Journal of Research in Science Teaching最新文献

Recently, there has been a surge of literature on the implementation of translanguaging pedagogy and practices in science education settings. By activating and validating learners' full communicative repertoire, translanguaging holds promise to build an inclusive science learning community where multilingual learners' ways of knowing are not only respected but celebrated and extended. Drawing from the dual synergy between translanguaging and science education on multimodalities and social justice agenda, this systematic review synthesized the key features of empirical research published from 2010 to 2023 that reported translanguaging practices in global K-12 formal and informal science education settings. The results indicated high heterogeneity in the studied socio-geographic landscapes and in the definition, implementation, and implication of translanguaging practices. Analysis of the science sense-making practices indicates some epistemic practices are more widely represented than others, with marginal global differences observed. To maintain and embolden the synergy between science education and translanguaging, our findings recommend increased collaboration between Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathmatics (STEM) education and bilingual education and collaboration between teachers and researchers to develop an effective translanguaging environment for science learning.

An inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities for marginalized students (i.e., opportunity gaps) leads to challenges in identifying effective study behaviors, metacognition, and academic help-seeking in higher education. While students benefit when these skills are taught explicitly through co-curricular workshops and courses, these interventions often require significant time investment from faculty and students, underscoring a need for alternative interventions that provide students with access to resources related to these skills. Course syllabi are one potential resource that can address these needs, and we asked to what extent biology syllabi are used for this purpose. We collected a national sample of introductory biology syllabi and used content analysis to determine if syllabi are learner-centered and whether they incorporate information on study behaviors, metacognition, and academic help-seeking. We found that most syllabi are not learner-centered, encourage ineffective study behaviors, did not include metacognition recommendations, and include incomplete academic help-seeking recommendations. We make several recommendations on how to incorporate complete, accurate information regarding study behaviors, metacognition, and academic help-seeking.

Research on translanguaging in science and engineering education has grown rapidly. Studies carried out across diverse contexts converge in their commitment to fostering equity in science and engineering learning for linguistically marginalized learners. However, the rapid growth of this research area has exposed different approaches to conceptualizing “equity” itself. The purpose of this review of literature was to examine what equity approaches have undergirded research on translanguaging in US K–12 science and engineering education and whether these approaches vary over time and across contexts. We systematically analyzed studies (N = 15) using the four equity approaches articulated in a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2022). Findings of our review indicate that, while studies aimed at increasing opportunity and access to high-quality science and engineering learning (Approach 1) and, to a lesser extent, identification and representation with science and engineering (Approach 2) were the two most prevalent equity approaches, studies focused on expanding what constitutes science and engineering (Approach 3) and seeing science and engineering as part of justice movements (Approach 4) were somewhat less common. Furthermore, justice-oriented approaches to equity (Approaches 3 and 4) were increasingly visible in the literature since 2020 as well as in research carried out in nontraditional educational contexts (e.g., out-of-school programs, classes outside of the core school subjects). Based on these findings, we propose the need for future research that (a) explicitly conceptualizes and operationalizes constructs related to equity (e.g., what is meant by “achievement” and how it is measured), (b) examines the possibilities and tensions associated with expanding what constitutes science and engineering in traditional educational contexts, (c) leverages the affordances of multiple STEM subjects for addressing justice issues impacting linguistically marginalized communities, and (d) iterates on the equity approaches themselves.

Science teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning are a vital component of teachers' professional competence and are often assumed to impact classroom practice. To date, these beliefs have been predominantly investigated regarding teaching and learning in general or for a particular science subject (e.g., physics). It remains to be determined whether these beliefs are similar across different goals within a subject. The study reported addresses this question by investigating and comparing beliefs about teaching and learning regarding two prominent main goals of science education: content goals that refer to scientific phenomena, laws, theories, and disciplinary core ideas and procedural goals that refer to scientific procedures and practices. To that end, data from 170 German teachers were collected in 2019 and 2020 with an online questionnaire. After modeling the data and assessing the quality of measurement via Rasch analysis techniques, subsequent t-tests were employed to compare beliefs. Results reveal that science teachers' beliefs vary between both main goals. For instance, teachers believe that achieving procedural goals requires primarily doing science with lesser relevance of discussing and elaborating with students explicitly the rules and strategies for engaging appropriately in scientific practices (e.g., control of variables strategy). In contrast, teachers believe that for achieving content goals, explicit instruction about corresponding conceptual knowledge is of higher relevance. Furthermore, the analysis reveals differences in teachers' beliefs about their own abilities. Teachers typically believe they are more able to teach and deal with content goals compared with procedural goals. The differences reported may help to understand research on teachers' classroom practice and can inform teacher training and professional development.

Increasing access to computational ideas and practices is one important reason to integrate computational thinking (CT) in science classrooms. While integrating CT into science classrooms broadens exposure to computing, it may not be enough to ensure equitable participation in the science classroom. Equitable participation is crucial because providing students with an environment in which they are able to fully engage and participate in science and computing practices empowers students to learn and continue pursuing CT and science. To foreground equitable participation in CT-integrated curricula, we undertook a research project in which researchers and teachers examined teacher conceptualizations of equitable participation and how teachers design for equitable participation by modifying a lesson that introduces computational modeling in science. The following research questions guided the study: (1) What are teachers' conceptualizations of equitable participation? (2) How do teachers design for equitable participation through co-design of a CT-integrated unit? Our findings suggest that teachers conceptualized and designed for equitable participation in the context of a CT-integrated curriculum across three primary dimensions: accessibility, inclusion, and relevancy. Our contributions to the field of science teaching and learning are twofold: (1) obtaining an initial understanding of how teachers think about and design for equitable participation is crucial in order to support teachers in their pursuit of creating equitable learning experiences for CT and science learners, and (2) our findings show that we can study teacher conceptualizations and their design choices by examining specific modifications to a CT-integrated science curriculum. Implications are discussed.

This phenomenological study examines how women and Students of Color who attend a small undergraduate predominately white institution (PWI) make meaning of their experiences in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and how individual and contextual factors influence whether they decide to stay, leave, or add an STEM major. We conducted qualitative interviews with 50 juniors and seniors across three participation pathways: (1) students who entered college with an interest in an STEM major and are still an STEM major, (2) students who entered college with an interest in a non-STEM major and switched to an STEM major, and (3) students who entered college with an interest in an STEM major and changed to a non-STEM major. Students' descriptions of the factors that influenced their academic choices support the tenets of the situated expectancy-value theory. Themes related to expectancies for success, value beliefs, and teachers and peers are presented. Implications of these findings for retaining underrepresented students in STEM majors are discussed.

In the context of scholarly and scientific discourse, students often have to deal with graphic-visual modes of communication, which requires their ability to comprehend and utilize inscriptions, that is, scientific visual representations, to convey information effectively—what we call graphical literacy. Despite its pivotal role for training scientists and facilitating scientific communication, there is a lack of resources for assessing the graphical literacy of undergraduate students during oral presentations (OPs), a common assignment in post-secondary educational contexts. This study addresses this gap by investigating the graphical literacy of first-year chemistry undergraduate students by analyzing the inscriptions they used during multimodal OPs designed to display the resolution of a problem posed through interrupted case studies. Our results are presented as claims that highlight how students' engagement with inscriptions in OPs makes evident their graphical literacy. These findings have significant implications for educators, providing guidance for assessing graphical literacy and the effective use of inscriptions in OPs.

We investigated the intersectional relationships between racism, sexism, and classism in inequities in student conceptual knowledge in introductory biology courses using a quantitative critical framework. Using Bayesian hierarchical linear models, we examined students' conceptual knowledge as measured by the Introductory Molecular and Cell Biology Assessment. The data came from the LASSO Platform database and included 6547 students from 87 introductory courses at 11 institutions. The model indicated that students with marginalized identities by race, gender, and class tended to start with lower scores than continuing-generation, White men. We conceptualized these differences as educational debts society owed these students due to racism, sexism, and classism. Instruction added to these educational debts for most marginalized groups, with the largest increases for students with multiple marginalized identities. After instruction, society owed Black and Hispanic, first-generation women an educational debt equal to 60–80% of the average learning in the courses. These courses almost all (85/87) used collaborative learning and half (45/87) supported instruction with near-peer learning assistants. While research shows collaborative learning better serves students than lecture-based instruction, these results indicate it adds to educational debts due to racism, sexism, and classism in introductory college biology courses.

Although previous research provides insights into how gestures function as a pedagogical tool, relatively little is known about how gesture is related to language, together creating a key meaning-making teaching resource. Drawing on the system of logico–semantic relations in Systemic Functional Linguistic theory and McNeill's description of gestures, this study examines how gesture is logically and semantically related to the language teachers use in elementary science classrooms. The study is primarily qualitative in nature and uses video recordings as the primary data. The main purpose is to analyze the kind of gesture–speech relations used by elementary science teachers and to develop a system network that describes gesture–speech relations in elementary science teaching. Distribution of the gesture–speech relations shows that some relations are more likely used to teach scientific knowledge, some are more likely used for classroom management, and some are used for both.