Preservice secondary science teachers often experience science learning in narrow and marginalizing ways in their science preparation. These experiences cause harm, particularly for preservice teachers of color. They also limit the disciplinary resources they can develop for later teaching science in ways that value and sustain their students'…

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…

Inquiry-Based Teaching Practice (IBTP) is an essential component of science education, and promoting its implementation is at the heart of various reform efforts. Even though science teachers regard IBTP as an essential pedagogical method, they rarely use it for various reasons. This study utilizes Bronfenbrenner's ecological framework to examine…

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…

Teaching about nature of science (NOS) is considered as an important goal of science education in various countries. Extensive empirical research about how some aspects of NOS can be effectively taught is also available. The most widely adopted conceptualization of NOS is based on a small number of general aspects of NOS, which fall into two…

Research on nature of science (NOS) and scientific inquiry (SI) has indicated that a teacher's knowledge of each, however well developed, is not sufficient to ensure that these conceptions necessarily manifest themselves in classroom practice (Lederman & Druger, 1985; Lederman, 2007). In light of considerable research that has examined…

New technologies are increasingly giving science teachers the ability to access and customize science lessons. However, there is substantial debate in the literature about whether and under what conditions teacher customization benefit student learning. In this study, we examined teacher customization of inquiry-based science lessons from an…

The purpose of this study was to compare the ability of different instruments, independently developed and traditionally used for measuring science teachers' beliefs in short-term interventions, to longitudinally measure teachers' changing beliefs. We compared the ability of three self-report instruments (Science Teaching Efficacy Belief…

In this paper we use practice theory, with its focus on the interplay of structure and agency, to theorize about teacher engagement in professional learning and teacher enactment of pedagogical practices as an alternative to framing implementation research in terms of program adherence and fidelity of implementation. Practice theory allowed us to…

Research experience is increasingly considered an important component of science education at the secondary school and undergraduate levels. This paper presents a case study of students learning in a unique apprenticeship model in which students are engaged in long-term (18 month) open-ended research projects in physics that are done at the…

This study explores the relationship between teaching assistants (TAs) and student learning in undergraduate science laboratory classes. TAs typically instruct laboratory courses, yet little, if any, research examines professional development (PD) for TAs or relationships between instructors and students in laboratory settings. The use of…

This mixed-methods research investigated teachers' perceptions of intrinsic factors (personal attributes of the teacher) and extrinsic factors (environmental) influencing the implementation of inquiry-based science learning at township (underdeveloped urban area) high schools in South Africa. Quantitative data were collected by means of an adapted…

Recent calls asking science teachers to increase student authority by diversifying instruction appear stalled by a lack of empirical evidence supporting the actual implementation of any such shifts. To better support the practical integration of more student-directed inquiry into the science classroom, we consider one teacher's day-to-day…

The theoretical construct of teacher noticing has allowed mathematics teacher educators to examine teacher thinking and practice by looking at the range of activities that teachers notice in the classroom. Guided by this approach to the study of teacher thinking, the central goal of this exploratory study was to identify what prospective science…

The Biology Workbench (BW) is a web-based tool enabling scientists to search a wide array of protein and nucleic acid sequence databases with integrated access to a variety of analysis and modeling tools. The present study examined the development of this scientific tool and its consequent adoption into the context of high school science teaching…