A teacher’s working context is an important factor in how they make sense of and enact curriculum. Understanding how external factors (e.g. state and/or district policies, school cultural norms) interplay with teachers’ personal resources (e.g. self-understanding, rules of thumb for decision-making) can help identify supports for implementation of increasingly available standard aligned curriculum materials. However, in science education, limited research has explored how curriculum enactments are influenced by this complex interplay. In this qualitative embedded case study, we investigated how four middle school science teachers within the same school district used their internal resources to make sense of external factors when enacting new NGSS-aligned place-based curriculum materials. Data collection occurred over multiple years and included semi-structured individual and focus group interviews, lesson plans, weekly surveys, observations, and memos. Using thematic analysis, we found that a new district-level policy implementing a 6-week science assessment caused differential enactments of the unit, depending on which internal resources teachers drew on to make sense of the curriculum materials. Our findings contribute to further understanding how internal personal resources and external factors support and impede science teachers’ use of curriculum materials in ways that align, or do not align, with recent reform-based learning outlined in the NGSS.
Wright, G., Zangori, L., Otto, S., Snyder, R., & Cole, L. (2025). Exploring middle school science teachers’ curriculum sensemaking. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/1046560X.2025.2497188