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Preservice elementary science teachers’ beliefs and practices influence the kinds of adaptations they make to curricula and the extent to which they are able to enact science lessons in justice-oriented ways. Through this qualitative study, we explored the beliefs and practices of five focal preservice teachers through an analysis of their lesson plans, recorded enactments, and interviews about their science teaching throughout their student teaching experience. We also introduce a framework for expansive sensemaking that integrates beliefs and practices related to four key themes: (1) believing in children’s brilliance, (2) building a collaborative classroom culture, (3) expanding what counts as science, and (4) positioning children as epistemic agents. While teachers varied in their beliefs about and approaches to each of these themes, they demonstrated strengths that illustrate what may be possible for early career teachers, like working to integrate many ways of knowing and being into science lessons, connecting to embodied knowledge, or supporting children to be scientific decision-makers. We discuss implications for teacher preparation programs and for theory development related to justice-oriented teaching in general and expansive sensemaking in particular.
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Preservice Teachers’ Support for Children’s Epistemic Agency in Elementary Science
Supporting children to make, explain, and reason through decisions about how to investigate scientific phenomena allows them to make sense of science content and practices in meaningful ways, positions children as agentic, and enables more equitable and just teaching. Novice teachers may use certain strategies and face unique challenges when engaging in this work. Drawing on written lesson plans, videorecords of lesson enactments, and interviews, this study explores five preservice teachers’ ideas and practices that positioned children as epistemic agents and identifies common tensions they negotiated. Each teacher demonstrated beliefs in children’s brilliance that were related to their practices, such as re-centering children’s ideas, working toward collective understanding, and engaging children in science practices. This study highlights early strengths of these five teachers and raises questions about teacher learning.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2246607
- PAR ID:
- 10519519
- Editor(s):
- Hoadley, C; Wang, X C
- Publisher / Repository:
- Repository of the International Society of the Learning Sciences
- Date Published:
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 19 to 26
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2024.669439
