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The ever-changing educational landscape, exacerbated by recent events surrounding COVID, political and cultural unrest, necessitates educators who are antifragile, able to withstand pressures and thrive amidst uncertainty. To this end, the pilot study reported here aims to examine mathematics educators’ initial reflections on what it means to be a risk-taker in the classroom, what prevents them from engaging in instructional risks and what would support their instructional risk-taking.

The pilot study utilized interviews with participants, including four pre-service teachers who were enrolled at the university and seven in-service teachers who were employed on active PDS campuses within the school district.

Preliminary findings suggest teacher beliefs concerning risk-taking, the barriers to engaging in such behaviors and the support needed to be able to take instructional risks. Results highlight the role of school–university partnerships in cultivating a culture of risk-taking through active collaboration and dialogue.

These findings have important implications for universities and PDS partners engaged in preparing teachers for an educational field that is unpredictable and continually changing. Additional research should be completed in varying PDS settings.

Findings highlight the role of school–university partnerships in cultivating a culture of risk-taking through active collaboration and dialogue.

Educators are currently faced with an unprecedented instructional landscape. Antifragile, risk-taking teachers are needed who are adaptable and innovative, thus better equipped to enter the challenging and uncertain realities of education.

This study illuminates how organizational actors use images in their struggle to define a contested industry. By leveraging social semiotics and visual rhetoric, we examine how multimodal texts (combining words and images) are used to label and reframe an industry using technical, environmental, human-rights, and preservation-of-life criteria. Building on theories of legitimation, we find that for this industry, contesting attempts at legitimacy work are escalated along a moral hierarchy. We offer an approach for examining how actors draw from broader meaning systems, use visual rhetoric in multimodal texts, and employ dual processes of legitimation and de-legitimation.

Despite research on legitimacy, fairness, and justice, there is a paucity of knowledge of how moral legitimacy becomes institutionally constructed in relation to and between stakeholders – both evaluators and those evaluated, human or non-human, in time and space. To understand the microfoundations of these processes, the authors examine transcripts from Alberta oil sands regulatory review hearings and associated media coverage from the 1960s to present day. The authors find six framings of fairness that respond to broader challenges to the moral legitimacy of this industry, while also dynamically evolving its regulatory framework.

Although scholars increasingly use institutional logics to explain macro-level phenomena, we still know little about the micro-level psychological mechanisms by which institutional logics shape individual action. In this paper, we propose that individuals internalize institutional logics as an associative network of schemas that shapes individual actions through a process we call institutional frame switching. Specifically, we conduct two novel experiments that demonstrate how one particularly important schema associated with institutional logics – the implicit theory – can drive individual action. This work further develops the psychological underpinnings of the institutional logics perspective by connecting macro-level cultural understandings with micro-level situational behavior.

There is a growing need to train and support educators to introduce or enhance aspects of sustainability into post-secondary curriculum. The authors provide an overview of integration of curricular sustainability development and education as well as related institutional leadership at the post-secondary level. Turning to educational development for sustainability education, the authors share tools and resources to support educators from any discipline, to introduce, integrate, and/or enhance sustainability in their course, program, or initiative. The authors found very few examples of workshops to post-secondary teachers. For one such example, the Sustainability Education Intensive, a three-day workshop that the authors designed and led at the University of British Columbia. The authors summarize the workshop aspects that two years of participants found helpful, and how workshop involvement affected them as sustainability educators. The authors encourage post-secondary institutions to provide support in the form of workshops, resources, and funding to help educators introduce or enhance aspects of sustainability into their courses and programs. Students are asking for this, and, as they are future leaders, it is important that educators address the numerous environmental, social and economic issues that demand attention.

This study aims to better understand the morphological characteristics of single particle and the health risk characteristics of heavy metals in PM_2.5 in different functional areas of Handan City.

High resolution transmission electron microscopy was used to observe the aerosol samples collected from different functional areas of Handan City. The morphology and size distribution of the particles collected on hazy and clear days were compared. The health risk evaluation model was applied to evaluate the hazardous effects of particles on human health in different functional areas on hazy days.

The results show that the particulate matter in different functional areas is dominated by spherical particles in different weather conditions. In particular, the proportion of spherical particles exceeds 70% on the haze day, and the percentage of soot aggregates increases significantly on the clear day. The percentage of each type of particle in the teaching and living areas varied less under different weather conditions. Except for the industrial area, the size distribution of each type of particle in haze samples is larger than that on the clear day. Spherical particles contribute more to the small particle size segment. Soot aggregate and other shaped particles contribute more to the large size segment. The mass concentrations of hazardous elements (HEs) in PM_2.5 in different functional areas on consecutive haze pollution days were illustrated as industrial area > traffic area > living area > teaching area. Compared with the other functional areas, the teaching area had the lowest noncarcinogenic risk of HEs. The lifetime carcinogenic risk values of Cr and As elements in each functional area have exceeded residents’ threshold levels and are at high risk of carcinogenicity. Among the four functional areas, the industrial area has the highest carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic risks. But the effects of HEs on human health in the other functional areas should also be taken seriously and continuously controlled.

The significance of the study is to further understand the morphological characteristics of single particles and the health risks of heavy metals in different functional areas of Handan City. the authors hope to provide a reference for other coal-burning industrial cities to develop plans to improve air quality and human respiratory health.