This study examines the transformation (professional growth) of career-changing women scientists who decided to become teachers. Drawing upon Mezirow's Transformative Learning Theory, we tracked their transformation for 3 years. Our findings revealed multiple identities, disorientation, a perceived sense of meaninglessness, loss and eventual…

Using socio-ecological theory, this study explores best practice (educational practices correlated with higher student performance) in middle-school science. Seven schools with consistently higher student performance were compared with three demographically similar, average-performing schools. Best practice included instructional approaches…

This study examines how three elementary teachers refer to pictorial models (photographs, drawings, and cartoons) during science read-alouds. While one teacher used realistic photographs for the purpose of visually verifying facts about crystals, another employed analytical diagrams as heuristic tools to help students visualize complex target…

This study explores how elementary teachers perceive and use "engaging oral strategies" (i.e., manners of speaking that encourage students to participate and become engaged in science discussions). It is reported that the strategies employed as well as their frequency varied substantially depending upon on the teachers' grade level and…

This study examined the effectiveness of introducing elementary teachers to the scholarly literature on personal pronouns and hedges in classroom discourse, a professional development strategy adopted during a summer institute to enhance teachers' social understanding (i.e., their understanding of the social functions of language in science…