When integrated into online curriculum modules for students, educative curriculum materials (ECMs) can enhance teachers' enactment of these modules. This study investigated (1) the use of digitally enhanced ECMs built into an online plate tectonics curriculum module by teachers with different backgrounds and teaching experience, (2) the…

Climate change is a growing global crisis with short and long-term physical and human impacts. Although climate change is a global occurrence, the impacts of climate change are not felt equally among all locations and all groups of people. Climate justice education is a form of social justice education that invites students to consider how the…

This study examines how storytelling can guide the critical reflexivity of secondary science teachers engaged in a professional learning community. Traditionally, storytelling has been used in Black communities to "teach the people to know themselves." The author engages in racial storytelling to remember, envision and consider what…

Teacher education programs must prepare their preservice science teachers to center social justice and to meet the academic needs of culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse students, as justice-centered discourses are traditionally absent from science classrooms yet integral to the teaching and learning of rich and relevant phenomena. In…

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…

It is generally accepted that a robust science education includes knowledge of science, as well as knowledge "about" science, or, in other words, an understanding of the "Nature of Science." However, debates around what Nature of Science is and how to measure it are far from settled, and this compromises our ability to support…

Research has revealed that teachers find teaching and assessing socioscientific argumentation (SSA) to be challenging. In this study, ten pre-service science teachers (PSTs) tested a new Practical Assessment of Socioscientific Argumentation Model (PASM) that was developed to enhance skills in assessing SSA. The models' design is based on the…

This work reports a classroom experience of a general physics course designed to foster also the initiation of preservice mathematics and biology teachers to physics pedagogical content knowledge. To modify the conceptions that these students have about teaching and learning, the course was taught using different active learning instructional…

Some Omani science teachers face a challenge in teaching students to deal with learning materials such as texts and pictures. Based on the need for adequate teaching with text-picture material (TPM), this study aimed at investigating the level of teachers' (N = 886) attitudes and motivational orientations--as aspects of their professional…

This study adds to the construct of science teacher noticing through an analysis that integrates concepts from pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) frameworks. It examines 929 instances of science teacher noticing made via video annotation tools (VATs) over the course of 38 early-career, secondary science teachers' participation in a two-year…

In the last 30 years, there has been an ongoing discussion about the effectiveness of Professional Development (PD) programs, which aims to promote reform-based Science Education (SE). Among the many, different trends of reform-based science teaching, inquiry-based approaches hold a dominant role. This study shows how teachers' practices were…

Although there are initiatives to attract individuals with STEM degrees and experiences into teaching, little is known about the characteristics and development of qualified professional scientists with previous uncertified teaching experiences becoming teachers. One approach to prepare second career certified teachers (SCCTs) for teaching is…

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…

Secondary science teachers participated in a socio-scientific issues (SSI) professional development (PD) during which they co-designed SSI curriculum units. In this qualitative multiple case study, we followed a sub-set of eight teachers who enacted their SSI units in their classrooms and agreed to participate in the study. Clarke and…

The purpose of the study is to understand secondary science teachers' self-efficacy beliefs and implementation of inquiry to provide information for the improvement of science education in a Midwestern U.S. state that has not yet adopted NGSS. An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was selected to capture both a broad perspective of…