Professional Development

Providing high-quality professional development for teachers with diverse backgrounds and classroom experience is a challenging task. In this work, we investigate the Illinois Physics and Secondary Schools (IPaSS) partnership program, which provides instructional resources and a network of support for high school physics teachers through a partnership with the University of Illinois. IPaSS aims to address disparities in physics instruction by equipping teachers with university physics curricula and equipment adapted to fit the context of their high school classrooms.

In teacher professional development (PD), grouping teachers with varying levels of experience can be a productive and empowering way to stimulate the exchange and co-generation of content and pedagogical knowledge. However, less experienced teachers can face socio-emotional risks when engaging in collaborative science content reasoning tasks with more experienced colleagues (Finkelstein, Jaber, & Dini, 2018), and these risks may impact the collaborative experience of both parties and the learning environment in teacher PD.

In this article, we describe a professional learning community (PLC) for science teacher educators that supported changes in pedagogy through educative curriculum materials and vignette writing. The PLC was convened as part of a grant-supported project to build preservice elementary teachers’ content knowledge for matter using educative curriculum materials. PLC members collaborated with one another over an academic year to learn about and discuss implementing curricular materials in their respective science teacher education courses.

Teacher–teacher feedback is an important feature of professional learning. However, deeply ingrained socio-pedagogical norms may affect both the nature and content of feedback, constraining its effectiveness. Prior studies have reported that avoiding critique and providing excessively generic information can hinder pedagogical inquiry and adoption of reform-based instruction.

This study examines secondary mathematics teachers’ anticipations of student responses related to a series of cognitively demanding mathematics tasks from multiple mathematical domains presented in the context of voluntary and asynchronous online professional development modules. We analyze 283 anticipations made by 127 teachers to 17 mathematics tasks and present four distinct foci of teachers’ anticipations.

Language is a fundamental tool for learning science. This study highlights the importance of teacher knowledge in utilising language as a tool for knowledge generation in the classrooms. This case study examines elementary teachers’ development of declarative, procedural, and epistemic knowledge related to using language, particularly focusing on how a three-year professional development programme centred around the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach influences the development of these knowledge bases.

Despite interest in how students’ implicit theories—their growth and fixed mindsets about their own learning—affect students as learners, relatively little research on mindset has looked at teachers as learners. This study explores elementary teachers’ implicit theories about the malleability of mathematics intelligence and teaching ability. It also examines how implicit theories of learning relate to teacher noticing, a construct that has been linked to teachers’ classroom practice and their students’ learning outcomes.

Foregrounding climate education in formal science learning environments provides students with opportunities to develop critical climate-related knowledge and skills. However, research has shown many challenges to teaching and learning about Earth’s climate and global climate change (GCC). This longitudinal study aims to establish how secondary science teachers, over time, implement model-based climate curricula in support of students’ climate and GCC education by utilizing EzGCM. The model (EzGCM) is a data-driven, computer-based climate modeling tool use to explore global climate data.

Foregrounding climate education in formal science learning environments provides students with opportunities to develop critical climate-related knowledge and skills. However, research has shown many challenges to teaching and learning about Earth’s climate and global climate change (GCC). This longitudinal study aims to establish how secondary science teachers, over time, implement model-based climate curricula in support of students’ climate and GCC education by utilizing EzGCM. The model (EzGCM) is a data-driven, computer-based climate modeling tool use to explore global climate data.