Although teachers have opportunities to learn about many things through teaching experience, we know little about how they develop science subject matter knowledge in this setting. With both limited opportunities to learn science subject matter knowledge before becoming teachers and minimal science professional development available while working…

Despite the importance of developing elementary science teachers' content knowledge for teaching (CKT), there are limited assessments that have been designed to measure the full breadth of their CKT at scale. Our overall research project addressed this gap by developing an online assessment to measure elementary preservice teachers' CKT about…

Addressing student conceptions is crucial in science education. Therefore, teachers should be able to notice and interpret situations, in which student conceptions are part of the complex classroom interactions. This study analyzes the skills known as professional vision using an interpretivist research paradigm and a sociocultural perspective.…

This multicase study examines how three teachers enacting ambitious instruction purposefully designed and used their classroom as a "place of science" in which students participated in disciplinary practices. A place of science is a location that shapes the norms, values, and history of disciplinary practices. Each participant's…

Research suggests that students tend to explain the origin of biological traits in terms of needs or purposes and/or as the direct product of genes, rather than as the outcome of evolutionary and developmental processes. We suggest that in order for students to be able to construct scientific explanations, it is important to clearly and explicitly…

One of the hallmarks of science and science education is the production of new knowledge about the natural world through objective argument and critique. Teachers' understanding of scientific argumentation impacts how they incorporate this important scientific practice into science classrooms. This study examined how three professional…

The purpose of this research was twofold. The first was to investigate the development of preservice teachers' knowledge base for science teaching on the rate of reaction topic within the 14-week content representation (CoRe)-based mentoring-enriched practicum course. In this course, CoRe design was used as a form of lesson planning and…

This study examined 188 preservice science teachers' professional growth along three dimensions--self-regulated learning (SRL) in a science pedagogical context, pedagogical content knowledge, and self-efficacy in teaching science--comparing four learner-centered, active-learning, peer-collaborative environments for learning to teach higher order…

One aspect of scientific inquiry that appears to be particularly challenging to learn is how explanatory models are developed and used in science. It is even more challenging to learn to teach through methods that engage young students in building and using explanatory models. In part, this is because to do so requires that teachers make real-time…

Although studies have documented teachers' growth in assessing science resulting from professional development or science methods courses, little attention has been given to growth while being prepared to assess a linguistically diverse student population. In this study, the growth of 11 secondary science preservice teachers is documented by…

Although teacher educators have achieved some success in improving teachers' understanding of the nature of science (NOS), helping teachers teach NOS has proved a much greater challenge. Currently, there are few examples in the literature of teachers who effectively teach NOS, and fewer still that rely on student outcomes as a measure of teachers'…

There is evidence that science teachers give naive responses to direct questions about the nature of science. However, there is also evidence that such responses underpredict the more sophisticated knowledge that teachers may use in classroom situations. The purpose of this study was to characterize the informal ideas used by teachers in…

Two elementary certified middle school science teachers are studied for changes in practical knowledge supporting the implementation of kit-based inquiry as part of a schoolwide reform effort. Emphasis is placed on studying how these two pilot teachers enact guided inquiry within their unique pedagogical and curricular interests, and what…

This longitudinal study explored change in teachers' knowledge of subjects they teach from preservice training through 17 years of professional experience. It followed secondary school science teachers in Australia, through sequences of individual interviews in which change in content knowledge (mainly energy-related) was probed primarily via…

Proposes a model of teacher knowledge situated in school science teaching that is the synthesis of a number of models, metaphors, and notions. Uses this model to examine the ways in which science teachers design and implement science lessons. Indicates that the model is sufficiently robust enough to provide simple and rapid yet effective and…