This study aimed to explore what kinds of epistemological messages were conveyed through teacher discourse in modeling-based and traditional elementary science classrooms and how teachers framed the two classrooms distinctively through these messages. Data came from two sixth-grade teachers' science classrooms--one characterized as a…

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…

Science education reform efforts have emphasized the incorporation of more authentic and meaningful scientific practices into formal learning environments. With this focus on practices, such as scientific modeling, a powerful tool for sense-making and reasoning, comes a need to observe and understand if and how it is actually occurring,…

We describe the development, design, implementation, and preliminary classroom results of an innovative curriculum, "Focus on Energy," that supports learning about energy in Grades 4-5. The curriculum is grounded in the concepts of science as practice, model-based reasoning, and learning progressions, and builds on students' pre-existing…

The purpose of this study is to challenge the prevailing negative narrative related to elementary science teaching by investigating the experiences of elementary teachers who identify as science teacher enthusiasts (STEs). Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, and Cain (1998)'s conception of identity as an ongoing production or construction in a…

Inquiry learning pedagogies have not only been proposed as a successful teaching methodology to draw students into science, they are also rich with possibilities for creativity. The particular focus on investigations and problem-solving provides opportunity for educators to embrace this. The primary curriculum explicitly values creativity in this…

This study examines and compares how developers designed two primary science curricula to support teacher adaptation and enable use of innovative materials at scale. The two cases--"Literacy Science" (a science and literacy curriculum for grades 2-5) and "Science as Inquiry" (a curriculum focused on matter for grades 3-5)--were…

School principals play a key role as instructional leaders in reform efforts, yet little is known about their knowledge of science. A key focus in recent reform efforts is the inclusion of science practices, which are potentially a significant challenge for schools. Consequently, we investigated K-8 principals' views of good science instruction…

In an effort to document teachers' enactments of new reform in science teaching, valid and scalable measures of science teaching using engineering design are needed. This study describes the development and testing of an approach for documenting and characterizing elementary science teachers' multiday enactments of engineering design-based science…

This study addresses how to help elementary science teachers explore the uncertainty inherent in scientific activity and support elementary students to engage in more complex and authentic investigations. We describe a district partnership focused on understanding how to support elementary teachers to adapt curricula to promote science practices.…

Through a randomized controlled trial, this mixed-methods study evaluated changes in elementary science teachers' understandings, confidence, and classroom implementation of problem-based learning (PBL), inquiry, and nature of science (NOS) instruction following participation in a professional development (PD) as well as the components of the PD…

A major challenge in preparing elementary teachers to teach inquiry-based science is finding qualified mentor teachers who use research-based approaches to teach science in their classrooms. This situation means preservice teachers often see few connections between the research-based principles for teaching science they learn in university-based…

When collecting data, science education researchers frequently have multiple respondents evaluate multiple artifacts using multiple criteria. Herein, the authors introduce Multifaceted Rasch Measurement (MFRM) analysis and explain why MFRM must be used when "judges'" data are collected. The authors use data from elementary science…

The national efforts underway to include engineering in K-12 science education present a variety of new challenges, including how to prepare teachers to teach a new discipline. In this paper, we focus on elementary teachers and how they enter into "responsive teaching," in which they closely attend and meaningfully respond to students'…

Elementary schools are under increasing pressure to teach science and teach it well; yet, research documents that classroom teachers must overcome numerous personal and school-based challenges to teach science effectively at this level, such as access to materials and inadequate instructional time. The elementary science specialist model…