David Perl-Nussbaum

Reform‐oriented instruction is advocated in secondary science, encouraging students to engage with the experimental and epistemic practices of science. It is challenging for teachers though, especially for out‐of‐field teachers. This study focuses on biology and chemistry teachers who are called to teach middle‐school physics. These teachers face not only a knowledge gap, but also an epistemic gap arising from the distinct epistemic practices that are applied in the different school‐subjects to construct scientific knowledge. We put forward a professional development (PD) approach for out‐of‐field teachers that capitalizes on the strengths and resources they bring from their original field of expertise, and describe design guidelines for a PD program designed to enable them to carry out inquiry experiences in physics with their students. Given our PD approach, we argue that successful classroom implementation should be framed differently for out‐of‐field teachers. Rather than expecting them to strictly implement the PD activities and thus completely change their familiar practice, successful implementation would entail modifications that integrate new practices with familiar ones. Using the boundary‐crossing framework, we analyze three illustrative case studies in which teachers report on classroom implementation. We show how teachers remained rooted in their former practice ‐ biology and chemistry instruction ‐ and at the same time were inspired to adopt physics‐oriented practices, for example integrating mechanistic reasoning and deductive approaches. Illustrating the different boundary crossing mechanisms the teachers applied and the boundary objects that mediated this process sheds light on new productive avenues for the PD of out‐of‐field science teachers.

In this paper, we demonstrate the fruitfulness of a theoretical framework called , developed in the context of mathematics education research, for conceptualizing and analyzing a professional development (PD) process on measurement uncertainty for secondary physics teachers. Evaluating measurement uncertainty is an important learning goal in the physics lab and is key to determining the validity of an experiment. While research has mapped difficulties students face and teaching strategies to support them, teacher PD still requires attention, both in capturing teachers’ existing perceptions and in designing PD activities that address these perceptions and support teachers in adopting a more scientifically aligned discourse on measurement uncertainty. perceives learning as becoming a participant in the discourse of a specific professional community. A discourse consists of keywords, visual mediators, narratives, and routines—and metarules that govern their use. The appropriation of a new discourse involves reconciling conflicts between the metarules of learners’ existing discourse and the new discourse (i.e., ). We adopted the commognitive framework in all phases of our PD design. First, we mapped the canonical discourse we intended our teachers to adopt versus the prevailing discourse of physics teachers in our national context. Following this mapping, we designed PD tasks intended to lead participants to acknowledge the limitations of their existing discourse on measurement uncertainty as a precursor to internalizing the canonical discourse. Finally, the commognitive framework served as an analytical lens to detect commognitive conflicts involved in collaborative sensemaking among the teachers and between them and the PD facilitators. We demonstrate this type of analysis in a case study, in which learners who hold different discursive metarules encounter implicit commognitive conflicts and discuss implications and untapped opportunities for physics teachers’ PD process on measurement uncertainty. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Despite the positive effects of gamification on student motivation and learning outcomes, there are still widespread concerns that ‘playing games is merely fun’ and have no added value, thus making teachers hesitate about incorporating games into their teaching. This paper describes Phys-Cards games, designed as a summative hands-on activity that highlights physics concepts through a ‘contrast and compare’ task in a game context. The Phys-Cards games were presented in a national network of professional learning communities (PLCs) for high school physics teachers. The teachers first played the games and then reflected on their experiences after they implemented them in their classrooms. Surveys and an analysis of the teachers’ reflections indicated that they valued the Phys-Cards games and reported that the games contributed to students’ conceptual understanding and knowledge organization. However, teachers faced challenges such as team size and composition, how to best monitor different groups, and timing in the instructional sequence. In their discussions during the PLC meetings, the teachers identified the features of the games that best promotedmeaningful collaborative learning and suggested productive ways to incorporate the games into their teaching.

Out‐of‐field teaching is a global educational challenge. In particular, many teachers whose academic background and main teaching experience is in biology are called to teach middle school physics and have limited opportunities for productive professional development. Based on previous studies, we expect these teachers to hold different epistemic cognitions from the in‐field teachers. The present study builds on this epistemic diversity and offers dialogic argumentation as a means to promote mutual learning among physics teachers from different disciplinary backgrounds. We describe guidelines for designinginterdisciplinary dialogic argumentationactivities that aim to encourage teachers to express their disciplinary perspectives in the context of inquiry‐based physics and to facilitate a deliberative discourse among them. We demonstrate in a case study the ways in which the discourse of a group of in‐field and out‐of‐field teachers unfolds under the proposed design guidelines. Using the Actor‐Network methodology and an analysis of power relations, we uncover a complex interplay between the social and the epistemic in the discourse: when interactions become more dialogic and power relations more equalized, the out‐of‐field teachers take an active role in the discussion, foregrounding their epistemic practices and enhancing the epistemic practices of the group, including the in‐field teacher.

Inquiry practices can be integrated into various settings that differ in terms of their constraints and hence in the scope and depth of the practices that students experience. Key policy papers suggest implementing a gradual learning sequence for inquiry practices so that students' learning experiences in more constrained settings can serve them later in extended research projects. What type of learning progression in inquiry is valued by students? To answer this question, students' views were examined while progressing from inquiry-oriented instructional labs to an extended research project. This was done in the context of the Research Physics program, a three-year program consisting of an introductory stage followed by a longterm (similar to 18 months) research project. The group administered interactive questionnaire methodology was used to collect student reflections at the interface between the two stages of the program, both individually and in groups. Students were asked to identify inquiry practices they had encountered during the introductory stage and to evaluate their contribution to their projects. Findings showed that while students perceived the development of measurement, analysis, and self-monitoring skills as useful in preparing them for future research projects, this was not the case for the practices of teamwork and communication of knowledge. We explain these findings, using the boundary crossing theoretical lens, by looking at the different meanings these two practices take on when imported from the physicist's lab to the educational lab and suggest that this impedes the cultural boundary crossing between these two settings.