Limiting case analysis (LCA) is important to practicing physicists. Yet, there is little concrete guidance for physics educators, and a lack of consensus in the research community about how to help students learn, and learn from, limiting case analysis. In this study, we first review existing literature to find commonalities and variations in how…

Literature shows that science teachers' development and practice of PCK have always been a concern in science education research. Globally, national policies have begun to underscore the instruction of science teachers as a great concern. This study is considered worthwhile, as it intended to address this gap by exploring a beginner teacher's PCK…

Multicultural education invites teachers to support students in critiquing the foundations of a given discipline, with the aim of reimagining that discipline and the purposes it serves. In this paper, we present a series of cases in which high school physics teachers who are enrolled in a summer professional development course expressed vexation…

Learning to teach is a culturally situated activity. As teachers learn, it is important to understand not only what teachers learn, but how they learn. This article describes a qualitative case study of a subset of four teachers' learning during a professional development surrounding a plate tectonics curriculum. Using qualitative methods, this…

Representational competence (RC) is a set of skills to reflectively use a variety of representations to draw inferences, make predictions, and support claims. Despite the important role RC plays in student success in chemistry and the considerable number of investigations into student ability to reason with representations, little is known about…

Science continuously interacts with the social environment. Science develops with social needs, and society develops and changes with scientific advances. These changes and developments may cause dilemmas in society. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the improvements among pre-service science teachers in terms of socio-scientific…

In this case study, I provide the methodologic approaches I used to investigate four in-service biology teachers' perspectives when using science instruction to address racial stereotypes within secondary science education. This case study provides practical advice for novice qualitative researchers who wish to conduct and design an intervention…

Recent reforms in K-12 science education call for curricular materials that are designed to be "coherent for students." This form of coherence arises when the classroom community sees their science work as addressing their questions and problems. In enactment, the teacher sometimes has to improvise from the planned trajectory of the…

Sensemaking has been advocated as a core practice of science education to support students in constructing their own understanding through a prolonged trajectory. However, the field lacks a discussion of teaching strategies that can better support students as they develop in the trajectory of sensemaking, which includes four phases: initial…

This study presents 3 case studies that examine the processes involved in the professional growth of physics teacher-leaders (TLs) in a national network of professional learning communities (PLCs). This program has been operating since 2012, using a "Fan Model" where the TLs participate in a PLC (TL-PLC) led by a team from the Weizmann…

This study aimed to determine science teacher candidates' understanding of the wave concept under the headings of the essential characteristics of waves and their place and importance in daily life. The research was carried out with 53 science teacher candidates studying in the first grade in the education faculty of a state university in Turkey…

Mastery goal structures, which communicate value for developing deeper understanding, are an important classroom support for student motivation and engagement, especially in the context of science learning aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. Prior research has identified key dimensions of goal structures, but a more nuanced…

This paper examines the pedagogical practices in three case studies of elementary science lessons that took place in classrooms or laboratories to make connections to the discourse about inclusivity in science teaching. Using the Singapore Teaching Practice as a reference, we analyzed the pedagogical practices enacted during three lessons where…

Differentiated instruction (DI) is a teaching approach that aims to achieve learning for students of diverse backgrounds, abilities, and interests. This study explores STEM teacher candidates' (TCs') development of DI-focused curriculum using case studies of socio-scientific issues (SSI). The paper addresses the following research question: How…

Citizen science education is a new approach in science education for promoting scientific inquiry related to localized problems and for engaging in social action based on inquiry results. Using agency as a lens for understanding teachers' practices when using this approach is important. In this ethnographic case study, a teacher implementing a…