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1. The Ripple Effect of Epistemological Framing: Linking Epistemology, Teacher Moves, and Student Learning

   Southerland, S. A.; Schellinger, J.; Jaber, L.Z.; Morandi, S.; Krishnan, H.; & Tekkumru-Kisa, M. (January 2021, Annual meeting program American Educational Research Association)

   null (Ed.)

   This work explores epistemological framing dynamics in a middle school biology classroom and how such dynamics shape student engagement and learning opportunities. Our data sources include student and teacher interviews, classroom videos of three multi-day lessons with a focus on argumentation, and work products collected across one academic year. Our analysis reveals that while the teacher made room for students to generate and negotiate ideas, brief but influential moves emphasizing single correct answers undermined students’ sensemaking. These instructional moves, while only occupying a small amount of instructional time, framed students’ sensemaking efforts not as a process to seek the strongest explanation from a number of possibilities, but rather to wait for the correct explanation to be revealed from an authority. 

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2. Complexities and contradictions in a teacher’s activation of epistemological resources and their consequences for student framing

   Southerland, S. A.; Schellinger, J.; Jaber, L. Z.; & Morandi, S. (January 2023, Annual meeting of the International Society of the Learning Sciences)

   This research employs the lenses of epistemological resources and framing to examine the complexities of one teacher’s efforts to position his middle-school biology students as sensemakers. Through interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis, we trace the teacher’s activation of varied epistemological resources and how such resources positioned students’ efforts throughout the lesson. While the launch of tasks was framed as an opportunity for “doing science,” this framing became less stable when the teacher engaged with students in small group work and during the wrap up that were focused on the “right answer.” Specific phases of the lesson served as a context that influenced the epistemological resources activated, helping us understand the varied, dynamic, and sometimes contradictory nature of the teacher’s moves and their consequences on students’ framing of their efforts. 

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3. Why do teachers vary in their instructional change during science PD? The role of noticing students in an iterative change process

   https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21853  

   Preminger, Linda; Hayes, Kathryn N; Bae, Christine L; O'Connor, Dawn (May 2024, Science Education)

   Instructional shifts required by equitable, reform‐based science instruction are challenging, especially in the elementary context. Such shifts require professional development (PD) that supports teacher internalization of new pedagogical strategies as well as changes in beliefs about how students learn. Because of this complexity, many PD programs struggle to foster lasting pedagogical shifts, necessitating further investigation into why some teachers successfully embrace reform practices while others do not. This qualitative study uses a nonlinear, iterative model of teacher learning (Interconnected Model of Professional Growth; Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002) alongside professional noticing to help understand why elementary teachers in science PD differentially make sense of and internalize new pedagogies. Findings indicate that teachers most likely to adopt reform‐based instructional practices from the PD were those who clearly connected student learning to their instructional moves. In addition, teachers who more actively attended to student sensemaking and productive struggle took up pedagogies from the PD more substantively than did colleagues who attended solely to student engagement and affect. Finally, teachers who attended to and valued novel ideas from students’ lived experiences were more likely to change their beliefs about students’ capacity to learn science, and thus more likely to see the value of instructional practices from the PD. In sum, structuring PD to build on these specific teacher noticing skills can encourage more teachers to move away from traditional, teacher‐directed instructional practice, and more fully support reform‐based instructional practices. 

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4. Are we moving towards equity in science talk? Evaluating timing and positioning of talk moves

   Morandi, S.; Southerland, S. (January 2023, National Association for Research in Science Teaching Annual Meeting 2023)

   Within the science education reform movement, there have been long standing calls initiated to attend to equity in the science classroom. These calls are sought to de-settle and advance the broad strokes of “equity for all” into deeper, more meaningful actions, considering the way we view equity and how equitable practices unfold in the classroom. Productive science discourse or productive science talk is just one instructional practice used and discussed which leverages students as sensemakers. This study seeks to better understand productive science talk as a practice of equitation instruction. In examining Ms. Savannah’s practice, a high school biology teacher, two major findings emerged around the use of productive talk: (1) pattern of moves to leverage student ideas and (2) timing of moves to stimulate interest or motivation. These talk moves and timing gave insight into talk as both having the ability to hinder and foster student ideas and provide an initial “on-ramp” for students’ voice to be heard, taken up and have accountability in the classroom. This work continues to sustain a call toward attention to equity and a need to evaluate the equity-aligned practices that are fore-fronted in PDs and workshops. 

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5. What Epistemological Resources Affect Chemistry Teachers’ Sense of "What Worked"

   Schafer, AGL; Stowe, RL. (January 2021, 2021 NARST International Meeting)

   null (Ed.)

   Teachers’ sense of “what is taking place with respect to knowledge” drives their perspective on “what works” and “what is likely to work” in their classroom context. Scholarship by Hammer, Russ and many others indicates that this “sense” is very often context-sensitive and may be productively modeled as a local coalescence of small-grained epistemological resources. Presented here is an investigation of the epistemological resources contributing to high school chemistry teachers’ framing of “what works” in their learning environment. Teacher reflections are unpacked and characterized for classroom information noticed and responded to when considering “what worked” during the 2019-2020 school year. Preliminary findings suggest epistemological resources guiding “what worked” often align with a view of knowledge as propagated stuff. Thus, implying that teachers’ reasoning about “what works” is guided by how well knowledge is transferred to students. Also present was evidence that epistemological resources aligned to views of knowledge as fabricated stuff were activated. The perspective that knowledge is inferred or developed from other knowledge, rather than passed from an authority figure, aligns well with reform efforts that emphasize student sensemaking. This study is part of a larger program in which a teacher-researcher collaborative adapts and refines evidence-based curricular materials for an undergraduate chemistry course for use in high school. These materials are structured around scaffolded progressions of big ideas (e.g., energy, electrostatic and bonding interactions) that build in complexity as students make sense of increasingly complex phenomena. Ongoing improvement of transformed materials is dependent upon the ability to initiate and stabilize a sense of “what works” consistent with sensemaking aims. 

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