The importance of models and modeling in science education is well-recognized, yet there exists significant polysemy among these terms within the literature. This ambiguity often leads to confusion, particularly regarding whether modeling represents an expected student performance, an instructional strategy to promote such performance, or both.…

Although previous research provides insights into how gestures function as a pedagogical tool, relatively little is known about how gesture is related to language, together creating a key meaning-making teaching resource. Drawing on the system of logico-semantic relations in Systemic Functional Linguistic theory and McNeill's description of…

How science is traditionally taught and presented in westernized classrooms, Western Modern Science often does not offer creative and culturally sustaining pathways for students with diverse multicultural backgrounds to view science as a beneficial resource for their worldview, values, and funds of knowledge. This conceptual position paper…

Informal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning (ISL) can remain inequitable when discourse and practices in ISL spaces position youth as temporary guests by implicitly or explicitly sidelining youths' experiences, community wisdom, cultures, and histories. The framework of "rightful presence" problematizes…

Science should provide students an accurate and contemporary education on genetic influence, particularly how it impacts trait variability and developmental norms. Stories involving familial, racial, and sexual differences routinely appear in the popular media and sales of over-the-counter genetic tests are mounting. Unfortunately, research…

Given the growing global environmental threats, shifts to increasingly binary thinking that isolate and polarize discourse, and the erosion of caring for each other and our places, the authors believe it is imperative that we change the way science and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education connect with communities and are…

This study explores the role of unconventional forms of classroom assessments in expanding minoritized students' opportunities to learn (OTL) in high school physics classrooms. In this research + practice partnership project, high school physics teachers and researchers co-designed a unit about momentum to expand minoritized students' meaningful…

As more and more science teacher educators are subscribing to a practice-based teacher education curriculum, it is becoming increasingly necessary to identify and articulate smaller grain-sized teaching practices nested within a core practice in important instructional contexts in order to facilitate preservice science teachers' (PSTs') learning…

Current science education reform efforts have identified sensemaking as an important goal of science education, and science education researchers have studied what constitutes the sensemaking process in the science classroom. Because the studies of sensemaking are loosely linked to those of scientific reasoning, however, they have provided little…

This is a study intended to address white supremacy in science education. To accomplish this, we describe how one White intern, Boaz, learned to teach science in anti-racist ways. By detailing how whiteness mattered in his learning to teach, we demonstrate that whiteness is potentially constant in White peoples' learning to teach science in…

Inquiry-Based Teaching Practice (IBTP) is an essential component of science education, and promoting its implementation is at the heart of various reform efforts. Even though science teachers regard IBTP as an essential pedagogical method, they rarely use it for various reasons. This study utilizes Bronfenbrenner's ecological framework to examine…

Taking the "practice turn" in K-12 science classrooms requires students to engage in processes of knowledge building, constructing explanatory accounts of natural phenomena. To support students in these sensemaking opportunities, a significant departure is needed from how science is typically taught in many classrooms. Teachers will need…

Energy is one important concept in physics, but science education research has repeatedly shown that students struggle to develop a full understanding of energy. Especially challenging for students is the notion of potential energy. Overwhelmed by the sheer number of potential energy forms, students struggle to make connections between them.…

Multiple external representations (MERs) are useful for teaching complex content in science education. An open question is whether there is an especially effective way to sequence MERs. On the one hand, the so-called concreteness fading approach suggests starting instruction with more concrete representations and proceeding stepwise to more…

Narrative texts have been advocated as tools to tackle science learning challenges, and there is even the proposal of a "narrative effect" on learning. We believe it is necessary to examine previous evidence on this effect, as well as to characterize the process of learning through science narrative texts more broadly. In this article,…