Science

This paper describes a guided-inquiry activity designed for the first week of a first-year high school chemistry course. Students manipulated magnetic models of atoms in depicting air and learned to connect the three domains of chemistry: macroscopic, symbolic, and particulate. The purpose of the activity was 2-fold: to remediate misconceptions of foundational chemical concepts such as atoms, molecules, compounds, subscripts, and coefficients; and to help students begin to think in the particulate domain of Johnstone’s triangle when studying chemistry.

Researchers and educators agree: Children demonstrate a clear readiness to engage in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning early in life. And, just as with language and literacy, STEM education should start early in order to maximize its benefits and effectiveness. So why is STEM not woven more seamlessly into early childhood education? What can we do – in the classroom, in homes, in museums, in research labs, and in the halls of legislating bodies – to ensure that all young children have access to high-quality STEM learning early in life?

This study investigates the models of elementary content specialization (ECS) in elementary mathematics and science and the affordances and constraints related to ECS—both generally and in relation to specific models. Elementary content specialists are defined as full-time classroom teachers who are responsible for content instruction for two or more classes of students. The sample consists of 34 elementary content specialists in math and/or science, as well as a matched comparison group of self-contained classroom teachers.

Ensuring all students have opportunities to engage in scientific argumentation is a key goal for K–12 students. While research has shown that teachers’ beliefs about argumentation can impact their classroom instruction and that students in low socioeconomic status (SES) schools are less likely to experience challenging science learning, there is little research focused on the relationship between teachers’ argumentation beliefs and student SES. As such, in this study we explored the scientific argumentation beliefs of teachers in low, mid, and high SES schools.

Despite the recent emphasis on science practices, little work has focused on teachers' knowledge of these key learning goals. The development of high quality assessments for teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of science practices, such as argumentation, is important to better assess the needs of teachers and to develop supportive teacher education experiences. In this paper, we present lessons learned from a development process to conceptualize, design, and pilot a measure of teachers' PCK of argumentation.

Recent education reform efforts have included an increasing push for school science to better mirror authentic scientific endeavor, including a focus on science practices. However, despite expectations that all students engage in these language-rich practices, little prior research has focused on how such opportunities will be created for English-learning students.

Science education research, reform documents and standards include scientific argumentation as a key learning goal for students. The role of the teacher is essential for implementing argumentation in part because their beliefs about argumentation can impact whether and how this science practice is integrated into their classroom. In this study, we surveyed 42 middle school science teachers and conducted follow-up interviews with 25 to investigate the factors that teachers believe impact their argumentation instruction.

Educative curriculum materials provide teachers with authentic opportunities to learn new skills and practices. Yet, research shows teachers use curriculum in different ways for different reasons, and these modifications could undermine the learning goals of the curriculum. Little research, however, has examined the variation in teacher use of educative curriculum and the impact on teacher learning. In this article, we use organizational theory's concept of sensemaking to examine teacher learning from educative curriculum.

This paper traces the research-design-develop-test cycle of a haptically-enhanced science simulation designed to teach upper-elementary students core ideas about matter, phase change, and the role of intermolecular forces. We describe our focus group work, usability testing, and small-scale pilot testing. We also detail the technical work behind the creation of our simulation.