This article reports on analyses of the instructional practices of six middle- and high-school science teachers in the United States who participated in a research-practice partnership that aims to support reform science education goals at scale. All six teachers were well qualified, experienced, and locally successful--respected by students,…

Multilingual youth, from nondominant communities, are often denied critical opportunities for engagement in robust sensemaking due to deficit-based perspectives and linguistic hierarchies. To advance equity, it is important to recognize all youth as epistemic agents and facilitate opportunities to take on intellectual positions. Drawing on…

While research shows that responsive teaching fosters students' disciplinary learning and equitable opportunities for participation, there is yet much to know about how teachers come to be responsive to their students' experiences in the science classroom. In this work, we set out to examine whether and how engaging teachers as learners in doing…

Worldwide, teachers are expected to engage their students in authentic practices, like scientific modeling. Research suggests that teachers experience challenges when integrating modeling in their classroom instruction, with one explanation that teachers themselves lack the necessary modeling competence. Currently, theoretical conceptualizations…

Despite mixed results in research on student learning from drawing in science, there is growing interest in the potential for this visual mode, in tandem with other modes, to enact and enable student reasoning in this subject. Building on current research in this field, and using a micro-ethnographic approach informed by socio-semiotic…

Attaining the vision for science teaching and learning emphasized in the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the next generation science standards (NGSS) will require major shifts in teaching practices in many science classrooms. As NGSS-inspired cognitively demanding tasks begin to appear in more and more science classrooms, facilitating…

It is a widely held view that students' epistemic beliefs influence the way they think and learn in a given context, however, in the science learning context, the relationship between sophisticated epistemic beliefs and success in scientific practice is sometimes ambiguous. Taking this inconsistency as a point of departure, we examined the…

Research on the design of learning environments for K-12 science education has been informed by two bodies of literature: inquiry-based science and Constructionism. Inquiry-based science has emphasized engagement in activities that reflect authentic scientific practices. Constructionism has focused on designing intuitively accessible authoring…

Although pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has become widely recognized as an essential part of the knowledge base for teaching, empirical evidence demonstrating a connection between PCK and teaching practice or student learning outcomes is mixed. In response, we argue for further attention to the measurement of dynamic (spontaneous or flexible,…

This study was conducted in a large-scale environmental literacy project. In the project, we developed a Learning Progression Framework (LPF) for matter and energy in social-ecological systems; the LPF contains four achievement levels. Based on the LPF, we designed a Plant Unit to help Levels 2 and 3 students advance to Level 4 of the LPF. In the…

Special education teachers provide critical science instruction to students. However, little research investigates special education teacher beliefs and practices around science in general or the nature of science and inquiry in particular. This investigation is a cross-case analysis of four elementary special education teachers' initial…

While research has shown that elementary (K-5) students are capable of engaging in the scientific practice of explanation construction, commonly-used elementary science curriculum materials may not always afford them opportunities to do so. As a result, elementary teachers must often adapt their science curriculum materials to better support…

Little is known about how the content of a video case influences what preservice teachers learn about science teaching. This study was designed to determine the impact of two different video cases on preservice elementary teachers' conceptions of multiple aspects of effective science teaching, with one video selected to focus attention on the role…

This study examines how a first-year biology teacher facilitates a series of whole-class discussions about evolution during the implementation of a problem-based unit. A communicative theoretical perspective is adopted wherein evolution discussions are viewed as social events that the teacher can frame intellectually (i.e., present or organize as…

This article presents a systematic review of research on the achievement outcomes of all types of approaches to teaching science in elementary schools. Study inclusion criteria included use of randomized or matched control groups, a study duration of at least 4 weeks, and use of achievement measures independent of the experimental treatment. A…