This research presents a case study of two teachers' emphasis on students' academic identity as a means of facilitating their science literacy development. These cases support a theoretical position that deconstructs the notion of normative science literacy into its constitutive components: (a) being scientific and (b) appropriating its literate…

We use a 10-year program of research centered on iterations of one elementary science methods course as a vehicle for exploring three important and interrelated goals for the learning of beginning elementary teachers. These include learning about inquiry-oriented science teaching, using science curriculum materials effectively, and anticipating…

When teachers or students assess the quality of ideas in science classes, they do so mostly based on "textbook correctness"; ideas are good to the extent they align with or lead to the content as presented in the textbook or curriculum. Such appeals to authority are at odds with the values and practices within the disciplines of science. There has…

This study examined both student and school predictors of science achievement as measured by a high-stakes state test. The study involved 23,854 fifth-grade students from 198 elementary schools in a large urban school district with a diverse student population. Multilevel modeling was conducted to examine both student and school predictors…

New views of proficiency in K-8 science that highlight the importance of engaging children in the discourses and practices of science have raised the stakes for elementary teachers and the teacher educators who prepare them. In this paper, a framework for teaching science as argument is presented. The framework is advanced as a means of addressing…

This article examines teachers' perspectives on the challenges of using a science reform curriculum, as well as their learning in interaction with the curriculum and parallel professional development program. As case studies, I selected 4 veteran teachers of 2nd or 3rd grade, with varying science backgrounds (including 2 with essentially none).…

This paper describes a comprehensive set of studies designed to assess the potential for commercial reading programs to teach reading in science. Specific questions focus on the proportion of selections in the programs that contain science and the amount of science that is in those selections, on the genres in which the science is portrayed, on…

Curriculum materials are a crucial tool with which teachers engage in teaching practice. For preservice teachers to learn to use science curriculum materials in productive ways, they must develop a conception of themselves as elementary teachers in which the use of science curriculum materials is a valued dimension of science-teaching practice. We…

Classrooms across the United States increasingly find White teachers paired with ethnic minority students, but few of these teachers are prepared for the disparities such cultural integration presents. This is particularly true vis-a-vis science education. While classrooms have diversified, science instruction has not necessarily followed suit.…

Implementation of science curriculum materials has been a fundamental challenge in science education for decades. Policy researchers have argued that alignment of standards, curriculum, and assessment are the key to supporting implementation. This paper focuses on teachers' perceptions of curricular alignment and on curriculum implementation using…

Teaching literacy in inquiry-based science-teaching settings has recently become a focus of research in science education. Because professional scientists' uses of reading, writing, and speaking are foundational to their work, as well as to nonscientists' comprehension of it , it follows that literacy practices should also be central to science…

In this paper, we synthesize two bodies of work related to students' representational activities: the notions of meta-representational competence and representation as a form of practice. We report on video analyses of kindergarten and first-grade students as they create representations of pollination in a science classroom, as well as summarize…

Curriculum analysis, modification, and enactment are core components of teacher practice. Beginning teachers rely heavily on curriculum materials that are often of poor quality to guide their practice. As a result, we argue that preservice teachers need to learn how to use curriculum materials for effective teaching. To address this concern, the…

Reports study of ability of 300 first grade Honolulu, Hawaii students to describe properties of a physical object. Children were divided into experimentals who received instruction in the Material Objects Unit of the Science Curriculum Improvement Project (SCIS) and controls who received usual program. Experimentals were significantly higher in…

Pleads that authors distinguish between process" as an end of science instruction (knowledge about how scientists work), and process" as a means of instruction (students investigating, measuring, observing, reading, etc., in the manner of scientists). (AL)