Science

Learning to Listen: Cultivating Pre-Service Teachers’ Attunement to Student Thinking

Reform efforts in science and mathematics education highlight students’ experiences and sensemaking repertoires as valuable resources for instruction. Yet, there is much to learn about how to cultivate teachers’ capacity for eliciting, understanding, and responding to students’ contributions. We argue that the first step of this cultivation is teachers’ learning to listen: to attune and attend to the novel ways that students make sense of scientific phenomena and the natural world.

Author/Presenter

Shannon G. Davidson

Lama Z. Jaber

Allison Metcalf

Year
2024
Short Description

Reform efforts in science and mathematics education highlight students’ experiences and sensemaking repertoires as valuable resources for instruction. Yet, there is much to learn about how to cultivate teachers’ capacity for eliciting, understanding, and responding to students’ contributions. We argue that the first step of this cultivation is teachers’ learning to listen: to attune and attend to the novel ways that students make sense of scientific phenomena and the natural world.

Fostering Expansive and Connective Sensemaking with Preservice Secondary Science Teachers

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' ways of knowing and being in the world. Our research explores possibilities for cultivating new spaces for preservice secondary science teachers to engage in science.

Author/Presenter

Jessica Watkins

Natalie A. De Lucca

Serena R. Pao

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2023
Short Description

Our research explores possibilities for cultivating new spaces for preservice secondary science teachers to engage in science. In a content-focused education course, we designed for and studied preservice teachers' engagement in expansive and connective sensemaking, incorporating heterogeneity, power, and historicity in pursuits of explanatory accounts of the natural world. In this article, we examined how this course design can support preservice teachers to attune to heterogeneity in ways of knowing in science and to connect to identity and historicity in scientific sensemaking.

Why Do Teachers Vary in Their Instructional Change During Science PD? The Role of Noticing Students in an Iterative Change Process

Instructional shifts required by equitable, reform-based science instruction are challenging, especially in the elementary context. Such shifts require professional development (PD) that supports teacher internalization of new pedagogical strategies as well as changes in beliefs about how students learn. Because of this complexity, many PD programs struggle to foster lasting pedagogical shifts, necessitating further investigation into why some teachers successfully embrace reform practices while others do not.

Author/Presenter

Linda Preminger

Kathryn N. Hayes

Christine L. Bae

Dawn O'Connor

Year
2024
Short Description

This qualitative study uses a nonlinear, iterative model of teacher learning (Interconnected Model of Professional Growth; Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002) alongside professional noticing to help understand why elementary teachers in science PD differentially make sense of and internalize new pedagogies.

Why Does Teacher Learning Vary in Professional Development? Accounting for Organisational Conditions

Professional development providers often struggle with how some teachers take up and internalise new instructional practices while others have difficulty implementing new ideas and strategies. Teacher personal characteristics account for only part of this differentiation in learning, and there are unanswered questions regarding how organisational conditions shape teacher learning in professional development (PD). To address these questions, we examined U.S. elementary teachers’ learning and change in a science professional development project.

Author/Presenter

Kathryn N. Hayes

Linda Preminger

Christine L. Bae

Year
2023
Short Description

Professional development providers often struggle with how some teachers take up and internalise new instructional practices while others have difficulty implementing new ideas and strategies. Teacher personal characteristics account for only part of this differentiation in learning, and there are unanswered questions regarding how organisational conditions shape teacher learning in professional development (PD). To address these questions, we examined U.S. elementary teachers’ learning and change in a science professional development project.

Exploring the Noticing of Science Teachers: What Teachers' Notice and Using Video to Capture Teacher Knowledge

Knowing how science teachers develop their professional knowledge has been a challenge. One potential way to determine the professional knowledge of teachers is through videos. In the study described here, the authors recruited 60 elementary and secondary science teachers, showed them one of two 10-min videos, and recorded and analyzed their comments when watching the videos. The coding focused on their noticing of student learning, teacher's teaching, types of teaching practices, and the use of interpretative frames.

Author/Presenter

Julie A. Luft

Yuxi Huang

Harleen Singh

Hatice Ozen-Tasdemir

Joe DeLuca

Shelby Watson

Elizabeth Ayano

Brooke A. Whitworth

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2023
Short Description

Knowing how science teachers develop their professional knowledge has been a challenge. One potential way to determine the professional knowledge of teachers is through videos. In the study described here, the authors recruited 60 elementary and secondary science teachers, showed them one of two 10-min videos, and recorded and analyzed their comments when watching the videos.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Online Professional Development for Rural Middle-School Science Teachers

In rural, geographically dispersed school districts, access to high-quality face-to-face professional development (PD) is challenging. Our study developed and compared the effectiveness of an online PD for middle-school science teachers working in remote, rural areas of Kansas with an evidence-based traditional face-to-face PD with the goal of supporting change in teachers’ conceptual understanding and self-efficacy in utilizing Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), change in instructional practices, and overall student content learning.

Author/Presenter

Brooke A. Moore

Earl F. Legleiter

Kylia Owens

Brynne Packard

Jessica Wright

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2023
Short Description

In rural, geographically dispersed school districts, access to high-quality face-to-face professional development (PD) is challenging. Our study developed and compared the effectiveness of an online PD for middle-school science teachers working in remote, rural areas of Kansas with an evidence-based traditional face-to-face PD with the goal of supporting change in teachers’ conceptual understanding and self-efficacy in utilizing Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), change in instructional practices, and overall student content learning.

Intersections of Teacher Noticing and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: A Conceptual Framework to Inform the Design of Teacher Learning

Teacher noticing scholars are just beginning to explore how to support noticing that is responsive to students' cultural resources. The theoretical basis of the teacher noticing literature affords scholars a range of paths for understanding student resources, only some of which are described in the literature. In this article, we offer a conceptual model showing how the theoretical roots related to teacher noticing and responsive teaching (N/RT) are closely aligned with theories foundational to culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP).

Author/Presenter

Melissa J. Luna

Malayna Bernstein

Janet D. K. Walkoe

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2023
Short Description

Teacher noticing scholars are just beginning to explore how to support noticing that is responsive to students' cultural resources. The theoretical basis of the teacher noticing literature affords scholars a range of paths for understanding student resources, only some of which are described in the literature. In this article, we offer a conceptual model showing how the theoretical roots related to teacher noticing and responsive teaching (N/RT) are closely aligned with theories foundational to culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP).

Policy Translation in Assemblage: Networked Actors Mediating Science Teachers’ Policy Play

Educational policies exist as part of complex systems of many policies, all of which science teachers must make sense before using in practice. Using Actor-Network Theory to view policy translation in assemblages, we examine how networked actors mediate teachers’ policy play. Drawing on ethnographic methods and post-structural analytic tools, we identified four mediating actors: espoused practices, learning events, administrator relationships, and communities of practice.

Author/Presenter

Kathryn M. Bateman

Scott McDonald

Year
2023
Short Description

Educational policies exist as part of complex systems of many policies, all of which science teachers must make sense before using in practice. Using Actor-Network Theory to view policy translation in assemblages, we examine how networked actors mediate teachers’ policy play.

Supporting Secondary Students’ Understanding of Earth’s Climate System and Global Climate Change Using EzGCM: A Cross-Sectional Study

Global climate change (GCC) is one of the greatest challenges of our age and a highly significant socio-scientific issue (SSI). Developing secondary students’ understanding about the Earth’s climate and GCC is critical for empowering future citizens and a key focus of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013).

Author/Presenter

Silvia-Jessica Mostacedo-Marasovic

Amanda A. Olsen

Cory T. Forbes

Year
2023
Short Description

Global climate change (GCC) is one of the greatest challenges of our age and a highly significant socio-scientific issue (SSI). Developing secondary students’ understanding about the Earth’s climate and GCC is critical for empowering future citizens and a key focus of the Next Generation Science Standards. In this cross-sectional study, we investigated secondary students’ evidence-based reasoning about GCC grounded in a curricular intervention involving the use of a data-driven, computer-based global climate model—EzGCM—over 3 years with four teachers who adapted the module in their own courses.

Supporting Secondary Students’ Understanding of Earth’s Climate System and Global Climate Change Using EzGCM: A Cross-Sectional Study

Global climate change (GCC) is one of the greatest challenges of our age and a highly significant socio-scientific issue (SSI). Developing secondary students’ understanding about the Earth’s climate and GCC is critical for empowering future citizens and a key focus of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013).

Author/Presenter

Silvia-Jessica Mostacedo-Marasovic

Amanda A. Olsen

Cory T. Forbes

Year
2023
Short Description

Global climate change (GCC) is one of the greatest challenges of our age and a highly significant socio-scientific issue (SSI). Developing secondary students’ understanding about the Earth’s climate and GCC is critical for empowering future citizens and a key focus of the Next Generation Science Standards. In this cross-sectional study, we investigated secondary students’ evidence-based reasoning about GCC grounded in a curricular intervention involving the use of a data-driven, computer-based global climate model—EzGCM—over 3 years with four teachers who adapted the module in their own courses.