Joanne K. Olson

Nearly 50 million public school students in the United States are required to learn the content prescribed by state‐mandated science standards. Although much is known about the implementation of science standards and teachers' perceptions of them, the development process of these standards remains unclear. Understanding standards development is crucial to ensure the process employed is thoughtful, fair, considers expertise, and results in standards of sufficient quality to warrant implementation. This study examined the development of science standards in Texas to determine the enacted process, the expertise involved, who held decision‐making authority, and how authority was exercised. State Board of Education meetings were transcribed, coded, and supplemented with online documents and public records requests. Experts on learning were not present, and expertise in physics, earth science, and chemistry was weak to non‐existent. Teachers played a role in the early stages of the process, but the board ultimately had the authority to override, modify, and write the final standards document. The board was observed adding developmentally inappropriate content, overriding teachers' and subject‐matter experts' concerns, and using humor about their lack of subject‐matter knowledge. The findings raise important concerns about placing responsibility for standards development on an elected board of public officials, given their limited time, expertise, and connections to special interest groups. Given the immense influence of standards on what students are taught, we recommend an independent standards development process that balances decision‐making authority across experts in teaching, learning, the subject matter, and the milieu.

Background: Around the world, efforts are underway to include engineering design as part of elementary science instruction. A common rationale for those efforts is that Engineering Design-based Science Teaching (EDST) is a productive pedagogical approach for developing students’ understanding of core science concepts. Effectively utilizing EDST requires that teachers develop design activities that are highly connected to science content so that students can apply and expand their understanding of relevant concepts. In this study, we examine how a group of elementary (grades 3–5) pre-service and in-service teachers incorporated EDST into their planned science instruction. Those teachers were participants in a professional development project aimed at supporting EDST. We examine the ways that participants used EDST, the extent to which engineering design activities were connected to science concepts, and factors associated with those connections.Results: Most of the participants in the study developed science units in which an engineering design activity was placed at the end of the unit. Approximately half of those design activities lacked connections to the science concepts in the unit; they were typically related to the topic of the science unit, but did not require the use or development of key science ideas. Eleven percent of participants developed engineering activities with deep connections to science concepts, and 35% developed activities with shallow connections. No differences were found between life science, physical science, and earth/space science units in terms of the extent of conceptual connections. However, we did find that participants who utilized and adapted published engineering curriculum materials rather than make them from scratch were more likely to have unit plans with higher levels of conceptual connections.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that elementary teachers need additional support in order to effectively utilize EDST in their classrooms. Even within the context of a supportive professional development project, most of the engineering activities developed by our participants lacked substantial connections to the science concepts in their unit plans. Our findings highlight the value of high-quality curriculum materials to support EDST as well as the need to further expand the curriculum resources that are available to elementary teachers.

With the growing adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards across the United States, elementary teachers are being called upon to incorporate engineering into their science instruction, creating a need for ways to help elementary teachers better understand what engineering is and how to accurately communicate it to students. The present study examines the effects of a teacher education and professional development project in which elementary student teachers and their cooperating teachers were teamed with engineering graduate students to incorporate engineering into grades 3–5 classrooms. By working alongside experts in engineering for a 16-week semester, the project aimed to help participating elementary teachers better understand what engineering is and what engineers do. To assess teachers’ conceptions of engineering, we administered the Draw-An-Engineer Test as pretest and posttest. An important contribution of the present study is our development of a novel approach to analyzing responses from that instrument that is appropriate for adult populations and that also addresses multiple known shortcomings of drawing tasks. We found that from pretest to posttest, teachers’ responses became clearer with respect to the processes that engineers use in their work, and they became more likely to represent flowchart models of “the engineering design process.” The teachers’ focus on process, however, was not shared by the engineers, indicating that the engineers were not simply conveying their own understanding of engineering to the teachers. Rather, the teachers constructed their own understanding of engineering work that deviated in certain ways from the views of the engineers.

Little is known about how the content of a video case influences what preservice teachers learn about science teaching. This study was designed to determine the impact of two different video cases on preservice elementary teachers’ conceptions of multiple aspects of effective science teaching, with one video selected to focus attention on the role of the teacher. Three groups completed either: (i) a unit plan; (ii) a video case analysis with problematic selection of content and use of teacher behaviors; or (iii) a video case analysis with only problematic teacher behaviors. Two hundred seven end‐of‐semester oral defenses were analyzed to determine the extent to which group differences exist on six questions. Both groups who completed the video case analysis better consider how children learn when making decisions, involving activities and content than those who completed the unit plan. However, they do not use this same knowledge base to inform their role in interacting with children to move their thinking toward more accurate ideas. Prospective teachers in all three groups overlook the role of the teacher in the classroom and focus almost entirely on keeping children physically active. Therefore, even when a video case was deliberately selected to focus attention on the role of the teacher, this critically important aspect of teaching continues to be absent, or vague at best, for the 207 prospective teachers in this study. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 53: 1500–1523, 2016

We are facing a plethora of educational mandates, trends and policies in science teacher education. Such issues are intricately connected, are arguably synergistic with one another though not neces...

This article provides a description of science teacher education policy in Canada and the USA. We focus on qualifications and procedures to obtain an initial teaching license, requirements for license renewal, and trends in our respective countries. In both countries, science teacher education is the responsibility of the province or state, rather than the federal government. Because these countries are composed of many provinces/states, each with its own unique characteristics, we focus on general trends, recognizing that exceptions to these trends exist. Our review indicates that science teacher education in Canada and the USA consists of a highly diverse array of licenses, requirements, and programs. While this variability provides flexibility for programs to meet local needs and to create innovative programs, it also creates the potential for teachers to enter classrooms with insufficient preparation. In both countries, multiple pathways lead to certification, many of which have very few science content or science pedagogy requirements. The science content knowledge required of elementary teachers is of concern in both countries. Secondary science teachers have multiple ways to teach with insufficient preparation in science content and pedagogy. The nature of science is notably absent from most science teacher education state and provincial requirements. Innovative program structures with high requirements for science content and pedagogy exist in both countries. Research is needed that compares program structures and requirements to determine their relative impact on teachers’ practices. Additionally, much remains to be done to improve the extent to which existing research influences policy.