The pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 has highlighted an urgent need for infectious disease education for K-12 students. To gather a better understanding of what educational interventions have been conducted and to what effect, we performed a scoping review. We identified and examined 23 empirical researcher- and teacher-designed studies conducted in…

Recently, there has been a surge of literature on the implementation of translanguaging pedagogy and practices in science education settings. By activating and validating learners' full communicative repertoire, translanguaging holds promise to build an inclusive science learning community where multilingual learners' ways of knowing are not only…

Practices of generating, analyzing, and using evidence play a central role in the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the NGSS. However, the construct of evidence remains largely underspecified in these documents, providing insufficient guidance on how to engage students with the broad and complex nature of evidentiary reasoning. This creates…

This article develops an argument that the type of intervention research most useful for improving science teaching and learning and leading to scalable interventions includes both research to develop and gather evidence of the efficacy of innovations and a different kind of research, "design-based implementation research" (DBIR). DBIR…

This article provides commentary on the five articles in this issue on large-scale interventions in science education for diverse student groups in varied educational settings. Using these articles as a point of departure, I discuss three challenges to science education research and practice. The first concerns the changed meaning of science…

A lack of qualified teachers and low enrollment in the geosciences exist at both secondary and tertiary levels in the United States. Consequently, it is unlikely that students will be able to achieve scientific literacy without an increase in both of these populations. To address these problems, we pose research questions, highlight sociocultural…

This study uses a new-to-educational-research methodology, based on the legal process, to build a case that U.S. students have been largely ignored in discussion and planning for their own, presumed futures. A variety of evidence, from two large and distinct data bases, is drawn together to show: (1) students perceive their classrooms in ways…

Beginning with a reference to living in a time of both uncertainty and opportunity, this article presents a discussion of key areas where shared understanding is needed if we are to successfully realize the design and use of high quality, valid assessments of science. The key areas discussed are: (1) assessment purpose and use, (2) the nature of…

The goal of the Inquiry Synthesis Project was to synthesize findings from research conducted between 1984 and 2002 to address the research question, "What is the impact of inquiry science instruction on K-12 student outcomes?" The timeframe of 1984 to 2002 was selected to continue a line of synthesis work last completed in 1983 by Bredderman…

This study aims to add to the growing research related to the implementation of non-traditional writing tasks in classrooms to encourage science literacy. A secondary reanalysis methodology was employed to review student interviews collected as a part of several individual studies during a ten year research program. This method established an…

Nearly 6,000 science questions collected from five different web-based, TV-based and school-based sources were rigorously analyzed in order to identify profiles of K-12 students' interest in science, and how these profiles change with age. The questions were analyzed according to their topic, thinking level, motivation for and level of autonomy in…

To explore how elementary teachers may differ from secondary teachers in their views about NOS, a professional development experience involving explicit reflective instruction on NOS, discussions about science with scientists, and exposing the teachers to the practices, techniques, and collaborations fundamental to scientific research was…

In this study, we analyzed the quality of students' written scientific explanations found in notebooks and explored the link between the quality of the explanations and students' learning. We propose an approach to systematically analyzing and scoring the quality of students' explanations based on three components: claim, evidence to support it,…

This study examines the development of ways of documenting and portraying science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). As a result of a longitudinal study into science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge, a method is developed for capturing and portraying PCK that comprises two important elements. The first is linked to the…

This study investigated teacher-child interaction within small-group science activities in a fourth-grade classroom. This qualitative study revealed three "zones of interaction," or teacher-child interaction categories: Individual Zones of Interaction, Multiple Zones of Interaction, and a Collective Zone of Interaction. Each zone was further…