This paper is part of the special issue on Teacher Learning and Practice within Organizational Contexts. Shifting instructional practices in elementary schools to include more equitable, reform-based pedagogies is imperative for supporting students' development as science learners. Teachers need high quality professional development (PD) to learn…

Professional development (PD) can support science teachers to learn about instructional reforms, but more work needs to be done on broadening our understanding of how specific PD activities support teacher learning. One understudied PD activity is the "student hat": when teachers engage in student learning activities while considering…

Science teachers struggle to implement and sustain new curricular ideas from professional development (PD) experiences. These PD opportunities are crucial for enacting real-world changes to teaching practice and address pressing global challenges, such as the teaching and learning of socioscientific topics nested in school communities.…

In this paper, we build on a growing body of research on practical measurement for educational improvement, contributing a conceptualization of the organizational functions of measurement in processes of persistence and change. Our work is grounded in theoretical understandings of micro-institutional change that foreground processes of…

This paper explores the views of leading Czech physicists regarding a physics curriculum for upper secondary schools. This paper presents the first part of an effort to define starting points for a new physics curriculum in Czechia (subsequent phases would analyze the opinions of other scientists, education experts, and physics teachers regarding…

The aim of this study is to develop more understanding about strategies to support teachers' professional development in curriculum innovations, in which pedagogy and content change simultaneously compared to the conventional curriculum. A pre-existing framework, including strategies for professional development, was adapted, implemented, and…

As part of the special issue on Teacher Learning and Organizational Contexts, this paper explores the collective organizational sensemaking processes of middle school science teachers engaged in a design-based research project focused on supporting science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) identity and interest development of middle…

As the vision in "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) takes hold in schools and classrooms, there is an urgent need for teacher professional development (PD) programs that align with NGSS-designed curriculum materials and address the unique strengths and needs of diverse student…

Although teachers have opportunities to learn about many things through teaching experience, we know little about how they develop science subject matter knowledge in this setting. With both limited opportunities to learn science subject matter knowledge before becoming teachers and minimal science professional development available while working…

Local implementation of science reform efforts in part relies on science teacher leaders (STLs) to improve science instruction in classrooms and beyond. The lack of science-specific professional learning resources drives STLs to act as boundary spanners to locate resources outside their local context to fill that gap. Museums and other informal…

This study addresses the measurement of high school students' epistemic knowledge associated with scientific experimentation (EKSE) which concerns "how" scientific experimentation generates knowledge and "why" that knowledge is justified. Based on philosophical, educational standards, and literature analyses, an EKSE construct…

Instructional shifts required by equitable, reform-based science instruction are challenging, especially in the elementary context. Such shifts require professional development (PD) that supports teacher internalization of new pedagogical strategies as well as changes in beliefs about how students learn. Because of this complexity, many PD…

In this paper, we argue that the current science curricula are failing to educate students to be competent outsiders to science. Historically, science education has rested on two premises. The first is that it is possible for students to acquire sufficient scientific knowledge from K-12 education to become intellectually independent. That is that…

As models of how students' thinking may change over time, learning progressions (LPs) have been considered as supports for teachers' classroom assessment practices. However, like all models, LPs provide simplified representations of complex phenomena. One key simplification is the characterization of student thinking using levels--that is, the…

How teachers' changes in their science teaching practices unfold over time remains unclear. We need greater understanding of the processes at work in professional development (PD) and how to sustain those processes that are effective over time. Effective PD processes are seen as those that recognize teacher change is…