Given the myriad mandates and policies related to math and language arts education, U.S. public elementary teachers must "care about" teaching science for it to actually happen. Consequently, this study sought to explore the impacts of assignments in a science methods course supporting teacher candidates (TCs) in "caring about"…

The purpose of this study is to describe the conditions under which diffracting noticing becomes both a process and product in dynamic relations to re-imagine preservice science teachers' becoming as ethical mattering, a concept rooted in a relational ontology of change and emergence. Drawing on theories of posthumanism, this study theorized…

Using previously collected data from a multi-site, mixed methods longitudinal study, we operationalize a conceptual frame of invisibility to describe and understand the phenomenon of erasure that some Boys of Color experienced by teachers in science learning environments where most others were hyper-visible (and subsequently hyper-criminalized).…

Scientific knowledge is necessary to make informed decisions about many social issues, but some of the public is skeptical of science and scientific expertise. Teacher education programs are one way to address distrust in science in this generation and the next. Socioscientific issues (SSI) have been advocated as important for teaching about the…

The adoption of "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) across the U.S. requires that the field of science education develops high-quality instructional materials. This need is particularly urgent as schools and districts are expected to design or adapt instructional materials for an…

Within two sections of science methods for elementary and middle-school teachers, an embedded, multi-case study design was employed to explore whether teaching rehearsals would better prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to implement explanation-driven science instruction. A teaching rehearsal allows PSTs to practice teaching a segment of their…

This study investigated how practice-based science methods courses, at three different institutions, provided opportunities for preservice teachers (PSTs) to develop new ways of enacting and noticing ambitious teaching through analyzing rehearsal lessons. We examined 194 written rehearsal reflections for similarities and differences in the types…

With the growing adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards across the United States, elementary teachers are being called upon to incorporate engineering into their science instruction, creating a need for ways to help elementary teachers better understand what engineering is and how to accurately communicate it to students. The present…

Across the country, states are adopting and implementing either Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or new state standards inspired by NGSS. Educators and researchers play a key role in the reform process as we design professional development (PD) and curriculum to support teachers in transitioning to NGSS. In this time of transition, close…

Inquiry, central in science education reforms for decades, is a critical element required in many teacher education programs. However, the instruction of inquiry-oriented pedagogies in those programs has limited impacts on science preservice teachers (PSTs) who arefvn the agent of transforming classroom instruction. The challenges include the…

This case study examines how elementary preservice teacher candidates used "hybrid" (both paper and digital) notebooks, the extent to which the digital portfolio showed evidence of changes in understanding, and whether candidates plan to use notebooks in their science lesson and unit plan assignments. Activity and reflection entries…

This article is focused on the creation of a new scale for measuring preservice teachers' positive affect for science, the Preservice Elementary Teacher Affect Scale for Science (PETAS-S). This new instrument is designed specifically to measure the level of positive affect toward the subject of science in preservice elementary teachers.…

This paper reports findings from a two-year investigation on the impact of a professional development (PD) program on second grade teachers' science teaching practice, particularly of the Next Generation Science Standards Science and Engineering Practices (NGSS SEPs). The aims of this study were three-fold: 1) identify which SEPs teachers enacted…

This study provides an example of a systematic professional development project designed to build capacity for the teaching of nature of science and scientific inquiry, while not sacrificing the learning of more traditional science subject matter. Specifically, this project examined the impact of a 5-year professional development project on K-12…

The current research is based on the phenomenological-qualitative paradigm. The goal was to examine the significant experiences, attitudes, and pedagogical practices of 17 Israeli student teachers in the science-teaching track regarding the use of project-based learning (PBL) as a pedagogical method, which they implemented in elementary schools…