The excessive "jargon" load in biology may be a hurdle for developing conceptual understanding as well as achieving core competencies such as scientific literacy and communication. Little work has been done to characterize student understanding of biology-specific jargon. To address this issue, we aimed to determine the types of biology…

The highly specialized language of science is both challenging and alienating to adolescent readers. This study investigated how secondary science teachers learn to teach the specialized language of science in their classrooms. Three research questions guided this study: (a) what do science teachers know about teaching reading in science? (b) what…

Our research project was guided by the assumption that students who learn to understand phenomena in everyday terms prior to being taught scientific language will develop improved understanding of new concepts. We used web-based software to teach students using a "content-first" approach that allowed students to transition from…