Socioscientific issues (SSI) have been found to improve scientific literacy skills among K-12 students. Existing literature shows, however, that elementary preservice teachers are reluctant to implement SSI due to a lack of confidence with subject matter knowledge and knowledge of instruction concerning SSI. Previous research has focused on…

Teacher professional development (PD) is essential to continuously improve teaching skills, to adapt to diverse student needs, and to promote equity and inclusion. Only a few studies to date have synthesized how PD programs improve teachers' content knowledge and instructional quality, as well as students' academic performance. In this…

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…

This study identifies proficiency levels in pre-service physics teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and reveals how teacher education can promote transitions into higher proficiency. Teacher education plays a fundamental role in supporting pre-service teachers' PCK development. Proficiency levels are a powerful source when evaluating…

The early years of teaching are important for science teachers, but little is known about how science teachers develop professionally in their early years. This mixed methods study took a longitudinal view of the early years of teaching. Following 95 secondary science teachers over a 5-year period, this study examined the beliefs, pedagogical…

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is an important target of science teacher knowledge assessment. Most studies that have assessed the PCK across a large sample of science teachers used a text-based approach to elicit and assess the more declarative and static form of teachers' PCK. Recently, small-scale qualitative studies have adopted a novel…

There is strong agreement in science teacher education of the importance of teachers' content knowledge for teaching (CKT), which includes their subject matter knowledge and their pedagogical content knowledge. However, there are limited instruments that can be easily administered and scored on a large scale to assess and study elementary science…

This study examined the relationship between preservice teachers' Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) scores, the most widely implemented preservice teacher performance assessment in the United States, and the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) levels reflected in their edTPA portfolios. PCK is a specialized form of teacher…

We report on the development of a new instrument for measuring teachers' knowledge of language as an epistemic tool in science classes. Language is essential for science learning, as all learning requires the use of language to constitute one's own ideas and to engage with others' ideas. Teachers with knowledge of language as an epistemic tool can…

Professional knowledge is an important source of science teachers' actions in the classroom (e.g., personal professional content knowledge [pedagogical content knowledge, PCK] is the source of enacted PCK in the refined consensus model [RCM] for PCK). However, the evidence for this claim is ambiguous at best. This study applied a cross-lagged…

Science teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning are a vital component of teachers' professional competence and are often assumed to impact classroom practice. To date, these beliefs have been predominantly investigated regarding teaching and learning in general or for a particular science subject (e.g., physics). It remains to be determined…

Situated in the context of an in-service professional development (PD) program focused on Interdisciplinary Science Inquiry, this quantitative study tests the validity of and further explores the theoretical model adapted from Desimone's (2009), "Educational Researcher," 38, 181-199 conceptual framework on effectiveness of PD. The…

Although widely touted as important, there is little evidence regarding the influence of teaching experience on elementary teachers' science subject matter knowledge (SMK). To better understand this phenomenon, we administered an assessment of science topics taught in the fifth and sixth grades to 169 preservice teachers, 231 fifth-grade teachers,…

Research on learning progressions has led to advances in understanding student learning about big ideas in science, but teachers struggle to leverage the full potential of learning progressions for classroom instruction. Because learning progressions lay out how students' ideas change over a long period of time, learning progressions could help…

Since scientific literacy has become a key goal in science education, many people have argued in favor of the incorporation of inquiry in science education. However, scattered in the literature are extrinsic and intrinsic teaching challenges linked to the design and implementation of inquiry-based practical work (IBPW) in secondary school science…