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Scholars have suggested that one way to promote informed decision making about pressing socioscientific issues is to incorporate epistemic practices in science curricula. However, a key factor in teaching with such curricula is whether and how teachers can adapt instruction from their routine teaching approaches. Through an adaptive expertise lens, in this study, we examine how two teachers, teaching with agent-based computational complex systems models, varied in their implementations of epistemic practices and how consequently students' performance on epistemic practices was impacted. Through qualitative analyses of two teachers’ implementation recordings, this study examines teachers’ adaptive expertise in curricular implementations that aim at promoting student epistemic practices and provides examples of high and low levels of adaptive expertise that result in distinct student classroom experiences. This study carries implications for future teacher professional development geared towards improving students' epistemic practices. 

In International Conference of Learning Sciences 2024 Proceedings 

Science skepticism challenges the trustworthiness of scientific knowledge. Researchers suggest that school science curricula should emphasize the epistemic practices realworld scientists use to generate claims, such as actively seeking contradictory evidence for explanatory models and comparing findings with peers. However, empirical evidence supporting the use of epistemic practices, and its potential impact on students’ trustworthiness of science remains limited. This study examines four ninth-grade biology students who designed experiments to understand a fictional viral outbreak using agent-based simulation data. They iteratively refined their designs and discussed with peers. Analysis of student worksheets and discussions reveals that students used three epistemic practices: considering multiple explanations, systematically evaluating evidence, and comparing findings with similar experiments. However, they struggled to revise their initial models when presented with conflicting evidence by their peers. These findings offer insights into how students engage with epistemic practices and their perceptions of science's trustworthiness. 

In International Conference of the Learning Sciences 2024 Proceedings 

Historic challenges in the biological sciences, such as the spread of disease and climate change, have created an unprecedented need for humans to engage with scientific information to address societal problems. However, understanding these socioscientific issues (SSI) can be hard due to the difficulty of comprehending their complex structures and behaviors, the intentional propagation of misinformation, and an insufficient understanding of the epistemic practices that scientists use to develop relevant knowledge. Education researchers have highlighted additional problems in the way science is taught with a focus mainly on concepts rather than practices, competing curricular mandates, and professional development activities that do not provide usable knowledge. The research reported here follows more than a decade of work using agent-based computational models to support the comprehension and analysis of complex biological systems. Our recent work has aimed to build tools and strategies to support students in decision making about complex SSIs. In this paper, we discuss 7 design challenges and principles that underpin this recent focus. Specifically, we combine agent-based modeling with strategies to develop students’ epistemic performance in high school biology curricula. We then provide a detailed case study of how the 7 design principles were used to create a disease epidemic model and unit anchored in the biology topic of the nature of science. Our goal is to offer a comprehensive set of research-derived design principles that can bridge classroom experiences in biology to applications of SSIs. 

An important goal of science education is promoting scientific literacy—the competence to interact with science as laypeople to solve problems and make decisions in their personal and community lives. This is made more challenging in an age of increasing science denialism. In this article, we discuss how to design learning environments for science education that can help students attain scientific literacy. We argue that science curricula should encompass lessons with two distinguishable foci. One focus engages students in understanding the reliability of science. The second focus engages students as laypeople interacting with science in the public sphere. We discuss these two curricular foci, presenting examples from our own work on designing and implementing instruction with the first focus. 

In International Conference of the Learning Sciences 2022 Proceedings