The complexity of science visual literacy education calls for a better understanding of elementary teacher visual literacy practices. Teachers play a key role in developing students' visual fluency through the visual literacy skills they develop in their pedagogical practices. Addressing these gaps in the research, this dissertation focused on the…

Education reform calls for portraying science as a process of inquiry and argumentation grounded in the epistemic traditions of a domain. While experimentation is a core scientific investigation strategy, diverse approaches are represented across different domains of science. Ecosystem scientists use experiments as a core part of their…

Effective teaching and learning of Nature of Science (NOS) has been a curriculum goal for decades and its inclusion into the science education from K-12 is becoming commonplace worldwide, regardless of the differences in the adapted science curricula. However, less attention, if any, has been paid to the holistic representation of NOS at…

There are relatively few studies examining cooperative learning during laboratory activities in a science museum. This study aims to explore such activities to better understand the nature of cooperative learning, if any, in that setting. The participants in this study were 60 fourth-grade students who visited a science museum lab as part of a…

Students often learn about measurement uncertainty as an isolated topic, with a focus on generalizable strategies to manage uncertainty in scientific investigation. In this study, we report and analyze a case of emergent learning about measurement and uncertainty, in which students in a Chinese elementary school science class explored and…

Preservice elementary teachers enter their science methods courses with a range of prior experience with science practice. Those prior experiences likely inform much of their science pedagogy and goals. In this study, the authors examine how a cohort of preservice elementary teachers engaged in science practice as they learned content in a physics…

Calls to bring more equity into science education research (McWayne and Melzi, 2023) are most notable for early childhood. We know very little about the teaching of science to infants and toddlers, yet this is where science education begins. To address the dearth in research, we undertook an in-depth intervention study in an Australian early…

Mechanistic reasoning about an artifact or system involves thinking about its underlying entities and the properties, activities, and cause-effect relationships of those entities. Previous studies of children's mechanistic reasoning about engineering solutions have mostly focused on specific mechanical systems such as gear trains. Yet there is…

A student's socioeconomic status (SES) has a significant relation to their academic achievement. Much of this work has explored this in math and reading, but less is known about how SES relates to science achievement, particularly in the early grades. Using quantile regression with nationally representative data, we explored this relation in…

Robert Collins offers congratulations to Katie Wylie, the recipient of 2022's ASE Alexander Award, which is awarded annually to a woman or group of women who have made a significant contribution to the scientific, technological, engineering or mathematical (STEM) education of girls or women, in situations of scarce resources. He offers a personal…

For some scientific ideas, it is obvious to pupils as to why they are studied. For others, a bit more work is needed before their significance becomes apparent. The concept of 'historical significance', which is used in history teaching, can help children to appreciate the enduring importance of scientific discoveries and events. The pedagogic…

There is an expanding body of research focused on exploring inclusive science learning for students with complex support needs. The aim of this qualitative case study was to explore how a research partnership focused on expanding inclusive science learning for students with complex support needs (CSN) could support the learning of a focal student…

Background: This study explored science teachers' participation in a professional development partnership with informal science institutions (ISIs) designed for urban middle school science teachers, known as the "Urban Advantage Science Initiative." The teacher training involved a whole school focused approach, providing teaching…

Visual-spatial literacy is an essential component to developing STEM literacy, which is a primary focus of the three-dimensional Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) framework for science education. Because scientific data is frequently communicated through visual representations, it is important for members of the current science and…

In this randomized control study, we evaluated science teachers' pedagogical practices via classroom observations following ongoing, intensive, and structured instructional support sessions. These sessions included virtual professional development (VPD) and virtual mentoring and coaching (VMC) that accompanied a literacy-infused science…