Teacher Practice

Facilitating discussions is a key approach that science teachers use to engage students in scientific argumentation. However, learning how to facilitate argumentation-focused discussions is an ambitious teaching practice that can be difficult to learn how to do well, especially for preservice teachers (PSTs) who typically have limited opportunities to tryout and refine this teaching practice.

Despite the importance of developing elementary science teachers' content knowledge for teaching (CKT), there are limited assessments that have been designed to measure the full breadth of their CKT at scale. Our overall research project addressed this gap by developing an online assessment to measure elementary preservice teachers' CKT about matter and its interactions. This study, which was part of our larger project, reports on findings from one component of the item development process examining the construct validity of 118 different CKT about matter assessment items.

American schools are becoming more linguistically diverse as immigrants and resettled refugees who speak various languages and dialects arrive at the United States from around the world. This demographic change shifts US classrooms toward super-diversity as the new norm or mainstream in all grade levels (Enright 2011; Park, Zong and Batalova 2018; Vertovec 2007). In super-diverse classroom contexts, students come from varied migration channels, immigration statuses, languages, countries of origin, and religions, which contribute to new and complex social configurations of the classroom.

Do your students ever share ideas that are only peripherally related to the discussion you are having? We discuss ways to minimize and deal with such contributions.

Peterson, B. E., Stockero, S. L., Leatham, K. R., & Van Zoest, L. R. (2022). Tackling tangential student contributions. Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12, 115(9), 618-624.

Do your students ever share ideas that are only peripherally related to the discussion you are having? We discuss ways to minimize and deal with such contributions.

Peterson, B. E., Stockero, S. L., Leatham, K. R., & Van Zoest, L. R. (2022). Tackling tangential student contributions. Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12, 115(9), 618-624.

Do your students ever share ideas that are only peripherally related to the discussion you are having? We discuss ways to minimize and deal with such contributions.

Peterson, B. E., Stockero, S. L., Leatham, K. R., & Van Zoest, L. R. (2022). Tackling tangential student contributions. Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12, 115(9), 618-624.

Teachers experience challenges in effectively using formative assessment practices in their classrooms. In the US, only 28% of elementary teachers report using formative assessment. This study highlights the need to design resources to meet teacher needs and support teachers in making sense of assessment information to inform three-dimensional learning and teaching.

Teachers experience challenges in effectively using formative assessment practices in their classrooms. In the US, only 28% of elementary teachers report using formative assessment. This study highlights the need to design resources to meet teacher needs and support teachers in making sense of assessment information to inform three-dimensional learning and teaching.

Real-world science exploration, where STEM fields are integrated to address societal issues, stands in contrast to the compartmentalized courses offered in high school. This reality calls into question the utility of high school science teaching and learning for preparing a STEM-literate citizenry and for fulfilling workforce needs.

In this article we describe an Informal Science Institution (ISI)-based professional learning program for science teacher leaders (STLs) developed within the context of a research-practice partnership (RPP). The RPP model supports practitioners and researchers to engage in joint inquiry, as they work together to understand and improve designs for learning (Coburn and Penuel 2016; Farrell et al. 2022).