In previous work, we described how three teachers differentially create opportunities for students to act as epistemic agents and to engage in collective knowledge-building work (Alzen et al., 2020). The descriptive nature of this previous research provided information about what variability can look like in classrooms attempting these…

Student participation in the science practices is more than following directions to conduct pre-determined experiments and analyze data with expected solutions. This requires classroom shifts that increase the epistemic agency of students: increase student involvement and authority in developing science knowledge and practices, rather than the…

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) demand that science educators shift from traditional to NGSS teaching and learning. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the change process of shifting from traditional one-dimensional teaching to NGSS three-dimensional teaching and learning. A survey was sent to all science…

It is 157 years since Mendel presented his results on hybridisation in peas to the Brünn Society for Natural Science. The discipline of genetics has dramatically changed since then, with technological advancements revealing multifactorial causation and trait variability. Whilst none of this complexity featured in the discovery of classical…

A confluence of circumstances in educational policy and teacher preparation have placed a low priority on elementary science teacher preparation. Historically, a lack of elementary science teachers' subject matter knowledge and pedagogical knowledge has negatively impacted science teaching self-efficacy, which is linked to many teacher and student…

Teachers often rely on curricular materials as support for implementing reform-based science practices and as educative materials to continue developing ways in which they teach and approach science. Therefore, it is important to understand how teachers develop and use curricular materials and how they learn from their experiences. However, we…

Curricular analytics (CA) is a quantitative method that analyzes the sequence of courses (curriculum) that students in an undergraduate academic program must complete to fulfill the requirements of the program. The main hypothesis of CA is that the less complex a curriculum is, the more likely it is that students complete the program. This study…

Quantitative reasoning (QR) competencies are increasingly called for in the data rich and complex environment of STEM disciplines, including biology. Curricular reform efforts in QR have been directed at disseminating course design and pedagogy but less work has been directed at understanding what faculty at large view as crucial for student…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Physics instructional labs have long been an area of pedagogical innovation and educational research. While current stakeholders in instructional labs are undoubtedly aware of the day's concerns, reform efforts, and empirical research…

For a long time, Soviet students learned 'pure' mathematics in their mathematics classrooms, while applications of mathematics were introduced in their science (mainly physics) classrooms. This approach was a part of a uniform and rigid national curriculum. Even when in the 1990s the world was moving towards including applications in school…

One critical step in the challenging process of curricular reform is determining how closely a curriculum aligns with national recommendations. Here, we examine the alignment of teaching, assessment, and student experience in undergraduate biology courses with the "Vision and Change" core competency recommendations. We applied the…

School pedagogies that expand opportunities for learners to build and use knowledge for meaningful purposes are resources for hope. Internationally, standards-based reforms in science education position schooling as a context for building and using disciplinary knowledge to explain phenomena and solve problems. There is also growing research…

Professional development programs aim to make long-lasting change to teacher practice. However, these programs are often short-lived due to limited personnel, cost, and time constraints. Using an actor-oriented approach, this study aimed to understand how teachers transfer their learning from a professional development program focused on…

Science education is shifting from a vision of students memorizing facts towards engaging in figuring out the natural world as students build ideas from their own experiences and backgrounds. This shift is hard for teachers. One way to support teachers is curriculum-based professional development, which pairs high-quality instructional materials…

Despite the substantial progress made to develop evidence-based pedagogical practices that support student learning, many courses are dominated by "traditional" practices such as a passive lecture. Thus, a continued focus on reforming courses is necessary. Here we describe the deliberate practice-driven reform of a large lecture-format…