Teacher Practice

This study aimed to explore the development of teachers’ knowledge of dialogue and argument through three specific knowledge bases: declarative, procedural, and epistemic. Additionally, the study sought to understand the implications of this knowledge for implementing a knowledge generation approach in classroom settings. To achieve these objectives, a multiple-case study was conducted with 12 elementary teachers who participated in a professional development (PD) program centered on the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH), an approach designed to promote knowledge generation.

Despite significant interest in Career and Technical Education (CTE), little is known about CTE teachers. Using ten years of Maryland administrative data, we find that almost one-fifth of CTE teachers enter the profession with a high school diploma or associate’s degree, reflecting state policies allowing trade/industry professional experience to substitute for higher degrees.

In our elementary science methods courses, we aim to shift our preservice teachers’ view of science instruction beyond teacher-directed, hands-on “touching and telling,” toward a student-centered approach that emphasizes scientific sensemaking. To that end, we have been emphasizing the sensemaking nature of the eight science and engineering practices (SEPs) defined in the Next Generation Science Standards. In this study, we investigated the question: What happens when we ask preservice elementary teachers to explicitly attend to sensemaking as they plan for and reflect on their own science teaching?

In our elementary science methods courses, we aim to shift our preservice teachers’ view of science instruction beyond teacher-directed, hands-on “touching and telling,” toward a student-centered approach that emphasizes scientific sensemaking. To that end, we have been emphasizing the sensemaking nature of the eight science and engineering practices (SEPs) defined in the Next Generation Science Standards. In this study, we investigated the question: What happens when we ask preservice elementary teachers to explicitly attend to sensemaking as they plan for and reflect on their own science teaching?

This study captures the experiences of rural teachers with a large-scale online professional learning (PL) program for teaching science and engineering in their contexts and suggests guidelines for designing effective online PL in STEM for rural teachers.

This study examines an expansive shift in the priorities of professional learning within a collective of high school science teachers, scientists, community organizers, youth, and educational researchers who were working together on classroom science projects grounded in community concerns of environmental racism.

Innovative science curricula aim to transform classroom instruction by emphasizing socio-scientific issues (SSI), student-centered inquiry, and culturally relevant pedagogy. Engaging with new and innovative curricula has the potential to stretch teachers’ instructional practices when they fully commit to implementation, challenging them to navigate tensions between their existing approaches and reform-oriented teaching methods. The Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT) and the Interconnected Model of Professional Growth (IMPG) provide a lens for understanding the motivations behind teacher decisions when implementing such curricula and whether these decisions lead to professional learning. This study applies these frameworks to examine how two middle school science teachers, Andrew and Abby, navigated the implementation of the Grand Challenges (GC) curriculum, balancing the perceived costs, values, and challenges of integrating SSI into their instruction.

Since the release of A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), there has been an urgent need for teacher professional development (PD) programs that support the implementation of NGSS-aligned curriculum materials and address the unique strengths and needs of diverse student groups, including multilingual learners (MLs). The purpose of this study is to describe how teacher feedback guided the design and refinement of our curriculum-based PD program integrating science and language with MLs through a 2-year field trial.

Teacher preparation programs need to consider how to support elementary science teachers in developing their knowledge related to environmental and climate justice. Working with children to determine steps they can take together with their community to address and mitigate local environmental justice issues can seem daunting, especially if teachers have not had opportunities to plan and adapt lessons with these goals in mind. We describe a series of lessons for preservice teachers on environmental justice, including climate justice, and climate change.

Professional noticing is a critical skill for teachers, enabling them to interpret and respond to significant moments in the classroom to support student learning. While recent theoretical papers have broadened the conceptualization of noticing to include social, embodied, and environmental factors, empirical research exploring the interaction of such domains is limited. To address this gap, the current study investigated the effects of perceptual (eye-tracking and presence) and cognitive (pedagogical content knowledge) factors on preservice teachers’ professional noticing within a 360 video.