There is growing recognition of the prevalence of "within school churn", a phenomenon in which teachers remain within a school but are assigned a new grade level or course. In this study we examine the consequences of within-school churn for the pedagogical content knowledge of elementary teacher participants in an NSF-funded science PD…

The Next Generation Science Standards call for changes in not only what is taught in elementary science but also how students engage in the learning experience to develop understanding of core disciplinary ideas. In this study we examined 5th-grade teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for 1 particular core idea: the small particle model…

Just as the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSSs) call for change in what students learn and how they are taught, teacher education programs must reconsider courses and curriculum in order to prepare teacher candidates to understand and implement new standards. In this study, we examine the development of prospective elementary…

This study examined the connections elementary preservice science teachers made among various aspects of nature of science (NOS). Totally, 45 preservice science teachers who were enrolled in the Laboratory Application in Science II course participated in the study. The course provided meaningful and practical inquiry-based experiences, as well as…

While teacher educators have had some success in helping prospective teachers understand the nature of science (NOS), they have been less effective in helping prospective teachers teach NOS. Though several studies have alluded to impacts of various interventions on developing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for NOS, the nature, source, and…