Journal of Research in Science Teaching最新文献

Access to computer science education (CSEd) has greatly expanded in recent years. Starting with the Computer Science for All Initiative, launched in 2016 under President Obama, CSEd has expanded across the U.S. with over half of high schools offering at least one computer science course. Although there has been growth in computer science course offerings, disparities exist when it comes to ‘who’ enrolls in CSEd courses, and ‘where’ those courses are being offered. These disparities highlight that while funding and support for CSEd has increased, little is known about the capacity of states to operationalize (and implement) policies to achieve equitable CSEd. Furthermore, how recent changes at the federal and state level(s) are directly impacting minoritized populations' access, participation, and engagement in CSEd. This commentary focuses on the state-level capacity to implement equity-focused CSEd policies that can lead to improvements in student opportunities and outcomes. We argue that state CSEd leaders engage at the intersection of four areas: (1) growing state investment in CSEd, (2) increasingly polarizing political environments, (3) securing human and fiscal resources to implement CSEd policy with fidelity, and (4) supporting Culturally Responsive Computing that sustains equitable teaching and learning practices in schools and classrooms. This commentary also serves as a Call to Action for STEM education researchers to listen closely and carefully to the communities served by CSEd research, including students, families, and educators.

The rise of social media platforms and subsequent lack of traditional gatekeeping mechanisms have enabled the proliferation of scientific disinformation. Users attempting to properly evaluate scientific information and disinformation are immensely obstructed by media communication mechanisms such as filter bubbles and echo chambers. Given the recent approaches to reconceptualizing the nature of science represented by facets of media communication mechanisms, we report results from seven focus groups of 26 tenth-grade students (M = 15 years; 58% female, 38% male, 4% nonbinary) investigating such mechanisms as applied to climate change content on social media. Using qualitative content analysis, we identified the students' awareness and conceptions of mechanisms such as filter bubbles and echo chambers on a continuum between rather simple and elaborate. The findings suggest that the students have a general awareness of most mechanisms based on their own experiences and describe additional media communication mechanisms, such as bots, microtargeting, and, particularly, algorithms, which appear specifically relevant in dealing with scientific disinformation on social media. Based on the results, we derive a set of needs for science educational learning materials and science media literacy to prepare students to tackle scientific disinformation on social media.

Students frequently turn to the internet for information about a range of scientific issues. However, they can find it challenging to evaluate the credibility of the information they find, which may increase their susceptibility to mis- and disinformation. This exploratory study reports findings from an instructional intervention designed to teach high school students to engage in scientific online reasoning (SOR), a set of competencies for evaluating sources of scientific information on the internet. Forty-three ninth grade students participated in eleven instructional activities. They completed pre and post constructed response tasks designed to assess three constructs: evaluating conflicts of interest, relevant scientific expertise, and alignment with scientific consensus. A subset of students (n = 6) also completed pre and post think-aloud tasks where they evaluated websites of varying credibility. Students' written responses and screen-capture recordings were scored, coded, and analyzed using a mixed-methods approach. Findings from the study demonstrate that after the intervention: (1) students' assessment scores improved significantly on all three tasks, (2) students improved in their ability to distinguish between sources of online scientific information of varying credibility, and (3) more students used online reasoning strategies and outside sources of information. Areas for student growth are also identified, such as improving coordinated use of credibility criteria with online reasoning strategies. These results suggest that teaching criteria for the credibility of scientific information, along with online reasoning strategies, has the potential to help students evaluate scientific information encountered on the internet.

The goals of science education must be sufficiently broad to support learners navigating changing scientific, social, and media landscapes. This position paper builds upon existing scholarship to articulate a set of constructs useful for navigating the modern information landscape including constructs with a long history in science education (e.g., science content knowledge, science practices, nature of science) as well as those still relatively uncommon in science education (e.g., domain-general epistemological beliefs, science disciplinary literacy, socioscientific reasoning, science media literacy, nature of technology, and critical consciousness). The paper first defines each construct, discusses how each construct supports navigating the modern information landscape, and explores research concerning the teaching and learning of each construct. Then, in the section “Application of Constructs to the Modern Information Landscape”, the paper succinctly explains how the constructs collectively combat particular struggles people may encounter. In addition to defining and articulating the constructs' utility, we explore strategies educators can use to integrate these constructs into their science teaching. Finally, we discuss implications for teaching, teacher education, and future research.

Teaching science in an age of disinformation and misinformation requires empowering students to address inaccurate information in evidence-based ways. Science communication scholarship highlights the growing importance of inclusive and relational approaches for addressing misinformation. Thus, we developed, implemented, and evaluated an interdisciplinary, graduate-level course for students in STEM, journalism/communication, and public health to learn to address misinformation using community-engaged, evidence-based approaches. We used the Theory of Planned Behavior as a theoretical framework for our mixed-methods analysis of the efficacy of this course, assessing both the behaviors that students planned to utilize in community-engaged science communication to address misinformation, as well as the attitudes, norms, and perceived behavioral control that influenced these planned behaviors. Quantitative self-report metrics indicated that this curriculum increased students' subjective norms for misinformation correction as well as perceived behavioral control of science communication and science civic engagement. Thematic analysis of qualitative student interview data showed that the course helped students increase their plans for inclusive approaches to addressing misinformation. This study indicates the importance of community-engaged curriculum to develop the mindset and self-efficacy necessary for scientists-in-training to address misinformation in their communities.

This study explored a middle school science teacher's curricular sensemaking in interaction with their use of an educative storyline curriculum, aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards, that was intentionally designed for more opportunities for students' scientific sensemaking. Using a phenomenological case study methodology, we examined how the focal teacher perceived and resolved (un)certainties in their understanding that emerged in their interaction with the curriculum (i.e., their curricular sensemaking), and how the teachers' curricular sensemaking impacted opportunities for students' scientific sensemaking. Findings served to expand our notions of how teachers engage in curricular sensemaking, when this sensemaking occurs, and what teachers make sense of as they experience a new, reform-oriented curriculum for the first time. In particular, the focal teacher found two types of (un)certainty to be salient at various time points during his curriculum use: (un)certainty around students' scientific sensemaking through particular science practices and (un)certainty about how to navigate the storyline curriculum using students' ideas to drive learning forward. Cutting across these types of (un)certainty, our findings suggest the need to (1) support teachers in problematizing their own understandings about particular science practices and the extent to which their previous instruction aligns with reform-oriented conceptualizations of those practices, (2) build teachers' capacity to differentiate between various causes of student discomfort and uncertainty so that students' needs and scientific sensemaking goals can be attended to simultaneously, and (3) provide teachers with opportunities to consider how they might use a variety of participation structures to move learning forward while preserving students' rights and responsibilities for the scientific sensemaking.

Systemic equity challenges in K-12 STEM education place students from minoritized groups on an uneven footing, restricting access and opportunity for the diverse students who make up the majority population in US public schools. Teachers play a key role in advocating for equity and justice in STEM education. In positioning themselves as agents of change, they have the power to impact their classrooms, schools, and communities. Using a collaborative coding process informed by dominant and critical framings of equity in STEM education, we analyzed equity research presentations and final written reflections from a graduate course for practicing teachers (n = 23) focused on STEM integration. Teacher participants demonstrated one of four advocacy orientations: (a) equity in classroom teaching, (b) STEM education, (c) equity in STEM education, or (d) neither equity nor STEM. Our analysis of teachers' final course reflections led us to develop a rubric using principles of grammar to evaluate the levels of agency evident in teachers' statements. Most teachers were at least minimally agentic for STEM, but fewer teachers were agentic for equity. Only four of 23 teachers were highly agentic for equity in STEM education. We identify a need for more purposeful scaffolding in professional learning to build teacher advocacy and agency for equity in STEM education. Future research should explore the high-leverage practices in STEM teacher education that foster advocacy and agency.

Collaborative argumentation has been recognized as a powerful means to facilitate conceptual change of scientific concepts for which students have robust misconceptions. However, eliciting and maintaining collaborative argumentation that yields such productive outcomes is known to be difficult. Specifically, social-motivational antecedents have not yet been explored. Over 13 weeks, we conducted a controlled experiment to examine the role of achievement goals in productive collaborative argumentation in the context of scientific concept learning while fully considering the effects on conceptual change, argumentative discourse, and perceptions of conflicts. Three types of achievement goals were identified among 94 undergraduates: mastery goal-dominant (a focus on developing competence and task mastery), two goals-balanced (pursuing mastery and performance goals simultaneously) and performance goal-dominant (a focus on demonstrating competence relative to others). Eighteen homogeneous groups participated in four collaborative argumentation activities concerning four scientific topics of varying controversy levels. The results showed that for highly controversial topics, mastery goal-dominant students and two goals-balanced students exhibited greater conceptual change than performance goal-dominant students over a longer period. Dialogue protocol analysis further revealed a combined pattern of argumentative discourse (i.e., both deliberative argumentation and co-consensual construction frequently occurred, while disputative argumentation rarely occurred) among mastery goal-dominant students and two goals-balanced students concerning highly controversial topics. Responses to stimulated recall interviews also indicated that perceptions of conflicts among the three types of students differed in terms of five aspects: their first impression of disagreements, their feelings in response to peer disagreement, their reasons for changing or maintaining to their original ideas, the meaning of group consensus, and the degrees to which they accepted group consensus. This study sheds light on the role of social-motivational antecedents, deepening our understanding of whether different achievement goals might orient students to different perceptions of conflicts, triggering different argumentative discourse, producing different conceptual change.

A crucial hurdle to addressing climate change is science denial. While research suggests that science denial is related to judgments individuals make about the credibility of information sources, less is known about how source credibility and characteristics of the individual interact to affect science denial. In the present study, we examined the extent to which individuals' belief in climate change claims and trust in the sources of these claims were influenced by the interaction between the political leaning of information sources (i.e., conservative media vs. liberal media vs. scientific institutions), individuals' political ideologies, and individuals' epistemic beliefs (beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing). We found that both individuals' belief in climate change information and trust in sources were predicted by interactions between these variables. For example, participants who believed that facts are not politically constructed were more likely to believe in climate information and trust scientific sources, regardless of the participant's partisanship. These findings suggest that epistemic profiles associated with deference to scientific sources might protect against climate change denial. Therefore, cultivating such epistemic beliefs and the skills to critically evaluate sources could be instrumental to combating climate change denial.

Articulating the rules, roles, and values that are expected of undergraduate researchers is important as we strive to create a more accessible path into the scientific community. Rules refer to skills required of scientists, roles refer to behaviors consistent with the expectations of a scientist, and values refer to beliefs of the scientific community. Doctoral student mentors have great potential to serve as agents of influence for undergraduate researchers as undergraduates engage in the process of learning to be a scientist through legitimate peripheral participation. As such, we argue that doctoral students are partially responsible for identifying and promoting the rules, roles, and values that undergraduate researchers develop in scientific research. However, few studies have examined what rules, roles, and values are appreciated, or perceived as desirable, by doctoral students and thus expected of undergraduate research mentees. To address this gap, we surveyed 835 life sciences doctoral students who had mentored or would eventually mentor undergraduate researchers. We assessed what qualities and beliefs they appreciate in undergraduate researchers and what advice they would give to undergraduates to maximize their experiences in research. We analyzed their open-ended responses using inductive coding and identified specific rules (e.g., effectively communicate), roles (e.g., demonstrate a strong work ethic), and values (e.g., be driven by intrinsic passion) that doctoral students wrote about. We used logistic regression to determine whether demographics predicted differences among doctoral student responses. We found that gender, race/ethnicity, and college generation status predicted what rules, roles, and values doctoral students appreciated and advised undergraduates to adopt. This research illuminates what rules, roles, and values undergraduate researchers are expected to uphold and identifies relationships between mentor identities and the advice they pass on to students.