ABSTRACTUnderscored by a long overdue call to challenge racism in teacher education (TE), we set forth to examine our own university TE classrooms to understand how we are both perpetuating and disrupting systemic racism and decentering whiteness, such that we can move toward sustained antiracist pedagogy for ourselves, our institutions, teacher candidates, and school communities. Undergirded by Critical Race Theory, this paper presents the development of an Antiracist Pedagogy Course Audit– a tool to develop instructor capacity to engage in critically reflective practices in five key areas: 1) Instructor Critical Consciousness; 2) Understanding Students’ Backgrounds and Experiences; 3) Course Readings and Content; 4) Classroom Learning Environment; and 5) Assignments and Assessments. We describe early implementation, process-oriented mechanisms for adaption, and applications of the tool in an early childhood education teacher education course.

AbstractThis article examines museum and academic library professionals’ perceptions of leadership, leader development, and the nature of leader development opportunities available to them. We compare these perceptions based on functional positions of staff as senior, middle, or non‐managers, which facilitates a deeper understanding of the data. Analysis reveals there are significant differences in the perception of leadership and leader practices between managers (senior and middle) and non‐managers; this gap is prevalent in both museums and academic libraries. There are also significant differences with respect to what leader development activities are available to whom and who is selected for these activities. Results point to the need for more intentional, equitable, and focused efforts to develop leader capacity so that museums and libraries are better positioned to meet current and future societal challenges. Finally, we provide some suggestions for future practice and research.

With the increase in the costs of providing education and concerns about financial responsibility, heightened consideration of accountability and results, elevated awareness of the range of teacher skills and student learning styles and needs, more focus is being placed on the promises offered by online software and educational technology. One of the most heavily marketed, exciting and controversial applications of edtech involves the varied educational programs to which different students are exposed based on how big data applications have evaluated their likely learning profiles. Characterized most often as ‘personalized learning,’ these programs raise a number of ethical concerns especially when used at the K-12 level. This paper analyzes the range of these ethical concerns arguing that characterizing them under the general rubric of ‘privacy’ oversimplifies the concerns and makes it too easy for advocates to dismiss or minimize them. Six distinct ethical concerns are identified: information privacy; anonymity; surveillance; autonomy; non-discrimination; and ownership of information. Particular attention is paid to whether personalized learning programs raise concerns similar to those raised about educational tracking in the 1950s. The paper closes with discussion of three themes that are important to consider in ethical and policy discussions.

ABSTRACTScience education today has become increasingly focused on research into complex natural, social and technological systems. In this study, we examined the development of high-school biology students’ systems understanding of the human body, in a three-year longitudinal study. The development of the students’ system understanding was evaluated using the Components Mechanisms Phenomena (CMP) framework for conceptual representation. We coded and analysed the repertory grid personal constructs of 67 high-school biology students at 4 points throughout the study. Our data analysis builds on the assumption that systems understanding entails a perception of all the system categories, including structures within the system (its Components), specific processes and interactions at the macro and micro levels (Mechanisms), and the Phenomena that present the macro scale of processes and patterns within a system. Our findings suggest that as the learning process progressed, the systems understanding of our students became more advanced, moving forward within each of the major CMP categories. Moreover, there was an increase in the mechanism complexity presented by the students, manifested by more students describing mechanisms at the molecular level. Thus, the ‘mechanism’ category and the micro level are critical components that enable students to understand system-level phenomena such as homeostasis.

How do children begin to make the transition from seeing the natural world to scientifically observing the natural world? This study explored how differences in parent conversational strategies and disciplinary knowledge impact children’s experience observing biological phenomena during shared informal learning. A total of 79 parent–child pairs with children ages 6–10 participated in a controlled study in which half of the parents used their natural conversational style and the other half were trained to use 4 conversational strategies during family observations of pollination in a botanical garden. Parents were also assigned to high- and low-knowledge groups according to their knowledge of pollination biology. Findings suggest that parents who received training used the conversational strategies more than parents who used their natural conversational style. Parents and children who knew more about pollination at the start of the study exhibited higher levels of disciplinary talk in the garden. However, the use of the conversational strategies also increased the amount of disciplinary talk in the garden. The extent to which families engaged in disciplinary talk in the garden predicted significant variance in what children learned from the experience. An extended example illustrates how shared family noticing and conversation may support learning to observe nature.

Development of learning progressions has been at the forefront of science education for several years. While understanding students' conceptual development toward big ideas in science is extremely valuable for researchers, science teachers can also benefit from assessment tools that diagnose their students' trajectories along the learning progressions. In this paper, we describe the develop- ment and validation of a teacher-friendly survey, the Structure and Motion of Matter (SAMM) survey, designed to measure students' trajectories along aspects of a research-based learning progression on the particulate nature of matter. Specifically, the survey assesses students' implicit assumptions about four concepts: the structure of solute and solvent substances in a gas solution, the origin of motion of gaseous solute particles, and their trajectories. The process to ensure the translation validity (face and content validity) of the survey is described. Criterion validity study results indicate that the SAMM survey is well grounded in theory, and the testretest study results indicate that the survey is also reliable. Finally, the development of an Excel-based scoring scheme associated with the SAMM survey is also described. Inter-rater reliability studies indicate that the scoring scheme can be used reliably.