In this article, we describe how teachers in the Australian school system are educated to teach science and the different qualifications that teachers need to enter the profession. The latest comparisons of Australian students in international science assessments have brought about various accountability measures to improve the quality of science…

This article provides a description of science teacher education policy in Canada and the USA. We focus on qualifications and procedures to obtain an initial teaching license, requirements for license renewal, and trends in our respective countries. In both countries, science teacher education is the responsibility of the province or state, rather…

In this review, the main characteristics of science teacher education in three countries in South America, namely Argentina, Chile and Colombia, are examined. Although reforms toward constructivist and inquiry-based teaching in science instruction have been made in each of the three reviewed countries, each country demonstrates limitations in the…

A number of reports recently identify that the quality of science education in a number of European countries is lower than expected. One of the reasons for the apparent underachievement in this generally economically prosperous continent might be a pedagogy of science that lacks variety, or a pedagogy that is less engaging than other subjects.…

Inquiry-based teaching promotes students' engagement in problem-solving and investigation as they learn science concepts. Current practice in science teacher education promotes the use of inquiry in the teaching of science. However, the literature suggests that many science teachers hold incomplete or incorrect conceptions of inquiry.…

Despite significant pressure to reform science teaching and learning in K12 schools, and a concurrent call to reform undergraduate courses, higher education science content courses have remained relatively static. Higher education science faculty have few opportunities to explore research on how people learn, examine state or national science…

This paper reports the results of an investigation of how a professional development content course based on the Physics and Everyday Thinking (PET) curriculum affected the teaching practices of five case study elementary school teachers. The findings of this study highlight different ways that teachers use what they learn in content courses to…

This paper reports on a study of teachers' actions when reading informational and narrative texts in the context of elementary science learning experiences. Focusing on the development of fundamental and derived senses of science literacy through the integrated science lessons, the research further explores the affordances of different genres…

This study explored the yearlong learning processes of two first-year secondary science teachers participating in an online mentoring program, through examination of their written dialogues within the program and other data. Using a case study method, this study (a) explored the patterns of written dialogues between the two new teachers and their…

The National Research Council's "Framework for K-12 Science Education" and the Next Generation Science Standards ("NGSS Lead States in Next Generation Science Standards: For states, by states." The National Academies Press, Washington, 2013) move teaching away from covering many isolated facts to a focus on a smaller…

This paper reports on a teacher's and his students' responsiveness to a new tetrahedral-oriented (Mahaffy in "J Chem Educ" 83(1):49-55, 2006) curriculum requiring more discursive classroom practices in the teaching of chemistry. In this instrumental case study, we identify the intentions of this learner-centered curriculum and…

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature published during the last 20 years that investigates the impact of approaches that describe themselves as integrating science and language arts on student learning and/or attitude at the elementary level. The majority of papers report that integrated approaches led to greater student…

The purpose of this study was to describe how teachers used and adapted a set of curriculum materials that included opportunities for students to engage in scientific practices. Two-fourth-grade teachers in the same school were observed and interviewed. Findings revealed that teachers enacted almost every type of scientific practice in the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary school pre-service teachers' understanding of photosynthesis and to examine if a refutational text can support understanding of photosynthesis better than a non-refutational text. A total of 91 elementary school pre-service teachers read either a refutational or a non-refutational text…

This paper present findings from a pre-service teacher development project that prepared novice teachers to promote English language and literacy development with inquiry-based science through a modified elementary science methods course and professional development for cooperating teachers. To study the project's impact on student learning,…