We investigated what a cognitive framework for measuring classroom teaching could reveal about (a) the impact of a professional development (PD) program on teaching practices and (b) the relationship between teaching practices and student science learning. To conduct this study, we leveraged a collaboration between two entirely independent…

This study explores how student-generated questions can support argumentation in science. Students were asked to discuss which of two graphs showing the change in temperature with time when ice is heated to steam was correct. Four classes of students, aged 12-14 years, from two countries, first wrote questions about the phenomenon. Then, working…

We investigated how 2 different curricular scaffolds (context-specific vs. generic), teacher instructional practices, and the interaction between these 2 types of support influenced students' learning of science content and their ability to write scientific arguments to explain phenomena. The context-specific scaffolds provided students with hints…

Research on personal epistemologies (Hofer & Pintrich, 2002) has mostly conceptualized them as stable beliefs or stages of development. On these views, researchers characterize individual students' epistemologies with single, coherent descriptions. Evidence of variability in student epistemologies, however, suggests the need for more complex…

Argues that role-playing activities can be a powerful tool in mathematics and science education, particularly in the new sciences of complexity (i.e., the study of complex systems). Two role-playing activities are described, each designed to help students develop better intuitions on how complex phenomena can arise from simple interactions, and…

Proposes an account of mechanisms by which students develop knowledge structures for modeling the physical world with algebra. (Author/CCM)