The purpose of this teacher-practitioner research study was to examine how elementary teacher candidates engaged in sensemaking about the learning process within the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and to further examine how they engaged in sensemaking about NGSS teaching and curriculum development. Interviews and course artifacts from 14…

Uncertainties are inherent in education as learners encounter gaps in their awareness of topics, receive new information that potentially conflicts with prior understandings, and grapple with known unknowns in order to construct new knowledge. While researchers have shown that students productively struggling with problematized and uncertain…

As the adoption rate of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) continues to rise in the United States, there is an increasing need for the development of high-quality instructional materials that reflect NGSS and effectively prepare teachers for its implementation. The NGSS aim to foster an understanding of three interconnected dimensions in…

Research states that elementary educators do not possess the adequate pedagogical content knowledge necessary to teach science effectively (Baumgartner, 2010; Lewis, 2017) The purpose of this mixed method study that took place at a public land-grant university in a large metropolitan city in the southern area of the United States was to gather the…

The purpose of this study was to explore four elementary preservice teachers' (PSTs) learning outcomes based on "affective characteristics," "science knowledge," and "pedagogical content knowledge" during a science methods course that incorporated "explicit instruction on drawing-to-reason" about…

This study uncovered more about the views of science education faculty in relation to multicultural science education through a qualitative research design. Science education in this study included the science courses required of students (pre-service) teacher preparation. More specifically, participants were faculty who taught pre-service…

This dissertation explores the ways in which preservice science teachers enact a critical race curriculum in majority-Latinx elementary classrooms. Even though Latinx students represent the majority in public schools, their ability to move forward in their curricular experiences are limited if teachers do not provide equitable opportunities to…

The NRC (2012) Framework and the ensuing Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have brought crucial shifts in the goals for students' science learning. Teachers bear the responsibility of translating the three-dimensional vision of student learning articulated in these documents in classrooms through instruction. Central to the idea of…

Purpose and Method of Study: The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of two approaches to professional development methodologies implemented in public schools. A quantitative, correlational research design was employed to determine whether the academic success in the core content areas of reading, writing, math and science could…

In this study, I conducted three separate, but interrelated studies that examine the ways preservice teachers (PSTs) generatively developed youth-centered, equity-oriented pedagogical imaginaries in their methods courses and how they enacted these practice(s) in their field experiences. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how and in…

Achieving widespread scientific literacy has been a longstanding goal of US science standards, requiring that students and teachers possess contemporary nature of science (NOS) conceptions. However, NOS conceptions are repeatedly found to be wide-ranging or 'naive', resulting in regular efforts by science education researchers to hone, or…

Despite much progress, the gender gap in science still persists, and it is imperative that researchers continue addressing the problem at all levels, in the hope that the combined efforts of all investigations and initiatives will eventually work to close the gap. This qualitative exploratory case study, rooted in a social constructivist and…

The development of scientifically literate citizens begins in the elementary school. Yet elementary school teachers are ill prepared to teach science (Trygstad, Smith, Banilower, Nelson, & Horizon Research, Inc., 2013). The research base on teacher preparation finds that programs designed to prepare elementary teachers are inadequate in…

This research investigates the professional life histories of upper elementary science teachers who were identified as effective both within the classroom and in the outdoor learning environment (OLE). The narratives of five teachers collected through semi-structured and open-ended interviews provided the data for the study. Professional life…

This qualitative exploratory study investigated practicing and pre-service elementary teachers' representations of the nature of matter and the ways in which those representations were transformed into teaching representations. Seven practicing elementary teachers from a rural elementary school and five pre-service elementary teachers were…