At Education Development Center, the authors developed professional learning for teachers that reflects the vision of the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") and makes explicit connections between science and language. In the authors' recent project, Literacy and Academic Success for English Learners through Science…

As a result of a dramatic shift over the last 10 years in how educators and administrators are supported in their professional learning, teachers are no longer working in isolation behind closed doors. Instead, professional learning has moved to the school and the classroom, and teachers are encouraged to share their work and their students' work.…

As a student teacher at Nottingham Trent University, the author explored the issues surrounding children asking investigable questions in science and the repertoire of strategies that could be employed by teachers in the classroom to support this process. His project was carried out in an inner-city primary school in Nottingham. The four focus…

Previous research suggests that elementary teachers vary in their enactment of science curriculum materials and may not always engage students in substantive sense making. This mixed-methods study investigates elementary teachers' use of science curriculum materials to engage students in the scientific practice of comparing and evaluating…

This study was presented at the American Educational Research Association 2012 conference in Vancouver, Canada. The study explored how action research of arts-based teaching (ABT) impacted at-risk students in three urban public schools in southern California, USA. ABT was defined as using arts, music, drama, and dance in teaching other subjects. A…

This heuristic narratological inquiry used video-taped interviews and observations to explore the experiences of 145 urban students in grades one through six who also represented diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The goal of the study was to identify curricular and pedagogical strategies that enhance what students love about school,…

We focus on the concept of matter and explore how young children in urban schools bridge their spontaneous concepts and everyday experiences with scientific concepts introduced to them by children's literature information books and their teacher. The study shows how material artifacts used in a sorting activity became ideational tools--semiotic…

Learning science in a meaningful way involves more than doing a series of activities directed towards anticipated outcomes. Learning science entails teacher and children talking together as "co-constructors" of knowledge (Barnes, 1976). Karen Gallas (1995) has described her long-term observations of the kinds of talk which contribute to…