journal of science education and technology, 20(5), 494-507. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-011-9305-4
  • Stratton, S. K., Hagevik, R., Feldman, A., & Bloom, M. (2015). Educating science teachers for sustainability. Springer.