To explore the affordances of learning progressions (LP) in support of teachers' formal and informal formative assessment (FFA and IFA) practices, we conducted a case study with a fine-grain-sized energy LP. The study first theorises an LP-based formative assessment model, which proposes the use of LPs in clarifying learning objectives, eliciting…

Teaching outdoors has been established as an important pedagogical strategy; however, science classes rarely take place outside. Previous research has identified characteristics of teachers who have integrated out-of-classroom opportunities into their teaching repertoire; yet little is understood as to why teachers make these different pedagogical…

A teacher professional development program for in-service elementary school science teachers, the Rice Elementary Model Science Lab (REMSL), was developed for urban school districts serving predominately high-poverty, high-minority students. Teachers with diverse skills and science capacities came together in Professional Learning Communities, one…

This study explores how teachers developed and critically evaluated a range of teaching strategies that could support the discussion of a socio-scientific issue (SSI) that had the potential to be controversial. The issue was stem cell research and six New Zealand teachers of senior biology students (grades 12/13) took part in an action research…

This two-year school-wide initiative to improve teachers' pedagogical skills in inquiry-based science instruction using a constructivist sociocultural professional development model involved 30 elementary teachers from one school, three university faculty, and two central office content supervisors. Research was conducted for investigating the…

Worldwide, a tendency is visible in which upper secondary science curricula are innovated in the direction of context-based education. Crucial to these innovations is the way teachers interact with newly developed teaching materials and implement them in classroom practice. The focus of our research is to identify characteristics of the…

Scientific inquiry involves a variety of abilities scientists use to investigate the natural world. In order to develop students' scientific inquiry, researchers and educators have developed different curricula and a variety of instructional resources, which make features and descriptors of scientific inquiry in teaching and learning even more…

The use of kits in elementary science classes is a growing trend in some countries. Kits provide materials and inquiry lessons in a ready-to-teach format for teachers to use in their science instruction. This study examined elementary teachers' instructional strategies, classroom practices, and assessment types in relation to the frequency of…

This study focuses on elementary teachers' comprehension of flooding before and after inquiry-based professional development (PD). There was an improvement in teachers' understanding toward a normative view from pre- to post-test (n = 17, mean gain = 4.3, SD = 3.27). Several misunderstandings and a general lack of knowledge about flooding emerged…

Although researchers have achieved some success in effective nature of science (NOS) teaching, helping teachers teach NOS continues to be a great challenge. The development of an educative teachers' guide would provide support for NOS teaching. In this study, we explored the effects that a research-based guide had on affording elementary school…

A programme of professional development was designed consisting of 20 hours of workshops plus in-school activities. The implementation of new pedagogy was supported by teachers bringing examples of their work in the classroom to the workshops for discussion and reflection. The purpose of this study is to explore factors that influenced what…

We describe an evidence-based continuing professional development programme on knowledge integration (KI) for high-school physics teachers. Sixteen teachers participated in the year-long programme (about 40 face-to-face lessons and in-between computerised interactions). The teachers experienced the KI activities as learners and then engaged in an…

Two research studies sponsored by the Centre for Informal Learning and Schools (CILS) investigated the programmes informal science institutions (ISIs) currently provide to support K-12 science education, particularly in the area of teacher professional development (PD). The first study was a large-scale survey with 475 ISIs responding about the…

In this study our goal was to better understand the development of chemistry teachers who are involved in a continuous professional development (CPD) programme, focusing on using the inquiry approach in the chemistry classroom-laboratory, followed by protocols assembled in a portfolio that can be used to demonstrate evidence-based practice in…

The research reported in this study focuses on an investigation into the teaching of argumentation in secondary science classrooms. Over a 1-year period, a group of 12 teachers from schools in the greater London area attended a series of workshops to develop materials and strategies to support the teaching of argumentation in scientific contexts.…