The goal of this study is to improve elementary science teaching and learning by developing, testing, and refining a framework and set of tools for strategically incorporating forms of uncertainty central to scientists' sense-making into students' empirical learning.
Throughout the United States, elementary classrooms include students with a range of communicative practices and strengths, including strengths in speaking one or more languages, and strengths in generating and understanding different types of representations. Although an emerging body of research has begun to explore how individual teachers can productively leverage these communicative strengths toward enhanced science learning and further develop language through science, there is currently little research on how larger-scale district infrastructures can be designed to support science learning that leverages and supports language development. This project will address this critical gap by developing a process through which school districts can design comprehensive infrastructures that leverage a broad range of linguistic and communicative practices for enhanced science learning among elementary students.
