Preservice elementary teachers enter their science methods courses with a range of prior experience with science practice. Those prior experiences likely inform much of their science pedagogy and goals. In this study, the authors examine how a cohort of preservice elementary teachers engaged in science practice as they learned content in a physics…

For some time, scholars who are guided by critical theories and perspectives have called out how white supremacist ideologies and systemic racism work to (re)produce societal inequities and educational injustices across science learning contexts in the United States. Given the sociopolitical nature of society, schooling, and science education, it…

This manuscript is born from contemplating and exploring how it is that we see so little systemic change in STEM education after so many years of working toward it, including the insidious persistence of systems of oppression, and historical and generational exploitation that our current critical, social justice efforts in STEM teacher preparation…

There is a general consensus that design-based research (DBR) is a genre of approaches in education research to design interventions for specific problems with the aim to gain an understanding of how they work in the problem context. While there is a considerable body of literature discussing the epistemic and methodological aspects of DBR, we…

Agency has been used as a lens to focus on how educators learn through pedagogical risk-taking, advocacy for curricular reform, and resisting policies that are not focused on the needs of students. We explored the role of agency as 65 preservice science teachers created learning opportunities for themselves during their clinical placements.…

The increasing attention in science education reform documents to language and literacy, coupled with the growing linguistic diversity of United States classrooms, means that science teacher educators and researchers are facing an important task of preparing secondary science preservice teachers (PSTs) to teach a language- and literacy-integrated…

Addressing student conceptions is crucial in science education. Therefore, teachers should be able to notice and interpret situations, in which student conceptions are part of the complex classroom interactions. This study analyzes the skills known as professional vision using an interpretivist research paradigm and a sociocultural perspective.…

The purpose of this study is to challenge the prevailing negative narrative related to elementary science teaching by investigating the experiences of elementary teachers who identify as science teacher enthusiasts (STEs). Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, and Cain (1998)'s conception of identity as an ongoing production or construction in a…

Learning to teach within and across the settings of teacher education coursework and field experience in local schools is subject to the "two-worlds pitfall," where practices, norms, expectations, tools, and other aspects of teaching can be jarringly different. This remains an ever-present dilemma for preservice teachers, their teacher…

This exploratory project considers the use of "wonder" as a pedagogical tool with preservice elementary teachers (PSETs). An ongoing vexation facing science teacher educators is helping future elementary teachers overcome anxiety and negative associations with science due to their own school science experiences, while simultaneously…

This proof of concept study investigated a secondary science teacher preparation intervention in six university programs across Arizona, California, and Texas. Researchers and science method instructors (SMIs) collaboratively restructured respective science method courses to hold fidelity to an interrelated set of instructional practices that…

In this study, we explored how science teacher candidates construct ideas about science teaching and learning in the context of partnerships with urban community-based organizations. We used a case study design focusing on a group of 10 preservice teachers' participation in educational programming that focused on environmental racism and connected…

When collecting data, science education researchers frequently have multiple respondents evaluate multiple artifacts using multiple criteria. Herein, the authors introduce Multifaceted Rasch Measurement (MFRM) analysis and explain why MFRM must be used when "judges'" data are collected. The authors use data from elementary science…

We present the case of Michael, a prospective high school biology teacher, to explore the implications of teacher resistance and avoidance to the topic of evolution. This case is drawn from a year-long qualitative research study that examined Michael's process of learning to teach high school biology and describes how his avoidance of evolution in…

Opportunities for the development of science-related pedagogy during training are necessarily limited for the generalist primary (elementary), preservice teacher. While school placement is an important context within which to develop such professional expertise, the role of institution-based learning is less well understood in this regard. This…