Engineering design entails making value-laden judgments against ill-defined, ambiguous, and/or competing sociotechnical criteria. In this article, we argue that such conditions make engineering designers particularly susceptible to the potentially deleterious effects of mis/disinformation in the processes and practices of engineering design, their…

Scientists and science educators have argued that learners (students, preservice teachers, and inservice teachers) should understand knowledge construction in science, in addition to figuring out disciplinary core ideas. Given this goal, some science education scholars created a construct called the "Nature of Science" (NOS), which aims…

This theoretical paper focuses on the social processes of public engagement with science and their implications for science education. The core of our argument is that science education should help people become better at evaluating, using, and curating their epistemic networks to make personal and civic decisions and to understand the natural…

Participation in citizen science, a research approach in which nonscientists take part in performing research, is a growing practice in schools. A main premise in school-based citizen science is that through their participation, students and teachers make meaningful contributions to the advancement of science. However, such initiatives may…

It has been widely accepted in the science education research community that scientific literacy as a concept and phrase was introduced by Paul deHart Hurd in 1958. Recent research into the origins of the phrase, however, has shown this to be incorrect. Its first published use can be traced back, in fact, to 1945, and the phrase was frequently…

The rise of social media platforms and subsequent lack of traditional gatekeeping mechanisms have enabled the proliferation of scientific disinformation. Users attempting to properly evaluate scientific information and disinformation are immensely obstructed by media communication mechanisms such as filter bubbles and echo chambers. Given the…

Current science education reform efforts have identified sensemaking as an important goal of science education, and science education researchers have studied what constitutes the sensemaking process in the science classroom. Because the studies of sensemaking are loosely linked to those of scientific reasoning, however, they have provided little…

Classroom discussions have become a centerpiece of reform efforts in science education because talk mediates the joint co-constructing of knowledge in science classrooms. Although decades of research underscore the importance of talk in supporting science learning, the science education community continues to grapple with how to support teachers…

Students frequently turn to the internet for information about a range of scientific issues. However, they can find it challenging to evaluate the credibility of the information they find, which may increase their susceptibility to mis- and disinformation. This exploratory study reports findings from an instructional intervention designed to teach…

The Next Generation Science Standards and increasing linguistic diversity of students in United States science classrooms require language-focused science instruction for which many secondary science teachers are not prepared. To date, minimal research has addressed how to best support secondary science pre-service teachers (PSTs) in teaching in…

Even though children are natural scientists, many preschools isolate and limit science, which can cause children to miss out on valuable learning experiences and school readiness skills. Additionally, minimizing science at the preschool level fails to set a solid foundation for K-12 science education. In this single case study, we focused on the…

Teaching science in an age of disinformation and misinformation requires empowering students to address inaccurate information in evidence-based ways. Science communication scholarship highlights the growing importance of inclusive and relational approaches for addressing misinformation. Thus, we developed, implemented, and evaluated an…

Knowledge of science content and the ability to translate knowledge into effective teaching is known as teachers' "content knowledge for teaching" (CKT). Teachers with developed CKT are able to more effectively determine instructional and assessment activities that will deepen K-12 students' scientific literacy. However, preservice…

Grappling with uncertainty is an essential element of students' science learning and sense-making processes, yet literature is limited regarding how teachers can facilitate and use student scientific uncertainty as a pedagogical resource in their classrooms. Furthermore, progress on pedagogical practice depends on both the ability to notice one's…

In this article, we investigate the community-driven science happening organically in elite athletics as a means of engaging a community of learners--collegiate athletes, many of whom come from underrepresented groups--in STEM. We aim to recognize the data literacy practices inherent in sports play and to explore the potential of "critical…