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Research has highlighted the significant decline in teachers' implementation of newly acquired teaching practices following professional development (PD), primarily attributed to the absence of follow-up support. Even science teachers who have participated in intensive PD programs often encounter challenges in integrating new teaching practices into their classrooms. This study investigated the impact of a follow-up PD (PD 2) on 16 rural middle and high school science teachers and their students' outcomes after their participation in an intensive PD the previous year (PD1). The findings showed that the teachers' inquiry knowledge and confidence levels in teaching science remained stable or slightly improved up until the end of year 2, comparable to the levels measured at the end of year 1. Moreover, teachers who initially showed lower levels of knowledge and confidence were more likely to revert to their initial status after reaching a certain level during PD1. Regarding student outcomes, the posttest effect sizes for middle school students were substantial and statistically significant in both year 1 and year 2, compared to their pretest scores. While the effect sizes for high school students in year 1 were small, they became larger and significant in year 2. The findings suggest the practical advantages of implementing follow-up PD to provide continued support for teachers' implementation in subsequent years. Additionally, this study presents a sustainable and cost-effective approach to deliver follow-up support to teachers, namely through a short-term PD accompanied by distance-based peer instructional coaching.

Bridging the theory-practice gap remains a challenge in preparing preservice elementary teachers for science teaching. Research experiences for undergraduates (REU) offer a potential way to help preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) come to value and implement research-based science teaching. REUs come in many forms but often take the form of either extracurricular research with a practicing scientist. Alternatively, practitioner inquiries are often used as part of a teacher preparation course or practicum but often are limited in time and scope. In this study, we report on a novel approach to an REU that combined the features of a traditional REU and practitioner inquiry, which we refer to as Extracurricular Practitioner Inquiry (EPI). PSTs collaboratively developed, tested, and prepared curricular units for publication as part of an extracurricular, funded project. A mixed-methods approach, including nonrandom matched pairs and semi-structured interviews, was used to investigate the impact of the EPI experience on PSTs' knowledge and beliefs about science teaching. As a result of their participation in the novel EPI, when compared with a control group, the PST participants developed beliefs more consistent with research-based science teaching. Support from collaborators, shifts in self-perception, and improved understanding of the research-practice relationship seem to have mediated changes in the PSTs' knowledge and beliefs about science teaching.

The purpose of "practical work" in chemistry lessons as perceived by teachers varies and does not always correspond with an emphasis on procedural learning. Teachers project various objectives in them. These activities have various characteristics and potential. The goal of this study is to find out the set of characteristics of practical activities in chemistry lessons as perceived by teachers. We identify and characterize the diversity of the sets of participants' perspectives across a given topic. Q-methodology was used to investigate the perspectives of 33 chemistry teachers regarding practical activities in chemistry lessons. The teachers ranked and sorted 61 statements about practical activities according to their preferences. The analysis showed three sets of perspectives: (Factor 1) focusing on experience with phenomena, (Factor 2) the teacher is in control, and (Factor 3) focusing on the process of learning. Based on the results, the study addresses some issues that need to be communicated with the teachers and their educators.

Evolution is a fundamental part of biology and thus it is essential that biology preservice teachers understand and accept it. The relationship between knowledge and acceptance of evolution, and specifically human evolution, has not been fully investigated in Israel. We sought to learn about that relationship amongst Israeli Jewish religious preservice science teachers. Twenty-three religious preservice teachers answered knowledge questions before and after participating in a human evolution activity and completed an acceptance questionnaire (I-SEA). In addition, eleven of them were interviewed regarding their knowledge of evolution and four were interviewed regarding their acceptance of evolution a few months after participating in the activity. Our main findings were that the relationship between knowledge and acceptance of evolution was not always one-to-one. The preservice teachers whose evolution knowledge is high and have firm religious faith accept the theory of evolution and are willing and eager to teach it. In addition, preservice teachers might have made a shift in their understanding of human evolution and thus accepted human evolution more due to the activity. More teacher training and exposure to evolution content and pedagogy are needed so that when preservice teachers will become in-service teachers they will teach evolution without hesitance.

One of the United States' higher education system's most important tasks is properly preparing elementary teachers to teach science. Teachers' ability to use their science subject matter knowledge (SMK) to effectively develop pedagogical approaches can significantly contribute to their students' engagement in science and motivation to pursue science-related careers. To date, several studies examine the influences of subject matter knowledge on teachers' pedagogical strategies. Although there are still contradictions regarding those influences, providing teachers with adequate preparation in science SMK and science pedagogical knowledge is crucial. To understand how elementary teachers are currently prepared in science SMK, this study examines degree requirements across 223 colleges and universities in the U.S. to determine the number and type of general education science content courses required for candidates to complete their elementary education degrees. Our findings indicated that while many U.S. universities' undergraduate general education science course requirements have increased in terms of required numbers of science credit hours since 2009, the related pedagogical science content knowledge and science content knowledge of pre-service elementary teachers has not also increased. Thus, we can surmise that increasing the required quantity of general education science courses does not correlate to increased science content knowledge, or increased science teaching confidence or competence, at least among undergraduate per-service elementary teachers.

Enormous scientific and technological development has brought the requirement of appropriate implementation of technologies into the educational process. The use of educational technologies is determined by several factors. One of them are teachers, for whom the effective integration of educational technologies is still a challenging task. Teachers' attitude toward technology makes a crucial point in this issue. An important element that determines teachers' interest for using educational technologies is their perception of the effectiveness in the educational process and also their skills in using technology. This study presents the results of a research, which's aim was to identify whether there are any statistically significant differences between science teachers' self-efficacy and self-assessment, based on the TPACK frame, and their attitudes toward using technologies in educational processes. Science teachers rated their own TPACK moderately positive. They had the highest mean scores on the component items focusing on pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge. Lower mean scores were recorded in the components associated with technological knowledge, where teachers perceiving their technological content knowledge to be the worst one.

In this exploratory qualitative case study, we sought to develop a better understanding of beginning teachers' (Scholars) ideas about justice-oriented science teaching. Data were collected from participants from the same secondary teacher education program with an overarching mission of social justice. The study spanned two academic years, including a one-year Master of Education program and the first year of teaching. Data sources included periodic semi-structured individual interviews, lesson plans, and written reflections. Findings are presented as chronological themes indicating: 1) Scholars used their own identities as a starting point for constructing their justice-oriented practice; 2) Scholars' learning about social justice in science education varied based upon their initial teaching goals; and 3) as first-year teachers, Scholars struggled to enact their justice-oriented goals within the classroom, which enhanced their sociopolitical awareness. The implications of this study point to attending to prospective teachers' science epistemologies and promoting critique of science and science education, as well as awareness of the simultaneity of identities they bring to the teaching of science to achieve the transformative goals of justice-oriented science education.

Social justice-oriented teacher education programs infuse critical pedagogies in their coursework to build teachers' capacity to design and enact teaching that seeks to disrupt systemic oppression and injustice. Graduates of these programs often seek teaching positions in schools that serve working class communities of color with the goal of working alongside students, families, and the community to act as agents of change. Yet, we know that teacher turnover remains high in these schools, especially for early career teachers (i.e. 1-5 years teaching experience). Understanding the needs and challenges that teachers face in their first few years of teaching can help teacher education programs design intentional support systems to ameliorate the lack of support early career teachers experience and issues with teacher turnover. In this paper, we share excerpts from interviews conducted with 20 early career science teachers that shared the social justice strategies, lessons, and pedagogies they used in their classroom. Our findings identified a multitude of teaching practices that depict teachers' everyday pursuit of social justice in their science classrooms, namely how teachers reflected on their positionality, built restorative relationships with students, developed students' critical dispositions, built positive science identities, increased student access to science, and incorporated students' knowledge, experiences, and histories, some of which also presented some challenges for them. We describe these practices and associated challenges with implications for how teacher education can support early career teachers and their alumni in their continued development as social justice educators.

In rural, geographically dispersed school districts, access to high-quality face-to-face professional development (PD) is challenging. Our study developed and compared the effectiveness of an online PD for middle-school science teachers working in remote, rural areas of Kansas with an evidence-based traditional face-to-face PD with the goal of supporting change in teachers' conceptual understanding and self-efficacy in utilizing Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), change in instructional practices, and overall student content learning. Fifteen rural middle-school science teacher participants were randomly selected to participate in the online or traditional PD, then taught the Toward High School Biology curriculum to their 504 middle-school students. Findings aligned with our hypothesis that online PD is as effective as traditional in improving student content knowledge related to the curriculum. Teachers' instructional practices in using Next Generation Science Standards improved, as did their use of student-centered instruction and making science relevant to the lives of their students. Our study supports the importance of designing PD that effectively and economically brings teachers in isolated and diverse rural communities together.

Science teachers are increasingly encouraged to critically engage their students with scientific knowledge and expertise, with the expectation that such instructional practices will support the development of scientific literacy (SL). Drawing on Bildung framework, this qualitative study was conducted in Tanzania to explore how science teachers' classroom practices facilitate the development of students' SL. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and non-participant classroom observations with science teachers and students from six secondary schools. The study has identified five instructional practices that were used to support students' development of SL, namely guided reading, code-switching, educational print and visual aids, science experiments, and science projects. While there is evidence that the instructional practices used provided opportunities for students to contribute their thinking, experience and understanding to the science learning, the instructional practices were mostly print-based, paper-based and teacher-led, resulting in little engagement in active scientific thinking and literacy learning. Overall, the knowledge base developed by this study is of practical use to science teachers and educators in making decisions about appropriate instructional practices and what should be the regular focus of pre-service teacher education and professional development programs.

New reforms and the Next Generation Science Standards call for three-dimensional learning through the integration of the crosscutting concepts (CCCs) with the science and engineering practices (SEPs) and disciplinary core ideas (DCIs). However, teachers face challenges in knowing how and why to incorporate the CCCs in their planning and teaching, and more information is needed about the use of CCCs in three-dimensional learning and teaching. In this qualitative study, we consider how 31 elementary teachers use the CCCs in their planning for three-dimensional learning and how the teachers describe their successes, challenges, and use of the CCCs in their classrooms. The teachers engaged in a week-long professional development focused on writing three-dimensional lesson plans with an explicit focus on the use of the CCCs in elementary classrooms. Our analyses showed that all the lesson plans included use of the CCCs to support students' 3D sensemaking. However, certain CCCs were used more than others and explicit use of the CCCs by students was uncommon. In addition, a mismatch existed between what CCCs the teachers claimed to use in their lesson plans and what was used in their lessons. In describing their successes and challenges with use of the CCCs in the classroom, the teachers typically discussed students' experiences and knowledge with the CCCs. Implications for teacher educators and curriculum developers are discussed.

Science teacher leaders have been identified as an important lever for the implementation of science education reform. However, science reform implementation is locally controlled and not uniform across districts; therefore, the work of STLs within a reform context can vary. In this descriptive case study, we explore the work of 11 science teacher leaders who support science education reform in a variety of organizational contexts. Through the analysis of multiple data sources, we describe the roles that these science teacher leaders take up in their work and identified how variation in these roles related to localized contexts and priorities for science education. We identified seven roles that science teacher leaders enacted in their work: activist, ambassador, collaborator, innovator, networker, organizer, and translator. We found that each science teacher leader prioritized one or two of these roles in their work, with other roles supporting these primary roles. While most science teacher leaders named some aspect of collaborator, networker, and ambassador as part of their work, only the district-level science leaders named translator. Furthermore, there were important differences across the science teacher leaders in our sample, which related to their district and/or school contexts. We end with suggestions for leveraging the existing variation in the work of science teacher leaders for designing professional development including opportunities for science teacher leaders to surface the various roles they occupy in their work and to provide choice in professional learning based on those roles.

This study reports findings from an interview study with eleven teacher educators from a physics teacher training program in Finland. They represented the four training environments that students encounter during their education, i.e. the Department of Physics, the Department of Mathematics and Science Education, the Department of General Pedagogy, and the Training School. Drawing on Gee's theory of figured worlds, our analysis shows that the educators across the four training environments largely maintain the same vision of what the attributes of a "good" physics teacher are. Although working in different settings, the eleven educators appear to be working in concert, each contributing to the development of an agreed professional physics teacher identity for their trainees. The ideal physics teacher was found to be envisioned in terms of a subject expert and a research-based educationalist, whilst at the same time being psychologically fully matured and willing to develop as both a person and a teacher. We identify a number of factors in the Finnish teacher training program that are suggested to contribute to the coherence found. Some of the factors we identify are specific to the Finnish situation, such as teacher status in society, whilst others could potentially be implemented elsewhere, such as dedicated training schools and direct teacher influence in the design of the curriculum.

Developing culturally responsive science teachers requires changes in one's knowledge and dispositions, as well as one's instructional practices. Multicultural science instruction (MSI) provides educators with a framework for strengthening and disrupting the formal curriculum in ways that infuse critical, historical, and culturally responsive connections. Practitioners need not only to see MSI modeled by teacher educators and their colleagues, but also to have concrete resources provided on their journey. While MSI has been defined and researched in academic literature for decades, there is not yet a clear understanding of how it is depicted in authoritative practitioner spaces--such as the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA)--where 40,000 members regularly seek out instructional resources. This potentially limits a major avenue for science teacher education toward inclusive, equitable ends. We conducted a review of 29 articles in the NSTA journals "Science Scope" and "The Science Teacher" to examine the nature and scope of MSI in secondary settings. NSTA publishes nine issues per journal each year, with approximately 15-30 entries per issue. Results indicated, on average, fewer than three MSI-focused articles were published per journal per year for the 10-year period under review. The characterization of MSI within articles was consistent with published scholarship. However, generally inclusive pedagogies dominated, rather than targeted approaches that advance the critical and emancipatory aims of MSI. Articles featuring family collaboration and sociopolitical consciousness represented 2% and 10%, respectively, of all observed MSI. Implications for supporting science teachers' multicultural instruction with authoritative resources are discussed.

There is an urgent call for science and STEM teachers to incorporate practices for equity-centered environments, social justice-orientations, criticality and other practices that promote system change. Yet this demand occurs against the backdrop marginalization of teachers' from having a say in the planning, teaching, and assessments in their own classrooms as teachers are stripped of agency, authority, and autonomy. We argue that these two simultaneous trends in science and STEM education--the drive for equity-centered environments and the systemic devaluation of teachers' expertise--are incompatible. Realizing the goal of science classrooms that support equity-centered and social justice-oriented learning requires that teachers have equal voice in important decisions on matters that impact their day-to-day actions, which includes the power to determine goals and practices. This means dismantling some of the power structures in the educational system that disenfranchise teachers' from making decisions based on their own knowledge, and their own goals for learning, particularly goals for social-justice and equity. In this article we describe pedagogical frameworks for making transformational change in science classrooms and in wider society and show how each framework is dependent on equity for teachers. We end with implications for this shift--moving toward a system where teachers have equal power--that is an essential part of creating science classrooms as sites of equity, social justice and science learning.

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.

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.

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.

Climate change is a growing global crisis with short and long-term physical and human impacts. Although climate change is a global occurrence, the impacts of climate change are not felt equally among all locations and all groups of people. Climate justice education is a form of social justice education that invites students to consider how the contributions toward and impacts of climate change differ across racial, socioeconomic, geographic, and intergenerational lines. Climate justice education can be impactful and may motivate climate actions and activism. To learn more about how climate justice education can be enacted, this mixed methods study sought to investigate Ohio secondary science teachers' climate justice and climate action teaching practices and their reasons for their instructional choices. Eighty-six Ohio secondary science teachers completed an electronic survey about their climate change teaching practices, and 26 of these teachers were interviewed to explain their practices. Research participants most often framed their climate change teaching as a global social issue and as a current problem with primarily physical impacts on the Earth. Most participants who taught about climate change address multiple climate actions and at least one climate justice issue. When participants address climate justice, they most commonly address geographic injustices and least often address racial injustices. Teachers most often teach individual, apolitical climate mitigation actions and seldom teach collective and/or adaptation actions. Implications for science teacher professional learning and curriculum development are discussed.

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.

Developing students' creativity is an important educational goal in many countries. The Australian Curriculum Authority has mandated that all teachers teach creative thinking across all subjects and grades. However, after more than 10 years working within this mandate, how do science teachers see their role in promoting creativity in the classroom? This study reports interviews with 13 Australian science teachers, from three jurisdictions, about how they understand creativity, the activities that they use and barriers to supporting creative thinking in classrooms. The findings showed that, although teachers were able to identify many of the elements of creativity and creative thinking described in the literature, many still felt unsure of what creative thinking entails. For class activities that foster creative thinking most teachers focused on project-based or inquiry learning which require long periods of class time to complete. Less emphasis was given to the importance of developing creative thinking skills in making hypotheses by supporting construction of meaning, providing personal insights and explanations through the use of possibility thinking, mental images, analogies when teaching curriculum content. The Australian Curriculum documents themselves give guidance suggesting that creative thinking in science is mainly developed through inquiry-based activities. It is imperative that schools give more support to teachers to understand and develop creative thinking tasks, including time, resources, professional learning, and accountability systems.

This qualitative case study examines the experiences of three Black female science teachers who experienced and participated in the triumphs and failings of today's charter school system while teaching Black and Brown students. Using Critical Race Theory and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy as frameworks, the findings of the study revealed that the teachers explained the rationale behind how and why they teach science to Black and Brown students, the actions that define their thinking (both positive and negative), and the personal and professional repercussions for being a Black woman science teacher working at a Charter Management Organization (CMO). Based on these findings, we suggest that science teacher educators encourage teachers to take risks by engaging in socio-political consciousness through curriculum redesign. Disrupting the White status quo requires science teacher educators to practice culturally relevant teaching themselves.

It is necessary to foster teachers' ability to design and implement instructions that encourage students to construct evidence and engage in argumentative discourse. The argument of this paper is that the continuous reflection and discussion as well as regular practice on instructional designs will promote pre-service science teachers' (PSSTs') competence to guide students in providing evidence. An in-depth analysis on PSSTs' instructional designs provided evidence for this argument. For this purpose, this study implemented an action research (AR) in which PSSTs' instructional designs were analyzed before and after the three-week reflection and discussion on instructions that they conducted in groups of three or four in a science education course. The author of this paper, who is also the instructor of the course, analyzed these instructional designs to identify PSSTs' level of guidance by using the rubric that she created with expert judgment. Two other researchers and the author coded each category in the rubric independently. She scored the PSSTs' level in each category from 1 to 3 and then calculated their total score for the design. She also made paired samples t-test on the scores of each category and in total scores to identify how the PSSTs' instructional design guides students to use evidence before and after the continuous reflection and discussion of their instructional designs. The results suggested that integrating continuous reflection and discussion into her teaching improved PSSTs' guidance in providing evidence. Concluding remarks will be made for the further implications of this study.

Recognizing that the power of computation has changed the practice of science, science education standards in a number of countries have included a call for the inclusion of computational thinking (CT) in K-12 science education. As CT is a relatively new construct, preparing inservice science teachers to implement CT-infused learning experiences depends on the creation of robust CT professional development (CT-PD) initiatives. Given that teachers' understandings, attitudes and beliefs impact their teaching, an important step in the development of these programs is identification of teachers' conceptualizations of CT and its role in science education as well as their perceived barriers to CT/science integration. Additionally, scholars have noted that teacher PD is more effective when it is tailored to the needs of participating teachers. To this end, this survey study examined secondary science teachers' conceptualizations of CT, perceived barriers to CT/science integration, and the types of professional support they believe is needed to overcome these perceived barriers. Analysis of 123 open-ended surveys revealed that secondary science teachers: (1) conceptualize CT as a specific type of thinking that can be used to build science students' problem-solving skills; (2) view their lack of CT understanding as a primary barrier to CT/science integration; (3) believe their students are academically unprepared for CT-infused science; and (4) want CT-PD focusing on the what, why, and how of CT/science integration. Drawing upon these findings, multiple implications for supporting science teachers in bringing CT-infused experiences to their students are provided.

Effective questioning and discussion are fundamental instructional skills for science teacher candidates to master. These skills are important for teacher competence that aids student achievement. Opportunities to practice these skills in traditional teacher preparation programs may be limited. This embedded single case study focused on an intervention consisting of an experiential deliberate practice approach which provides a virtual learning simulation experience and asynchronous skill development provided science teacher candidates with the opportunity to learn and practice questioning and discussion skills. Teacher candidates taught the same lesson three times to avatars over the course of three weeks to establish a baseline and post-intervention practices. Feedback was provided after each teaching experience and asynchronous skill development modules were presented between each teaching session. Data included scores of teacher practice using an evaluation rubric for questioning and facilitating discussions, self-reflective surveys after each teaching session, and culminating semi-structured interviews. Both participant self-reporting through surveys and interviews and scorer ratings of lessons supported the intervention having positive impacts on skill competencies of participants.

While states are increasingly adopting and implementing the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) as goalposts for student learning, there is less clear consensus around the science instruction needed in classrooms to realize this vision. In this study, I investigate the visions of expertise in science instruction that three science teacher educators (TEs) hold who work for a university, public district's residency, and charter school's new Graduate School of Education (nGSE). Through analyzing interviews as well as artifacts of their institution's evaluation rubrics and methods, I find that TEs across institutions have remarkably similar ideals for student learning in a science classroom, yet markedly different descriptions of how teachers should facilitate this experience for students in their instruction. The differences in their visions of instructional expertise mirror the priorities seen in their institution's evaluation practices, which in turn closely resemble the market logics of their institutions. Using the framework of adaptive expertise, my analysis reveals that these differences occur on three dimensions: how much they prioritize general routines through proactiveness, students' novel thinking through responsiveness, as well as how much they consider the material conditions of classrooms. This work suggests that in the absence of field-wide consensus around NGSS-aligned instruction, science TEs are highly influenced by the insular logics of their institutions. Future work might consider how cross-institutional dialogue could provide science TEs access to alternative logics that expand their knowledge base, as well as develop shared insights around science TE pedagogy for methods instruction that upholds the NGSS.

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.

The purpose of this study is to describe the conditions under which diffracting noticing becomes both a process and product in dynamic relations to re-imagine preservice science teachers' becoming as ethical mattering, a concept rooted in a relational ontology of change and emergence. Drawing on theories of posthumanism, this study theorized pre-service teachers' "becomings" as ethical mattering which pays attention to two events: 1) the differences produced when participants engage in diffracting noticing by placing themselves in the middle of where they are in their "becomings," and 2) the effects or a material mark on bodies, things, and other actants left by these differences. During these events, intra-action and entanglement with other actors produced differences and juxtapositions about how they understood and enacted equitable science teaching. Preservice teachers began to re-imagine what they would do differently to enact more equitable and inclusive teaching practices. Preservice teachers who participated in diffracting noticing could "see" their teaching practices in relation to and entangled with others, and therefore became differently and ethically mattered. In doing so, teachers rendered themselves and each other response-able and accountable for the knowledge that was collectively co-constructed about equitable teaching. The notion of becoming as ethical mattering illustrated in this study contributes to a new thought and re-imagines the traditional notion of change-in-practice, as preservice teachers could not be the same person as they were prior to intra-acting and thus seeing-becoming differently.

In this paper, the authors explore how teachers and community members in Nepal come together to transform students' science teaching and science learning experiences. The community members, primarily parents of the students, took the opportunity to drive the kinds of science topics and the nature of science activities the teachers needed to teach in their children's science classrooms. This paper qualitatively documents the interactions between the teachers and the community members, the teachers' decisions regarding their science lessons, and the nature of critical consciousness discourses in teachers' built-in classroom interactions with students. The data were collected over 8 weeks through classroom observations, interviews, and student artifacts. The analysis showed that community-initiated partnership with science teachers builds science teaching that values critical community well-being and that the teachers have the agency to provide spaces for learning focused on critical consciousness. The paper uses transformative learning theory, liberation social psychology, and deliberative democracy as the guiding theoretical perspectives to understand transformative science teaching through teacher--community partnership.

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.

Teacher education programs must prepare their preservice science teachers to center social justice and to meet the academic needs of culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse students, as justice-centered discourses are traditionally absent from science classrooms yet integral to the teaching and learning of rich and relevant phenomena. In this study, we investigated a cohort of preservice secondary science teachers enrolled in a yearlong, post-baccalaureate teacher education program that attended to social justice. We conducted four interviews with each participant across their program and qualitatively analyzed their discussions of social justice ideas and teaching practices using three tenets of a justice-centered science pedagogy framework: enacting an antiracist and equitable science education, grounding instruction in social and environmental justice phenomena, and framing students as transformative intellectuals. We found preservice teacher participants discussed enacting antiracist and equitable science teaching by using a critical lens to identify inequities in classrooms and schools, and by attending to high academic expectations. Preservice teachers described focusing on socioscientific phenomena and local contexts as starting points for teaching about social justice science issues. Participants also shared their work toward framing students as transformative intellectuals by developing teacher-student relationships, building from students' ideas, and discussing emerging ideas and efforts for student advocacy. Findings from this study underscore the need for more focused work on ways to prioritize the justice component of social justice science issues and the student advocacy component of students as transformative intellectuals so as to prepare preservice teachers to fully enact a socially just science education.

Teachers' career choice motives are defined as the interests, orientations, and motives of young people that motivate them to aspire the teaching career. Teachers' career choice motives have been shown to impact teaching and job retention. Many studies investigated teachers generic career choice motives but studies on teachers' subject-specific career choice motives are widely missing. This study investigated preservice biology teachers' (N = 168) generic and subject-specific career choice motives by using open-ended questions and applying a qualitative content analysis approach to the data analysis. Category systems with generic and subject-specific career choice motives were deductively developed and inductively refined. The findings suggest intrinsic and altruistic motives to be most prominent. In contrast to most previous studies, the extrinsic motive benefits and returns of the teaching profession was also mentioned quite often. Furthermore, the qualitative approach made it possible to differentiate between the motives subject interest in biology and relevance of biology. Only small relationships were found between the generic and the subject-specific career choice motives of the participants and between the career choice motives and sociodemographic background variables. Implications for future research and teacher education are proposed.

Learning to teach is a culturally situated activity. As teachers learn, it is important to understand not only what teachers learn, but how they learn. This article describes a qualitative case study of a subset of four teachers' learning during a professional development surrounding a plate tectonics curriculum. Using qualitative methods, this study tells the story of how the four teachers negotiated professional vision for science teaching around dilemmas that emerged throughout the professional development. By taking a sociocultural perspective on professional vision, researchers can gain insight into how and what teachers learn in professional development settings because it renders teacher learning complex and nuanced. Additionally, we argue negotiating professional vision parallels sensemaking. Sensemaking around science teaching includes grappling with epistemic issues of science in addition to pedagogy and curriculum. Implications for science teacher education are discussed. Specifically, we argue learning to teach requires teachers to engage in conversations that create opportunities to "get somewhere" in relation to dilemmas they have about teaching. In this way, professional vision is an ongoing process of learning that has no endpoint or ideal articulation of teaching or science. Therefore, by framing professional vision as a process of learning we are able to push back on simplistic descriptions of teaching and science.

Recent science education reforms emphasize the goal of developing students' science and engineering practices. To foreground those practices during science instruction, teachers need conceptual tools to guide their instructional decision-making. In this conceptual paper, I propose that thinking about science and engineering activities as educative games provides a useful model for designing productive educational experiences. Central to this argument is a recognition of the ways that games allow learners to experience and cultivate new forms of agency--including those aligned with the practice of science and engineering. When immersed in a game, a student/player pursues clearly defined goals using a limited set of available actions, and in doing so they act out and experience a form of agency that they might not otherwise have been able to access. Viewed in this way, science and engineering activities can be analyzed and evaluated with respect to the forms of agency that they cultivate in students, including the extent to which those forms of agency are consistent with those of science and engineering. In addition to presenting this way of thinking about science and engineering activities, this paper proposes a practical model to assist teachers in analyzing and designing science and engineering learning activities.

In this study, we present a conceptual tool for guiding teachers' principled pedagogical actions toward equitable instruction, referred to as the "Transforming Science Learning" (TSL) framework. The TSL framework was developed to address the challenges of enacting an ideological commitment in local contexts--promoting equity and justice through culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) in K-12 science classrooms. TSL consists of five design principles that articulate the goals (the "why" of practice), instead of prescribing pedagogical activities (the "what" of practice). The five principles are: a) make it matter, b) support sense-making, c) attend to race, language, and identities, d) build a welcoming community, and e) disrupt power hierarchies. We use a co-designed high school physics unit enacted by one teacher, Ms. Davis (pseudonym), as an illustrative case to contextualize our overall data analysis in three physics classrooms. We examine what teachers did, guided by each design principle, including when they planned lessons, interacted with students during instruction, and assessed student learning. We discuss the affordances of a well-designed conceptual tool in addressing the problem of enactment by productively mediating co-design toward transformative and consequential learning.

Inquiry-based science education (IBSE) has been a key element in science education for the past decade and should therefore be a key element of pre-service teacher (PST) education as well. This study aims to explore how IBSE is implemented in teacher education for primary and lower secondary levels (years 1-10) to prepare PSTs for their professional practice as science teachers. This is explored through an interview study conducted at seven teacher education institutions in Norway. The results reveal that teacher educators implement IBSE in different ways and to different extents. In the interviews, they discuss the use of various scaffolding models and describe specific examples of teaching activities and how they included literature and mandatory work in addition to reflections on the opportunities and challenges related to IBSE in teacher education. Based on these results, we examine three issues related to the implementation of IBSE: 1) how IBSE is implemented (whether science teacher educators prioritize giving PSTs experience in inquiry-based methods in the learner role or the teacher role), 2) how often IBSE is implemented (whether educators focus on single examples or have a plan for progression), and 3) the intention of IBSE implementation (whether IBSE is taught as a product or a process). Based on these issues, we provide recommendations for how IBSE can be implemented in science teacher education.

Literature suggests the transfer of understanding the nature of science to instructional practice requires preservice teachers to value teaching about the nature of science. Despite decades of research developing preservice teachers' views of nature of science, there is still a disconnect between their understanding and instructional practice. While engaging with the nature of science during a methods course is a good place to begin, field-based opportunities are instrumental in helping preservice teachers develop an understanding for why this practice is important. The current study explores how field-based assignments during a science methods course influences ten elementary preservice teachers' views for the importance of nature of science and how they begin to transfer NOS to their practice. To help the preservice teachers understand the importance for nature of science instruction, intentional field-based assignments within a science methods course provided opportunities for application of the nature of science within in the context of the classroom. Data were collected from an analysis of young children's views of science paper, written science lesson plans with reflections, and video recordings of enacted science lesson plans. These data sources were analyzed to identify evidence of NOS views and practice. Findings reveal positive influences of these field-based experiences with nature of scientific thinking on the preservice teachers' intended and enacted instructional practice. These findings, along with implications for the use of field-based activities while enrolled in a science methods course are discussed.

It is generally accepted that a robust science education includes knowledge of science, as well as knowledge "about" science, or, in other words, an understanding of the "Nature of Science." However, debates around what Nature of Science is and how to measure it are far from settled, and this compromises our ability to support teachers and students develop their understanding in this area. In this paper, two approaches assessing one aspect of the Nature of Science, the degree to which is it "socially embedded," are compared. The VNOS-C was administered to a cohort of pre-service secondary science teachers and analyzed using the traditional approach as well as a new approach, using "Specialization" from a framework known as Legitimation Code Theory. The results from the standard analytical approach revealed that preservice teachers' ideas were overwhelmingly Naïve or Mixed, and that these did not change over the course of the semester. However, there was insufficient discrimination between students' ideas, particularly those in the Mixed category. The new approach was able to capture more of the nuances in preservice teachers' responses. The potential of the new approach will be discussed in terms of its utility for understanding Nature of Science theory and improving assessment in relation to the "social embeddedness" tenet.

In-service teachers of science work with unique content and pedagogical experiences within a changing educational landscape. Understanding teacher agency in these circumstances will help researchers understand the actions that these teachers take. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to review how the agency of K-12 in-service teachers of science has been examined empirically in the science education research literature during the period of 2007-2020. Informed by grounded theory, we qualitatively analyzed 48 peer-reviewed articles, which we located using specific search criteria. We identified that science teacher agency is currently conceptualized largely paper-to-paper and without fully attending to the professional and lived experiences, and thus humanity, of science teachers; thereby, creating exciting opportunities for science education researchers to expand on both the breadth and depth around the theorization and operationalization of in-service science teacher agency. Recommendations are addressed.

Recent events reveal the impact of systemic inequities on marginalized communities and highlight the importance of critical frameworks in science teacher education. Education theorists and research suggest that lack of sociopolitical, or critical, consciousness among teachers limits their ability to engage students in culturally relevant teaching and learning; provoking critical consciousness among white educators is an especially daunting task. Research is needed to uncover how science teacher educators might support the development of critical consciousness among practicing science teachers. In this article, we present findings from a study situated within a larger Design-based Research project to test and revise an instructional sequence grounded in science content, collaborative inquiry, and critical place-based pedagogies. This analysis of how participants' collective awareness developed over the course of a four-day Professional Development workshop offers insight into how innovative in-service science teacher education might be employed to support practitioners' understanding of oppressive systems including those inherent in the discipline of science. Findings suggest that the incorporation of collaborative inquiry as a design heuristic supported teachers' emerging understanding of the role inequitable systems play in disparate health outcomes. In addition, interrogating race and racism in the context of science challenged deficit frameworks and prompted some participants to acknowledge the limitations of their own lived experiences in comparison with those of their students. Implications include a new model for professional development to support practicing teachers' moves toward justice-oriented science teaching and learning.

Understanding Nature of Science (NOS) is a requisite for improving scientific literacy, and as such, it is increasingly being included in science curricula worldwide. It is now therefore important that teachers understand NOS so that intended learning outcomes become visible in the classroom. Pre-service teachers also need an opportunity to develop an understanding of NOS. As a result of a national curriculum change in the Republic of Ireland, which saw the explicit inclusion of NOS in the school for the first time, the study was designed to develop pre-service teachers (PSTs) understanding of NOS. To aid PSTs understanding, workshops were designed around the theoretical perspective of the Family Resemblance Approach to Nature of Science. The framework is also referred to some authors by the Reconceptualized Family Resemblance Approach or RFN. The article presents case studies to illustrate how the PSTs navigated the ideas presented to them during NOS workshops and how they translated their understanding from the workshops into their lesson preparation. Data were collected over a calendar year, and findings were drawn from interviews, lesson plans, and assessment tools. The results indicate that although the two case-studies in the study had similar attendance and engagement, their understanding of what constituted NOS incorporation differed. The case studies presented are useful for illustrating how PSTs react to courses designed using the RFN framework and for showing evidenced implications for pre-service teacher education during a time of curricular reform.

This study explored whether, and how, preservice elementary teachers' scientific curiosity related to their confidence for science teaching. A group of 29 preservice, elementary teachers in the U.S. engaged in a curiosity journaling strategy across a 16-week scientific inquiry course. Their expressions of curiosity were coded using Luce and Hsi's framework of curiosity. Whether expressions of curiosity related to their confidence for teaching associated science topics was examined statistically. In addition, the categories of their curiosity were coded and are described across eight journal entries. The nature of the relationship between scientific curiosity and science teaching confidence, as well as the nature of the curiosity they expressed, are described. Generally, curiosity about specific scientific phenomena and changes in confidence for teaching those topics did not relate to one another. Relationships did emerge, however, among categories of curiosity and participants' confidence for teaching seven specific science topics.

Calls to immerse students in the sensemaking practices of science recommend that students propose ideas and work together to construct explanations as well as drive the evaluation and decision-making around classroom knowledge-building. In other words, they should be participating with epistemic agency. Part of the teaching work of supporting student sensemaking, therefore, is to intentionally open up space for student contributions and negotiations during sensemaking. The type of space that is opened up for students' sensemaking is highly dependent on teachers' choices and interpretations of student contributions. Accordingly, this paper leverages a teacher noticing framework to begin to characterize the teacher noticing and decision-making involved in supporting students' epistemic agency while teaching. Using a novel point-of-view video collection methodology, we asked two teachers to identify moments while teaching in which they were making a decision about how to open up or close down space for students' epistemic agency. We found that both teachers attended similarly to the "disciplinary substance" of students' ideas; the "epistemic nature" of students' ideas; students' "epistemic stance or orientation" during participation; and students' overall "degree of engagement." Teachers' responses to students varied across pedagogical phenomena, and they also varied in their effectiveness. These variations were related to each teacher's conception of epistemic agency. We propose that attention to the "epistemic nature" of students' responses and to students' "epistemic stance or orientation" may be especially important foci of teacher attention for supporting students' epistemic agency.

Engaging preservice teachers in the analysis of videos of teaching has become a widely-used and highly-regarded approach within teacher preparation. This approach has become even more pronounced in the wake of COVID-19. Despite the myriad ways that video can support teacher preparation, uncertainties remain regarding how to design and facilitate productive video tasks. This paper reviews existing frameworks to guide the use of video tasks. It then introduces and describes the Framework for Analyzing Video in Science Teacher Education (FAVSTE) to highlight important decision points regarding the implementation of video tasks for teacher educators. Further this paper discusses how the FAVSTE connects to and expands on existing frameworks. Finally, the paper provides two examples to illustrate its use so that it might support teacher educators in maximizing the effectiveness of video analysis/reflection tasks.

Although there are initiatives to attract individuals with STEM degrees and experiences into teaching, little is known about the characteristics and development of qualified professional scientists with previous uncertified teaching experiences becoming teachers. One approach to prepare second career certified teachers (SCCTs) for teaching is through teaching fellowships. This qualitative case study investigated the experiences and development of three SCCTs who were accepted into a one-year, intensive teacher fellowship preparation program. The study focused on the SCCTs development and transformations over the fellowship year. The data collected consisted of questionnaires, interviews, and teaching observations. Cross-case synthesis revealed similarities and differences in the coherences and tensions experienced by the SCCTs throughout the clinical preparation year. In addition, the SCCTs experienced shifting identities from scientists, to students, to teachers, to professionals. This study suggests that science teacher educators need to recognize the diverse prior experiences of SCCTs and assist them in balancing and negotiating tensions that might exist between previous and current teaching experiences.

This study reports on eleven second-year teachers who were all students in the same practice-based secondary science methods courses framed around ambitious science teaching. In this qualitative embedded single case study, we examined if, how, and why novice teachers linked their current critical pedagogical discourses and instruction back to any practice-based learning opportunities from the methods courses, especially an opportunity termed "macroteaching." We found that ten out of the eleven participants expressed similar critical discourses about what counts as good teaching, positioned themselves as "becoming ambitious," and linked such critical discourses back to the shared methods class. One participant provides counter-examples. We conclude with lingering questions and research suggestions for the field.

To meet the demands of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), teachers need to reconsider their current instructional practices, shifting from learning about scientific ideas to making sense of phenomena and solving problems using three-dimensional learning components. Project-Based Learning (PBL) provides a framework for creating NGSS-aligned curricular materials that supports this shift. In this study, high school chemistry and physics teachers collaborated with science education researchers to develop PBL-aligned units that were later enacted in their classrooms. Results found several emerging concepts regarding shifting toward PBL: (i) the units helped students build toward the NGSS 3-dimensional learning goals, (ii) using the driving questions was important in providing lessons with coherence and relevance, (iii) students were meaningfully using scientific practices, mostly the practice of developing and using scientific modeling, (iv) students collaborated and shared ideas to make sense of phenomena, and (v) students' artifacts contributed to their learning and to the assessment of their learning by the teachers. Teachers reported encountering several challenges when shifting to PBL, mostly for those of which it was their first interaction with the PBL approach and the NGSS. These ideas were further supported with students' data, obtained from real-time reports, indicating students' increased engagement in the modeling practice and increased opportunities to collaborate and share ideas with other students during most of the PBL units. This study demonstrates that engaging teachers and students with PBL curricula can support successful integration of the NGSS learning goals, as perceived by the teachers and reported by students.

The issue of science teacher turnover has been examined in many national studies, yet most educational policies related to teacher preparation and student performance are determined at the state level. There has been a lack of research that explores this issue in specific science domains. The present nonexperimental longitudinal study examined physics teacher retention, attrition, and migration patterns over a five-year period from 2012 to 2017 in the case of New York State. The theoretical framework is based upon theories of teacher retention, attrition, and migration, specifically with regard to teacher preparation, organizational culture, and student performance in physics. The sample included 1472 teachers, 105 of whom retired from the profession. Of the remaining 1367 physics teachers, 78.3% (n = 1070) were retained in their schools, 13.2% (n = 181) left public school teaching all together preretirement, and 8.5% (n = 116) migrated to work in other school districts. Multinomial logistic regression determined physics teacher attrition was predicted by years of teaching experience (professional age), school-level socioeconomic status, school locale, and course load taught in physics. A significant interaction between professional age and urban locale suggested novice teachers in urban schools were particularly vulnerable. Physics teacher migration was predicted by professional age and school-level socioeconomic status. Of the novice teachers who migrated to other schools, approximately one-third left urban and rural schools to work in suburban schools while most of the others migrated to similar locales. Implications for the support and preparation of novice physics teachers, particularly those who work in high need schools, are discussed.

This study investigated the nature of the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) development among 22 prospective teachers enrolled in an elementary science methods course. The nature of prospective teachers' PCK development was investigated in relation to their experiences in planning, enacting, and reflecting upon a Physical science lesson. The study was framed by the literature on the nature of PCK and PCK development. Narratives, together with other data sets, were used to embed the prospective teachers' experiences throughout the 15-week methods course. Data analysis indicated that prospective teachers' orientation to teaching was focused on keeping students' engaged with teacher-centered or student-centered activities and was a needed requirement for learning science content. This orientation to teaching also served as the predominant knowledge component that scripted, filtered, amplified and mediated the other PCK components, and thereby dictated the prospective teachers' PCK development traced across time. This orientation was also used as a frame of reference to plan, enact, and reflect upon science lessons. Implications include the need for teacher educators to provide authentic platforms for prospective teachers to trace and track their PCK development. Authentic platforms include the use of studenting and teaching narratives together with other praxis tools, and the use of domain/discipline-specific PCK as a frame of reference to provide the essential explanatory factor for understanding PCK development from the dynamic processes of planning, enacting, and reflecting upon science lessons respectively.

Video analysis of teaching episodes is a widely-used approach in science teacher education. While numerous scholarly articles have been written on the topic, there are still many unanswered questions about the most effective strategies for integrating this approach into science teacher education. The current article adds to this area of inquiry by detailing the use of video analysis and reflection across a three-course sequence in an MAT program in secondary STEM education. The same instructor taught all three courses, and this instructor presents the affordances and constraints of the use of video analysis integrated with the professional noticing framework. A pair of researchers who collected data during the year-long implementation of this integrated approach share the outcomes from their perspective. Using ideas associated with distributed cognition from Hutchins's "Cognition in the Wild," the instructor and researchers show that most of the shortcomings with this integrated approach were a result of not effectively distributing knowledge across the different components of this system--including both humans and instruments. The authors specify how those shortcomings could be addressed by others seeking to replicate aspects of this integrated approach. They also show that, despite the missteps in helping the MAT candidates learn how to use video and the professional noticing framework to improve their pedagogy, the candidates did show evidence of achieving the ultimate goal of this effort: knowing how to analyze and articulate their own and others' teaching practices.