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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. 

Science learning is thought to be best supported when students are positioned as epistemic agents. Using a case study approach, we explore the experiences of one Black middle school girl and her epistemic efforts and the ways in which her group members’ responses to her efforts either supported or constrained her epistemic agency during small group work in two argumentation lessons. Our findings show that Jessie’s epistemic efforts were not often taken up by her peers in ways that support her epistemic agency, findings that have implications for student learning and engagement in terms of the epistemic work we ask students to engage in, and the instructional strategies that support this work. 

If we are to support students to become epistemic agents in the ways envisioned in reforms, we must acknowledge that classrooms can be spaces of injustice, where instructional efforts can propagate inequitable systems of oppression. In this case study, we describe the epistemic efforts of one Black girl, Jessie, and the rights and privileges afforded or denied to her as she worked with a group of her peers to develop and negotiate a scientific claim. Through examination of video data, transcripts, and student work products, we characterized students’ efforts as about epistemic, rhetorical, and pseudo-argumentation, and how we explored how such efforts invited or constrained Jessie’s epistemic agency. Jessie’s pattern of persistence, which we understand to be her fight to have her rights as a scientific sensemaker acknowledged, surfaced issues of inequity in which Jessie’s ongoing efforts to engage in epistemic argumentation were rejected by her peers. 

Research on students’ engagement suggests that epistemic affect--that is, the feelings and emotions experienced in the epistemic work of making sense of phenomena-- should be recognized as a central component of meaningful disciplinary engagement in science. These feelings and emotions are not tangential by-products, but are essential components of disciplinary engagement. Yet, there is still much to understand about how educators can attend and respond to students’ emotions in ways that support disciplinary engagement in science. To inform these efforts, we follow one high school Biology teacher, Amelia, to answer the following question: How does Amelia attend to and support her students’ emotions in ways that support their disciplinary engagement? Data examined include teacher interviews and classroom recordings of two multi-day science lessons. We found that the teacher worked to support her students’ emotions in moments of uncertainty in at least two ways: (1) by attending to these emotions directly, and (2) by sharing her personal experiences and feelings in engaging in similar activities as a science learner. We describe how Amelia made herself vulnerable to students, describing her own struggles in making sense of phenomena, in turn supporting her students to normalize these experiences as part of doing science. 

This work follows a group of four science teachers in the second year of an intensive PD. Our analyses revealed two distinct variations in their instruction. These differences were accompanied by similar differences in their instructional vision. We argue that instructional vision can illuminate teachers’ thinking about their work, insights that may be useful in helping PD facilitators better hone such experiences. 

Current understandings of science learning revolve around students’ developing the ability to use science concepts and practices to “figure out” aspects of the natural world. One emerging area of focus in this new vision of learning is the emotional work required in students’ participation science sense making. This research focuses on how one teacher supports student reframing of moments of epistemic vexation. After reviewing classroom video, and interviews, three themes emerged: (1) Productive meta-affect is more likely to occur when students understand why the teacher allows for failure to connect ideas or understand scientific concepts, (2) Without explicit attention from the teacher during moments of epistemic vexation, students can disengage from sense-making and (3) When the teacher does not adequately attend to students’ epistemic vexation, students can build solidarity and reach out to each other for emotional support in developing meta-affect. 

Researchers of teacher education have long advocated that one of the most essential supports to teacher learning of novel instruction practices comes from collaboration. Much of the collaboration literature focuses on the outcomes of teacher collaboration without providing insight into the nature of collaborations. In this work, we seek to understand the collaboration that occurred between five school biology teachers as they designed, enacted, and reflected on a lesson emerging from professional development focused on productive talk. The questions guiding this work include: What was the focus of the LCD teacher group’s collaboration?, What was the nature of the LCD teacher group’s collaboration? and, What role did the group’s collaboration serve in supporting each teacher’s practice? We found that the collaborative space opened-up opportunities for teachers to discuss their practice for the lesson and outside of the lesson itself. Salient to the collaborative space was a sense of support between the teachers as teachers intensively listened to one another, normalized a problematic issue as well as the emotions that they were experiencing by relating to each other, providing advice and words of encouragement. Teachers’ collaboration eased the work of designing and enacting a conceptually challenging lesson. 

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.