ABSTRACT Learning to plan modeling-based investigations (MBIs) presents significant challenges for pre-service elementary teachers. Although they understand disciplinary core ideas and modeling practices, they address both as competing learning goals and, as novices, they have not experienced how to structure MBIs for their future students. In the context of a science teacher education course, we have designed a set of pedagogical supports around a biology-specific epistemic tool to help pre-service elementary teachers meet those challenges. This study builds the case of how a group of four pre-service elementary teachers learns to plan MBIs while working with the designed supports. We use the professional vision as a theoretical and analytical framework to characterize the group’s learning through discourses to build shared professional understandings of planning MBIs around biology core ideas. Analysis focused on their highlighting and coding of relevant aspects of disciplinary core ideas, modeling, and structuring MBIs, as well as their creation and use of material representations. The findings illustrate that: a) epistemic negotiation supports the group in integrating biology core ideas and modeling practices when developing explanatory models, and b) pedagogical negotiation, through the de-construction of those explanatory models, supports the group structuring of a MBI, including a natural phenomenon and questions students can investigate in a coherent sequence. We discuss how a biology-specific epistemic tool embedded in pedagogical supports helps pre-service teachers learn to plan MBIs by facilitating both epistemic and pedagogical negotiations.

ABSTRACT Teaching practice internships provide opportunities for pre-service teachers (PSTs) to enact their knowledge in real classroom settings. This paper investigated PSTs’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) about electrostatics, its translation into practice and factors that affect the translation. The refined consensus model (RCM) of PCK served as theoretical framework. Guided by the RCM, two manifestations of enacted PCK (ePCK) focusing on lesson planning (ePCKP) and teaching (ePCKT) were investigated. Data reflecting ePCKP was collected using content representations (CoRe) tools and lesson planning forms. Data reflecting the ePCKT was explored using classroom observations. The components of the grand PCK rubric served as the analytical framework. These are teacher knowledge and skills related to (i) curricular saliency, (ii) learners’ understanding of concepts, and (iii) conceptual teaching strategies including representations. These components were used to analyze the manifestations of ePCK before they were compared. Components that revealed variations between ePCKP and ePCKT were used to formulate interview questions to elicit the pedagogical factors that affected the translation of the PCK into practice. The results revealed multiple instances where there were misalignments between ePCKP and ePCKT. The misalignments were ascribed to the following pedagogical factors: interactions with learners, the involvement of mentor teachers, reflections, management of time for teaching concepts, and teacher efficacy. The results have implications for PST education and mentorship during teaching practice internships.

ABSTRACT This study examined the impact of a practice-based approach to in-service science teacher education, using small-group discussions about photovoltaic (PV) science to support teachers’ instruction on sustainable energy transitions in response to climate change risks. Ultimately, we aimed to promote teachers’ PV science comprehension as well as their ability to use small-group discussions productively in their future classrooms. In-service teachers (N = 6) participated in a five-week summer Solar Energy Engineering Research Experience for Teachers program where they read a series of scientific articles, attended presentations, and engaged in small-group Quality Talk discussions, all about solar energy as a sustainable technology for post-carbon energy futures. Using a qualitative content analysis approach, we gathered evidence associated with both the indicators of high-level comprehension evidenced within the talk as well as teachers’ individual PV science knowledge before and after each discussion. We also collected data related to teachers’ instructional intentions via lesson plans and their self-reported future use of classroom discussions. Numerous indicators of high-level comprehension were present within the talk and teachers evidenced growth in their PV science knowledge from pretest to posttest. Additionally, teachers not only infused their lesson plans with the PV science topics they discussed, but they also expressed intentions to teach PV science using discussions in their future classrooms. Findings suggest in-service teachers can benefit from opportunities to engage in a practice-based approach emphasizing discussions, resulting in not only enhanced PV science comprehension but also intentions to enact discussions about the learned content in their future classrooms.

ABSTRACT This study provides evidence of the effect of video analysis of real classroom situations as a support for promoting the professional vision among primary education pre-service teachers. Specifically, it focuses on the Science Process Skills involved in scientific inquiry when teaching through this method. This quasi-experimental study (n = 90) analyzes a didactic strategy based on the noticing and coding of inquiry teaching practices in school contexts. It aims to encourage pre-service teachers’ knowledge of the Science Process Skills. The quantitative results show a significant improvement in all these skills in the experimental group, mainly with regard to the proficiency of Planning and Experimentation and Interpretation skills. These data are congruent with the results obtained from the qualitative analysis of the codification engaged in by this group. The results of this study contribute to responding to the need for resources in the scientific inquiry education of pre-service teachers in primary education. Video analysis was observed to help mobilize a wide range of concepts involving knowledge of the Science Process Skills that are studied in the initial stages of teacher education.

ABSTRACT The use of data to explain natural phenomena has been a core feature of science education, and science educators continue to call for an increased emphasis on teaching data practices. This mixed methods design-based research study adds to the growing body of research on data practices in science by explaining the learning trends of science teachers involved in a three-year collaborative professional development (PD) using computational thinking (CT) and self-regulated learning (SRL) as a means to support teachers in implementing data practices. The PD resulted in long-term high-quality teacher learning outcomes for all three elements of the PD (data practices, CT, and SRL) despite the upheaval of teaching platforms due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the teachers were involved in design-based research, their professional learning focused on collaboratively creating an electronic, interactive notebook with lessons for use in science classrooms across the United States. Creating a common product as an outcome of the PD may have served as motivation for teachers to learn about and implement more data practices, CT, and SRL, which suggests that design-based research is another valuable design for teacher PD.

ABSTRACT This study examines how storytelling can guide the critical reflexivity of secondary science teachers engaged in a professional learning community. Traditionally, storytelling has been used in Black communities to “teach the people to know themselves.” The author engages in racial storytelling to remember, envision and consider what could have been, to imagine new possibilities. Through narrative case study analysis, the author examines two science educators' past, present, and futures through their narratives. The author asserts that critical consciousness is necessary for teachers as they aspire to support the needs of diverse learners.

ABSTRACT When pressing societal challenges (e.g., COVID-19, access to clean water) are sidelined in science classrooms, science education fails to leverage the knowledge and experiences of minoritized students in school, thus reproducing injustices in society. Our conceptual framework for justice-centered STEM education engages all students in multiple STEM subjects, including data science and computer science, to explain and design solutions to pressing societal challenges and their disproportionate impact on minoritized groups. In the first part of this article, we extend our conceptual framework by articulating the affordances of justice-centered STEM education for one minoritized student group that has been traditionally denied meaningful STEM learning experiences: multilingual learners (MLs). Justice-centered STEM education with MLs leverages the assets that MLs bring to STEM learning, including their transnational knowledge and experiences as well as their rich repertoire of meaning-making resources, thus refuting deficit narratives of these students. To illustrate the affordances of justice-centered STEM education with MLs, we draw on examples from our instructional unit that engages students in the pressing societal challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the second part of the article, we report on an initial inquiry into how 14 undergraduate pre-service teachers made sense of our conceptual framework after participating in lessons from our COVID-19 instructional unit. Findings indicated that pre-service teachers perceived both opportunities and obstacles of justice-centered STEM education with MLs. We close by discussing what it might take to prepare the next generation of teachers to disrupt systemic injustices in and out of school.

ABSTRACT Science content, teaching, and teacher preparation are all political acts. However, accepting the political nature of science as well as that of science teaching has proven to be a hard shift for many in the science community. In this paper, we suggest a shift away from an apolitical teaching of science toward a system of practices that transforms the purposes of science education through a justice-centered science pedagogy approach. For science teachers to engage their students in this type of transformative teaching and learning, we argue that the science teachers themselves need to be immersed in conditions under which their learning experiences foregrounds the transformative power of justice centered science pedagogy. In this study, we explore a residency program, and in particular, a secondary science methods course in which pre-service teachers engaged in a social justice project exploring social justice science issues to illustrate preservice teachers’ conceptualizations of justice-centered science teaching and learning.

ABSTRACT This study focuses on teaching and learning science in three secondary public school classrooms with mostly culturally marginalized students from Gurung and Magar communities in a semirural district in Nepal. The study aims to understand how three science teachers in different schools engage students in culturally relevant transformative science learning. I use a constructivist case study design. Data were collected through 18 classroom observations, three interviews with science teachers, and a student focus group interview. Analysis of the data showed that culturally marginalized students are experts in the cultural knowledge they bring into the classroom, science teachers felt ambivalence between culturally relevant science and success in tests, and science teachers showed a need for greater pedagogical skills in cultural relevancy. The study suggests a need for focused and intentional culturally relevant courses in science teacher education programs and professional development. Educating teachers for more transformative and relational science teaching will support embedding cultural knowledge and values in classroom teaching and curriculum.