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…

Science content, teaching, and teacher preparation are all political acts. However, accepting the political nature of science as well as that of science teaching has proven to be a hard shift for many in the science community. In this paper, we suggest a shift away from an apolitical teaching of science toward a system of practices that transforms…

Literature suggests the transfer of understanding the nature of science to instructional practice requires preservice teachers to value teaching about the nature of science. Despite decades of research developing preservice teachers' views of nature of science, there is still a disconnect between their understanding and instructional practice.…

Preservice elementary teachers need to be able to engage young students in science practices but may not have extensive experiences with those practices. They also may have contrasting beliefs about them, which inform their teaching practice. To understand preservice teachers' beliefs related to science practices, we focus on the connections they…

This study investigated the nature of the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) development among 22 prospective teachers enrolled in an elementary science methods course. The nature of prospective teachers' PCK development was investigated in relation to their experiences in planning, enacting, and reflecting upon a Physical science lesson. The…

This study reports on eleven second-year teachers who were all students in the same practice-based secondary science methods courses framed around ambitious science teaching. In this qualitative embedded single case study, we examined if, how, and why novice teachers linked their current critical pedagogical discourses and instruction back to any…

The Next Generation Science Standards articulate a new vision for K-12 science learning that engages students in disciplinary practices to encourage deeper participation in and understandings of science and engineering. Teacher educators have a major responsibility in helping pre-service teachers (PSTs) develop knowledge of these practices and…

A high self-efficacy in teaching is sometimes used as a kind of litmus test of science teaching practices. However, the connection between self-efficacy and teaching effectiveness is not well established. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the connections between self-efficacy and enacted science teaching of preservice elementary…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate preservice elementary teachers' science teacher identity development during their participation in the field-based science methods course and a year after. Grounded within the Feiman-Nemser's thematic framework of learning to teach, this study utilized a case study approach aimed to examine…

Research on teacher identity has suggested that being able to envision oneself as a teacher of science is an important part of becoming a teacher of science. Identity is a multifaceted construct and for prospective elementary teachers there are many possible sources for learning about what it means to be a teacher and these sources may tell…

The academic language of science includes science content words and words that describe the practices of scientists. The present study examined science vocabulary knowledge and science vocabulary instruction practices of pre-service teachers enrolled in a primary science methods course. This exploratory mixed-methods study presents quantitative…

Meaningfully engaging students in the NGSS scientific practices requires that student ideas become the driving force of classroom activity. However, in order for student ideas to take on this new role, teachers must engage in responsive teaching in which they elicit, notice, and respond to the substance of student thinking. In this work, we…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ways in which preservice elementary teacher candidates designed integrated reading and science lessons that evoked the use of similar cognitive skills in both subjects, such as sequencing, predicting, classifying, or noting cause and effect. The authors provided the candidates with a lesson plan…

Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education has become an international focus of science education curricular reforms. However, few K-12 teachers have the background to authentically teach STEM in an integrated way. This is especially true of elementary teachers, who are often less confident or prepared to teach STEM disciplines…