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A teacher’s noticing or their ability to see and interpret classroom events is an important component of their expertise. Examination of these noticings is a way to understand changes in their learning over time. In this research, we examine changes in teacher noticing of classroom instruction for two groups that participated in slightly different professional development experiences to understand how this PD shaped their personal domain of learning. Findings suggest that both programs shaped teacher noticing and learning but in different ways. 

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. 

This research employs the lenses of epistemological resources and framing to examine the complexities of one teacher’s efforts to position his middle-school biology students as sensemakers. Through interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis, we trace the teacher’s activation of varied epistemological resources and how such resources positioned students’ efforts throughout the lesson. While the launch of tasks was framed as an opportunity for “doing science,” this framing became less stable when the teacher engaged with students in small group work and during the wrap up that were focused on the “right answer.” Specific phases of the lesson served as a context that influenced the epistemological resources activated, helping us understand the varied, dynamic, and sometimes contradictory nature of the teacher’s moves and their consequences on students’ framing of their efforts. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

Recent educational reforms conceptualize science classrooms as spaces where students engage in Science-as-Practice to develop deep understandings of scientific phenomena. When students engage in Science-as-Practice they are constructing explanations, arguing from evidence, and evaluating and communicating information to develop scientific knowledge (NGSS Lead States, 2013). This process of learning requires a focus on productive science talk in which students grapple with and socially negotiate their ideas (Kelly, 2014) through interactions involving talk, joint attention, and shared activity aimed at building, negotiating, and refining new understandings of phenomena and relevant science concepts (Ford, 2015; Michaels & O’Connor, 2012). Productive talk requires the ‘nimble’ involvement of the teacher to help students productively contribute their ideas to the class and use them as resources to drive instructional activities supporting the development and refinement of more sophisticated scientific understandings (Christodoulou & Osborne, 2014; González‐Howard & McNeill, 2020).