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Science Education has transitioned to science proficiency-- students are to gain the ability to engage in sense making about the natural world (National Research Council [NRC, 2012])--learning to “figure things out” (Passmore, 2014). One emerging area of focus is the emotional work students participate in during science sense making. There is growing recognition that these emotions are not just unnecessary by-products of scientific work, but rather they are part-and-parcel of doing science, as these emotions are part of what “instigates and stabilizes disciplinary engagement” in scientific pursuits (Jaber & Hammer, 2016b, p. 189). The research question that guided this study is: What is the teacher's role in reframing moments of epistemic vexation, so students experience productive meta-affect in the science classroom? After reviewing video footage and student and teacher interviews, three themes emerged: (1) Without reframing from the teacher during moments of epistemic vexation, students disengage from sense-making, (2) Productive meta-affect is more likely to occur when students understand why the teacher allows for failure to connect ideas or understand scientific concepts, and (3) When the teacher does not reframe moments of epistemic vexation, students build solidarity and reach out to each other for emotional support in developing productive meta-affect. 

As part of a larger study focused on supporting high school biology teachers' use of productive science talk, this study compares the use of two different observation protocols, the RTOP and the IQA-SOR. Reviewing a year-long data set of video observations collected from classrooms of teachers participating in the larger professional development study, the two validated instruments produced significantly correlated scores of different scales based on the unique structure of each tool. We posit this demonstrates that both instruments can be useful for analyzing classroom instruction intended to emphasize productive science talk. However, the instruments do possess unique structural and theoretical qualities that warrant this study to understand the insights afforded by each. The similarities and differences emerging from each are explored in the presentation and how they impact the analyses. These considerations can be helpful for scholars who research in-service teacher learning as classroom implementation and impact on student learning activities are general outcomes that most professional development research endeavors to explore. Further, considerations of what a particular observation protocols’ foci include will be necessary so that continued research on teacher learning works to make science learning through discourse accessible to all learners.