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Reflection allows teachers to evaluate their past instruction and make decisions to guide their future practice (i.e., Killion & Todnem, 1991; Moore-Russo & Wilsey, 2014). The literature on teacher sensemaking suggests that engaging in reflection might support sensemaking about changes to teachers’ practice (e.g., Marco-Bujosa et al., 2017; Senzen-Barrie et al., 2020). However, prior research has not connected teachers’ engagement in reflection to their sensemaking. By using video data of PD, we analyzed the category of reflection (Moore-Russo & Wilsey, 2014) teachers participated in, the process of sensemaking (Robertson & Richards, 2017), as well as what teachers were sensemaking about in relation to the PD’s design. Our analysis indicated that teachers typically reflected by sharing their individual viewpoints and used the process of negotiation to consider how to facilitate productive talk. Additionally, different features designed as a part of the PD (i.e., general discussion, redesign, video) supported teachers to participate in different types of reflection and processes of sensemaking. The findings from this study have implications for teacher PD design features and their role in facilitating reflection and promoting sensemaking. 

Reform efforts targeting science instruction emphasize that students should develop scientific proficiency that empowers them to collaboratively negotiate science ideas as they develop meaningful understandings about science phenomena through science practices. The lessons teachers design and enact play a critical role in engaging students in rigorous science learning. Collaborative design, in which teachers work together to design, enact, and reflect on their teaching, holds potential to support teachers’ learning, but scarce research examines the pathways by which collaborative design can influence teachers’ instructional practices. Examining the teaching and reflective thinking of two science teachers who engaged in collaborative design activities over two years, we found that their enactment practices became more supportive of students’ rigorous learning over time, and that they identified collaborative efforts with teacher educators and partner teachers to plan lessons and analyze videos of instruction as supportive of their learning to enact rigorous instruction. 

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.