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ABSTRACT This study centers the idea that it is not just what science teacher educators (STEs) teach, but how they teach it, that matters. To prepare future teachers who can enact more equitable and transformative reform‐oriented science instruction with multilingual learners, research must explore what STEs are doing, and how, to develop preservice teachers' expansive views of language and understandings around the nuanced ways students might use their diverse language repertoires for sensemaking. Wanting to explore whether our instructional practices as STEs aligned to the translanguaging pedagogy we espouse within our bilingual elementary science methods course, we employed self‐study methodology to critically examine our own instruction across a semester, specifically in terms of how we engaged in the core practice of “eliciting student ideas.” Findings revealed particularities around the evolution of our translanguaging pedagogy with respect to this core practice, the extensive and intentional effort that went into designing learning activities strongly suited to facilitate our elicitation of PSTs' ideas in language‐expansive ways, and the vulnerable space that we had to hold, as individuals and as a collective, in order to (un)learn and carry out this work. These findings highlight the importance of STEs addressing their own continued professional growth, and of the power of collaboration in supporting this growth through self‐examination and loving self‐critique. Furthermore, findings suggest the importance of intentionally eliciting and elevating PSTs' ideas both implicitly and explicitly, and for needing to attend to the emotional and relational aspects of learning environments to support students' language use. 

This synthesis examines recent science education research on multilingual students’ experiences with language-rich science practices. Adopting a translanguaging lens, we explore how researchers’ language conceptualizations impact the science practices they study and the ways multilingual students are positioned. This analysis helps us understand the extent to which recent research is disrupting, or sustaining, minoritizing narratives about multilingual students and how they sensemake in science. Based on our findings, we suggest researchers: (1) reflect upon and expand their views of language, which will enable the field to develop more nuanced understandings of how language use across linguistic and multimodal resources permeates all science practices, and (2) consider how to expand multilingual students’ language repertoires for sensemaking while also valuing students’ existing language resources and practices. 

Research in science education with multilingual learners (MLs) has expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion can be situated within a larger dialogue about what it means to provide minoritized students with an equitable education. Whereas some conceptions of equity focus on ensuring all students have access to the knowledge, practices, and language normatively valued in K‐12 schools (equity as access), increasingly prominent conceptions focus on transforming those knowledge, practices, and language in ways that center minoritized students and their communities (equity as transformation). In this article, we argue that conceptions of equity provide a useful lens for understanding emerging research in science education with MLs and for charting a research agenda. We begin by tracing how conceptions of equity have evolved in parallel across STEM and multilingual education. Then, we provide an overview of recent developments from demographic, theoretical, and policy perspectives. In the context of these developments, we provide a conceptual synthesis of emerging research by our team of early‐career scholars in three areas: (a) learning, (b) assessment, and (c) teacher education. Within each area, we unpack the research efforts in terms of how they attend to equity as access while pushing toward equity as transformation. Finally, we propose a research agenda for science education with MLs that builds on and extends these efforts. We close by offering recommendations for making this research agenda coherent and impactful: (a) being explicit about our conceptions of equity, (b) paying attention to the interplay of structure and agency, and (c) promoting interdisciplinary collaboration.