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There is limited time for elementary teacher professional learning in science in order to meet the aspirational goals of current reform efforts. In this study, we investigated what and how teachers learn on-the-job to gain insight into modes of support less often included in teacher education design. Specifically, we studied elementary teachers’ participation in a system-level organizational routine: curriculum materials adoption processes(CMAPs).Using a communities of practice framework, we explored teacher learning in a comparative case study of three U.S.school districts’ CMAP routines, observingCMAP committee meetings and interviewing participants about their expeirences. We found that what teachers learned varied across each district’s CMAP. We argue this variation can be traced to two CMAP features:(1) teachers’ use of boundary objects and (2) their boundary spanning roles and structures. Results have implications for the design of educational systems’ organizational routines to more intentionally serve a dual role as a professional learning opportunity. 

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. 

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the limits of big data to guide decision-making in times of crisis. As people navigated daily life, they were confronted with the reality that data were often not yet material but rather in-the-making. Drawing upon critical and feminist lenses and participatory methodologies, this study investigates the data stories of nine people of Asian descent living in the United States. Findings illustrate how participants navigated within and across time, space, activity, media, epistemology, race, and politics to produce lively data assemblages. These data stories guided social-distancing and mask-wearing weeks before official US policy even as participants lived in constant fear of dehumanizing racist and xenophobic violence. This study advances theorizing about data practices for human knowing and learning with media, racial and epistemic (in)justice, and community action. It also advances participatory research as a site of epistemic resistance and activism. 

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a reform effort “for states, by states,” advances ambitious ideals for elementary science teaching, but the fate of these ideals will depend in part on the engagement of state science coordinators (SSCs). This article explores the responses of SSCs to NGSS in a purposeful sample of 18 US states. Based on analysis of 19 interviews with 22 SSCs, we develop two arguments. First, SSCs' ideas about improving elementary science education converged around three themes: the introduction of three-dimensional science teaching and learning, the integration of engineering with science teaching, and the integration of science with ELA and mathematics. Second, SSCs' sense-making about reforming elementary science education was situated in and shaped by (a) their knowledge of how elementary science instruction has been and continues to be de-prioritized, as well as their experiences (b) facilitating work groups in developing science standards using the Framework for K-12 Science Education, and (c) participating in professional networks.