Critiquing arguments is important for K-12 science students to learn but not emphasized by the predominant claim-evidence-reasoning (CER) argumentation model. Drawing on the work of Yu and Zenker (2020), and Dove and Nussbaum (2018), we developed a tool for supplementing CER with critical questions (CQs) from philosophy that cover most, if not…

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…

To promote a justice-oriented approach to science education, we formed a research-practice partnership between middle school science teachers, their students, curriculum designers, learning scientists, and experts in social justice to co-design and test an environmental justice unit for middle school instruction. We examine teacher perspectives on…

Adopting new instructional materials is an important way to support reform in science education, but implementation can be challenging and complex. Therefore, we conducted a contrasting case study of two middle schools implementing new curricular materials. We conducted semi-structured interviews with teachers and leaders and collected…

Mechanistic reasoning is a powerful form of reasoning central to scientific explanations. Despite mechanistic reasoning being an important dimension of scientific practice and a central dimension of science curricula, students face difficulties in developing such type of reasoning. Many authors have been proposing tools for supporting its…

Research into the effective teaching of science to emergent bilinguals has converged around key theoretical perspectives and led to expansive empirical evidence that emphasizes the integration of science learning with language/literacy development. Simultaneously, formative assessment has been touted as one of the key components of effective…

Building on previous research that has described the underrepresentation of women of color in science fields, this paper presents case studies of Black middle school girls to examine how their science identities developed over space and time. Data were collected over the course of their seventh-grade year in both in school (science classroom) and…

The adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) requires many teachers to drastically change their classroom instruction. Curricular materials offer a tool to support this transition, but there are questions about the degree to which available curricula truly reflect the shifts required by the NGSS. This study proposes a framework of…

Science education reform efforts have called for teaching science to all students, yet the "Science for All" mantra has remained merely rhetoric. Given that multilingual learners continue to face inequities more broadly in the education system and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects in particular, there…

Culturally sustaining pedagogies have encouraged scholars to reimagine and rebuild justice-oriented classrooms across context and disciplines and provide opportunities for students to reclaim their ways of knowing and doing in schools. In this study, we seek to contextualize culturally sustaining teaching practices in integrated science and…

Studies of both professional science practice and children's science learning show that care is not merely ancillary to disciplinary work but a core and generative constituent of science practice. In science education research, however, students' care is often overlooked. In this paper, we describe the expression of care across two STEM classrooms…

Recent reforms in science education advocate for a vision of learning where students "figure out" science ideas through engagement in science practices. Consequently, there have been significant efforts to engage K-12 students in the science practices. However, less research attention has been given to understand how this…

A hotly debated topic is the effectiveness of inquiry-based instructional practice in science classrooms on student achievement and motivation. Numerous studies based on multinational large-scale education data show such student-centered instructional practice positively led to students' motivational beliefs but was negatively associated with…

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…

Despite broad consensus on the value of classroom dialog for promoting scientific argumentation, tensions have emerged in the literature regarding the degree to which teachers should guide the dialogic process (dialogic stance). We use the lens of responsive teaching to examine how one teacher adjusts his instruction to foster dialog in three…