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Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is the key renewable fibre crop worldwide, yet its yield and fibre quality show high variability due to genotype-specific traits and complex interactions among cultivars, management practices and environmental factors. Modern breeding practices may limit future yield gains due to a narrow founding gene pool. Precision breeding and biotechnological approaches offer potential solutions, contingent on accurate cultivar-specific data. Here we address this need by generating high-quality reference genomes for three modern cotton cultivars (UGA230, UA48 and CSX8308) and updating the TM-1 cotton genetic standard reference. Despite hypothesized genetic uniformity, considerable sequence and structural variation was observed among the four genomes, which overlap with ancient and ongoing genomic introgressions from Pima cotton, gene regulatory mechanisms and phenotypic trait divergence. Differentially expressed genes across fibre development correlate with fibre production, potentially contributing to the distinctive fibre quality traits observed in modern cotton cultivars. These genomes and comparative analyses provide a valuable foundation for future genetic endeavours to enhance global cotton yield and sustainability.

Applied pedagogy, and specifically service learning, bridges the university educational experience with hands-on training. Such pedagogies in STEM are nuanced in unique ways in comparison to more classroom-based STEM learning and applied teaching outside of STEM contexts. As STEM service learning may be especially vulnerable during system shocks, we advance work on such pedagogy by investigating how a certain type of pedagogy, specifically caring pedagogy, may be particularly useful during social disruption (i.e., COVID-19) in applied STEM learning. The main purpose of this study is to examine how pandemic-related disruptions impacted teaching and learning in a service-learning STEM program known as the Environment Corps. We thematically analyzed longitudinal data from multiple rounds of interviews with seven instructors, one-time interviews with thirteen undergraduates, and eight instructor meetings occurring from late 2019 to early 2021. Similar to findings in related work, teaching and learning obstacles from the pandemic were personal, interpersonal, and logistical. After instructors realized they needed to implement changes, some obstacles were ameliorated through caring pedagogy practices outside of in-person interaction. Yet, even as disruptions lessened, students and faculty still experienced impacts from the pandemic. We offer insight into how applied STEM courses can be adjusted with an eye toward caring pedagogy-informed practices to minimize negative effects from system shocks. This contributes to the literature on disaster and COVID-19-related challenges, caring pedagogy in virtual spaces in teaching circumstances, and environmental education.

An extensive faculty partnership at the University of Connecticut (UConn) that reaches across college and departmental lines is engaged in a project that seeks to enhance, expand, institutionalize, and study a new model for community engagement. The model, called the Environment Corps (E-Corps), combines the familiar elements of classroom instruction, service-learning, and extension outreach to create a method of engagement that aims to benefit students, faculty, surrounding communities, and the university community itself. This article describes the structure and history of E-Corps; details the institutional setting, faculty partnerships, and pedagogical strategies involved; and discusses early evidence of impacts and future prospects.

Our multiple case study addresses the lack of opportunities many people have developing positive identification with STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields by investigating STEM identity authoring in three intergenerational collaborative partnerships. Adult and teen partners participated in two-day workshops learning conservation science and geospatial technologies to design and implement community projects. Our research examined how the design and implementation of intergenerational projects provided opportunities to: (1) demonstrate competence in STEM knowledge and understandings, (2) participate in performances of STEM practices, and (3) be recognized for competence and performances in STEM fields. Qualitative methods were used throughout. Data consisted of field observations followed by separate semi-structured interviews with each partner. Artifacts such as presentation posters, online maps and websites, educational materials (e.g., pamphlets and booklets), email, and forum posts were used as secondary data sources. We found STEM identities were promoted in intergenerational collaborative partnerships when personal resources and conservation science competences and performances were positively recognized by meaningful others. Our findings inform how informal STEM education programs can foster positive identification with STEM fields that may lead to increased participation in STEM pursuits across the lifespan, and likely have similar implications for formal STEM learning as well.

Background: It is crucial to support students in better understanding water and sustainability issues because water plays a vital role in maintaining global ecosystems, including human life. A wide range of curricular and instructional supports like those embodied in model-based learning (MBL) are necessary for teachers to engage students in the core epistemic commitments of the Next-Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to inform theory about students' early attempts to engage in the complex kinds of sensemaking experiences inherent in the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the NGSS. Sample: Data for this study was collected from 74 10th grade students in a high school in the Northwest region of the New England state. Design and Methods: An explanatory sequential mixed-method research design was used to examine students' learning outcomes, and to better understand these outcomes in connection to their experiences engaging in modeling in the MBL curriculum unit. Results: The results indicated that students' model scores, the number of concepts in models, and the coherence and sophistication of models improved between their initial and final models. Additionally, the following patterns emerged related to ways in which students engaged in the practice of modeling: (1) students attempted to directly represent what they observed, (2) they struggled to pictorially express complex patterns or mechanisms, and (3) students experienced difficulties representing models from a diverse range of perspectives. Conclusion: The patterns identified across student models, as well as their reports of experiences related to the MBL unit implementation, provided insight into student experiences with models, while also providing meaningful implications for the refinement of the MBL curriculum unit investigated in this research specifically, while informing approaches MBL curricular units aimed at supporting NGSS implementation efforts more generally.

Despite decades of policy that strives to reduce nutrient and sediment export from agricultural fields, surface water quality in intensively managed agricultural landscapes remains highly degraded. Recent analyses show that current conservation efforts are not sufficient to reverse widespread water degradation in Midwestern agricultural systems. Intensifying row crop agriculture and increasing climate pressure require a more integrated approach to water quality management that addresses diverse sources of nutrients and sediment and off-field mitigation actions. We used multiobjective optimization analysis and integrated three biophysical models to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of alternative portfolios of watershed management practices at achieving nitrate and suspended sediment reduction goals in an agricultural basin of the Upper Midwestern United States. Integrating watershed-scale models enabled the inclusion of near-channel management alongside more typical field management and thus directly the comparison of cost-effectiveness across portfolios. The optimization analysis revealed that fluvial wetlands (i.e., wide, slow-flowing, vegetated water bodies within the riverine corridor) are the single-most cost-effective management action to reduce both nitrate and sediment loads and will be essential for meeting moderate to aggressive water quality targets. Although highly cost-effective, wetland construction was costly compared to other practices, and it was not selected in portfolios at low investment levels. Wetland performance was sensitive to placement, emphasizing the importance of watershed scale planning to realize potential benefits of wetland restorations. We conclude that extensive interagency cooperation and coordination at a watershed scale is required to achieve substantial, economically viable improvements in water quality under intensive row crop agricultural production.

Understanding factors that influence teacher use of professional development learning is critical if we are to maximise the educational and financial investment in teacher development. This study used a multi-case mixed methodology to investigate the factors that influence teacher adoption, adaption, and abandonment of teacher-directed learning. The theoretical framework of activity theory provided a useful way to investigate multiple factors that influence the appropriation of pedagogical practices from a professional development experience. This framework accounts for a multitude of elements in the context of teacher learning. In this study educational appropriation is understood through a continuum of how an educator acquires and implements both practical and conceptual aspects of learning within localised contexts. The variability associated with instructional changes made from professional learning drives this inquiry to search for better understandings of the appropriation of pedagogical practices. Purposeful sampling was used to identify two participants within a group of teachers engaged in professional development designed to enhance the use of technology within science classrooms. Data from this investigation identified eight factors that can positively influence principled appropriation professional learning. Findings support a purposeful adaptive approach where teachers develop ownership attributes allowing for contextual adaptation within conceptual boundaries.

Families create contexts for learning to enhance and support the interests of their children, while simultaneously teaching language, morals, and culture. This research examines intergenerational family teams engaged in a long-term conservation project in their community. Participants were interviewed during and after project completion with the central research purpose of exploring how the intersecting experiences of family members explain emerging family cultural learning pathways. Intergenerational family teams shared narratives which were then analyzed using the cultural learning pathways framework [Bell, P., Tzou, C., Bricker, L., & Baines, A. D. (2012). Learning in diversities of structures of social practice: Accounting for how, why and where people learn science. Human Development, 55(5-6), 269-284. doi:10.1159/000345315] that we subsequently used to create family cultural learning pathways for each participating family. Family interactions are powerful influences on the identity development of children, not only in their academic development, but also in their moral, ethical, and social development.

Background: In the context of recent research in science education and continued struggles to understand how best to support science teachers, epistemological frames, made up of sets of epistemological resources teachers activate, have emerged as an important focus of research. However, at the time of this writing no research was available to identify the epistemological frames activated by preservice science teachers (PSTs). Methods: In this research, using qualitative research methods, we studied and applied a coding scheme to identify 10 PSTs' epistemological framing in their early teaching as part of a science teaching methods course. Three observations and three interviews of each PST served as primary data sources. Findings: We found three main epistemological frames activated. Further, we identified the contexts in which these frames were activated, where contexts can be understood as situations characterized by different possible dimensions within which resources are activated. We also described dynamics noted by PSTs related to the activation of specific epistemological resources and identified frames. Contribution: This research is a relatively new application of the epistemological framing framework that has potential to help science teacher educators better understand and support PST learning and practice.

High Leverage Practices (HLPs), as a core set of teaching practices, represent important instructional priorities and provide instructional guidance for students' engagement in practice-based instruction. The goals of this research were to: (1) understand how an epistemic community (the people designing and leading courses and programs) viewed the HLP creation process; (2) understand the processes through which the epistemic community actually engaged in the refinement of the HLPS; and (3) identify and present the HLPs created. Data collected across the 2019-2020 academic year included interviews with seven instructors and seven students and four observations of the integration team meetings. First, thematic analysis revealed that the epistemic community members considered the process of creating and refining HLPs central to improving the quality of their instruction. Second, the processes through which the community engaged in HLP refinement included connecting experience and feedback with educational research, identifying the purpose of instructional strategies, sharing practices for instruction, and creating a model for course expansion. Third, the HLPs produced included: (1) eliciting students' initial ideas; (2) informing approaches to problems; and (3) developing informed solutions to address community environmental challenges. This work informs in the literature, especially in applied STEM education, about HLP creation in the context of an epistemic community.

Comprehensive reviews of empirical research on teacher leadership have revealed that this body of research remains grounded in what might be described as, at best, a weak theoretical base. This article seeks to address this by proposing a theoretical framework based on social learning theory, communities of practice, and identity and iterated through the examination of a small group of teacher leaders. In the end, we believe our proposed theoretical model serves as an important first step that will allow the field to move away from a list of things that teacher leaders 'do' to context-specific work that has meaning due to communities and their pursuits, and provides a means by which we could observe the development of teacher leader identity over time.

Engineering has led the way in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, including developing masks that reduce transmission, digital tools that allow contact tracing, and vaccines that show promise to put an end to the pandemic and allow a more normal way of life. Society is not only "following the science," but is also applying principles of engineering to human problems to create timely and needed solutions. Teaching principles of engineering in classrooms should involve more than simply working through preconceived design challenges. It should be a way to position students with agency--that is, to offer them a chance to see themselves as capable of solving problems in their homes and communities. In this article, the authors describe a unit that was implemented in second grade to demonstrate how the engineering design process (EDP) afforded agency to one teacher's elementary students (this unit was adapted for use with third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students as well). The learning experiences allowed students to solve societally relevant problems, especially those they experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. When students selected problems encountered during the pandemic, the teacher did not ask them to find a new, easier, or less contentious problem; instead, she took the opportunity to empower her students to respond to the pandemic in their own ways.

Purpose: Drawing upon research into standards reform, and theorizing of professional and political capital, this article seeks to understand the development of and advocacy for the Next Generation Science Standards in the United States. As well as revealing how professional capital exists in three dimensions--human, social, and decisional--the research argues professional capital also needs to be understood as inherently political. Research Methods/Approach: The research draws upon interviews and discussions with key educators who developed and supported the Next Generation Science Standards at state and national levels. Findings: The article reveals political capital as vital for promoting educational standards reform, managing perceptions of reform, and making pragmatic decisions to ground reform in context. Political capital is a complex, contingent capacity vital to the development and acceptance of science education reform. Implications: Findings have implications for understanding power dynamics that characterize reform in schooling systems and professional contexts more broadly.

Recently, there has been more focus on issues related to the professional development of teacher leaders (TLs), but there is still much to learn. Situated within a larger study, the purpose of this research was to understand the ways in which individuals participated in teacher leadership and how participation and identities shaped and were shaped by communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Specifically, this study focuses on two TLs and the manifestation of what we are describing as 'thick' and 'thin' TL identities. Based on our findings, we see thick identity--that is, a TL identity that is deeply rooted in who the person is--as possibly more desirable than a thin TL identity, or a TL identity in which one might see themselves occasionally as a TL when they are called on to lead. This has implications for the theorizing of and professional development for teacher leadership.

This design-based research project reports on three multilevel networks that were focused on implementing the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Given the recent attention to understanding infrastructure to craft coherence in NGSS implementation, this research investigated how these networks iteratively re-designed infrastructure as they engaged in implementing the NGSS. This focus is particularly important in the current context of NGSS implementation since needed infrastructure did not accompany the dissemination of the standards. The three networks were the following: mentor teachers, district specialists, and interim assessment specialists. Qualitative cases based on recordings of network working sessions, interviews with members, and artifacts of their work were generated for each network and then compared and contrasted. Findings show the work on infrastructure re-design across the networks not only involved identifying useful NGSS-designed resources and frameworks, but also translating these into meaningful supports or scaffolds that could ultimately lead to productive forms of engagement for either supporting teacher professional learning or student learning. Also, collegial workspaces were beneficial for institutionalizing networks' foci by creating spaces for all actors to share their experiences, challenges, and needs. This meant focusing on curriculum and instructional routines for mentor teachers, focusing on NGSS instructional principles for district leaders, and focusing on the development of an interim assessment practice brief for interim assessment leaders--foci identified as central to and immediately applicable in the day-to-day work of the respective network members.

In the United States and internationally, there has been an increased emphasis on the practice turn or a focus on engaging students in more authentic representations of how science is practiced. In this article, we describe the development of a student questionnaire to investigate the extent to which students report being engaged in learning experiences similar to those explicated through the practice turn. We developed a questionnaire that consisted of 35 questions that were separated into four constructs. The questionnaire was determined to be internally consistent, with a high reliability estimate. Confirmatory factor analysis showed item clustering consistent with the research-derived constructs indicative of a practice turn focus in science classrooms. Furthermore, early evidence from this pilot study is provided to reveal the ability of the questionnaire to detect student experiences that are differentiated at the teacher-level. Based on the analyses completed, the questionnaire appears to be a needed and useful measure of student-reported learning experiences that can provide an indication of students' opportunity to learn in ways aligned to the most recent reforms in science education.

As a result of the pet trade, Africa’s Nile monitor (Varanus niloticus) is now established in North America (Florida). This generalist carnivore is a potential threat to native wildlife, requiring proactive measures to effectively prevent further spread into novel regions. To determine regions at risk, we create and compare alternative ensemble species distribution models (SDMs) using a model selection approach (with 10 possible modeling algorithms grouped according to assumptions). The ensemble SDMs used presence and environmental data from both native (Africa) and nonnative (Florida) locations. The most predictive consensus SDMs for native and native + nonnative data sets (TSS = 0.87; Sensitivity = 93%; Specificity = 94%) were based on the boosted regression tree (BRT), classification tree analysis (CTA), and random forest (RF) modeling algorithms with all environmental predictor variables used. The global Nile monitor SDMs predict strong habitat suitability in tropical and subtropical regions in the Americas, the Caribbean, Madagascar, Southeast Asia, and Australia. Florida Nile monitor populations are less likely to spread into the Neotropics than if pets now in the Southwest USA are released intentionally or accidentally. Management options to avoid this spread into vulnerable regions are to actively prohibit/regulate Nile monitors as pets, enforce those restrictions, and promote exotic pet amnesty programs. The model selection approach for ensemble SDMs used here may help improve future SDM research

This research aimed to better understand the interaction between positioning and STEM identity authoring as intergenerational teams collaborated to complete community conservation projects, following a two-day conservation and geospatial technology workshop. Scientists and science educators supported these learners as they developed the focus, resources, timeline, and methods used to accomplish their negotiated pursuits at the two-day workshop and throughout their subsequent community project as a form of public engagement. To better understand the ways in which intergenerational teams located or positioned themselves and their partners, the ways in which teens and adults engaged in STEM identity authoring, and the interplay between positioning and STEM identity authoring a two-case study was completed. In this, field observations, interviews, and project artifacts were collected as the primary data sources. Findings emerging from the qualitative analysis of the data collected revealed how positioning and STEM identity authoring were found to be entangled and concurrently reinforcing even at the outset of the intergenerational teams' work. Additionally, positioning and STEM identity authoring in intergenerational teams were influenced by societal and cultural norms. These findings as well as recommendations emerging from the findings are further elaborated with the aim of supporting future intergenerational work of teens and adults in informal STEM learning contexts.

Set in the context of modeling-based learning (MBL), this research investigated the potential of epistemic frames as a theoretical and analytical framework for understanding teaching and learning practices used in classroom communities of practice. Epistemic frames are conceptualized as an orienting lens for a classroom community of practice that emerges out of how they organize knowledge structures and practices to support their ways of knowing. This research examined the types and organization of practices in the classroom where a MBL unit was implemented to understand what sense-making practices were used, and how these practices supported the classroom community's negotiation of understanding. Through this analysis, a sense of the viability of epistemic frames as a productive theoretical and analytical lens was revealed in terms of providing a better understanding of the nuances and context dependencies of what students and teachers do to make sense of real-world scientific phenomena in classrooms.

Drawing upon interviews with key actors involved in the development of and support for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in the United States, this article shows how a potentially controversial reform came to be actively supported by senior educators. We utilize Kingdon's (2003, "Agendas, alternatives, and public policies," 2nd ed.) concept of policy entrepreneurs to highlight how these educators navigated a complex and contested policy and political environment. We reveal the cogency of Kingdon's argument that specific agendas are dependent upon the "coupling" of particular problems with relevant policies and political support. However, at particular moments in time, the findings also show how those engaged in the NGSS found it beneficial to "uncouple" federal accountability agendas that would have limited support for the NGSS.

Our research centered on developing the Conservation Science and Technology Identity (CSTI) instruments as an empirical way to measure STEM identities and the intersection of identity constructs such as competence, performance, recognition, and ways of seeing and being. The surveys were used in a large funded multi-year project for teens and adults learning geospatial technologies and conservation science to use in intergenerational community conservation projects. We investigated whether an informal STEM learning program was developing new STEM identities or advancing well-developed identities. The instruments' content validity was determined through a vetting process from national STEM identity research experts. Reliability was estimated with Cronbach coefficient alpha. Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests were used to determine participants' STEM identities and the workshop's effect on specific identity constructs. We found teens and adults had historically similar STEM identities, with stronger conservation science than technology. Both science and technology competences, as well as technology ways of seeing and being, significantly increased, suggesting CSTI can be a valuable instrument in empirically assessing STEM identities.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a historic global event that has extended to all parts of society and shaken the core of what we know and how we live. During this pandemic, the work of STEM professionals has taken center stage. Through our close observations of how the events of the pandemic have been unfolding across the globe, we propose an instructional framework that emerged out of the real-time responses of STEM professionals to explain the pandemic and find solutions. This framework centers on data science, computer science, and multidisciplinary convergence as tools for engaging K-12 students in complex societal problems like the pandemic. In this theoretical position statement, we propose our framework that is grounded in three areas: (a) data science and computer science, (b) multidisciplinary convergence, and (c) orientation and support for science teachers specifically and STEM teachers broadly to prepare them for fundamentally different roles. Using data and computer models, students find phenomena and problems compelling, appreciate the power and potential of STEM subjects, and explain phenomena and design solutions to real-world problems. Then, through multidisciplinary convergence, individuals and societies integrate STEM disciplinary knowledge and practices to make informed decisions and take responsible actions. As STEM teachers engage students in explaining phenomena and solving complex societal problems with data science and computer science through the convergence of multiple STEM subjects, teachers take on roles that are fundamentally different from the roles they have traditionally played.

Grounded on the tenets of informal learning this research took place in a STEM-focused summer youth program at a state science center. We used a research practice partnership to iteratively improve the triggering and development of minoritized learners' STEM identification and interests. Informed by our previous qualitative research that revealed the importance of learner's communication competence as a key focus and driver to gaining confidence, understanding, and supporting their STEM identification, the research reported here drew on a survey strategy to examine the extent to which the summer youth program supported participants' self-perceived communication competence. The findings from the survey revealed that participants' mean overall communication competence level, as well as their communication competence in four different contexts and with three different types of individuals showed significant increase. The findings suggest that providing engaging and meaningful STEM experiences to minoritized underserved learners in a summer program have positive consequences. Such experiences tend to occur more in informal settings and provide learners opportunities to develop STEM-informed agency.

This research explores how explaining an anchoring phenomena and engaging students in investigations, as central designs of a model-based inquiry (MBI) unit, afforded or constrained the representation of scientific activity in the science classroom. This research is considered timely as recent standards documents and scholars in the field have highlighted the significance of identifying what features of scientific activity are important and how these can be represented for students in classrooms. Through taking advantage of qualitative research methods to closely examine the enactment of an MBI unit, both affordances and constraints were identified for each design. More specifically, explaining an anchoring phenomenon provided a context for more authentically framing the work of students, while investigations afforded students insight into the role these play in the refinement of models. Further, the teacher's attempts to support student reasoning and, at times, reasoning for students when they were found struggling were the most salient constraints identified connected to explaining an anchoring phenomenon and engaging students in investigations.

Cultivating students' scientific knowledge and developing their capability in scientific inquiry depends on a teacher's ability to use existing resources to design rich learning opportunities. Designing such experiences is not easy, and is particularly challenging for new teachers who have little experience making decisions about the best way to develop specific knowledge and practices. In addition, a limited amount of guidance to support teachers in the practical aspects of combining the three dimensions currently exists in K-12 science instruction. More resources and preparation are needed to support teachers in using the three dimensions effectively in teaching science. A special issue of The Science Teacher in September 2013 focused on the theme "Developing and Using Models," and other supportive guides have also been released. However, engaging students in developing and using models in science classrooms is still difficult given how modeling has only recently been emphasized in science classrooms as an important practice for knowledge development. Given this, this article provides four questions that can be used to guide the use of models in teaching science: (1) What is the purpose of a model; (2) How can a model be developed; (3) How can models be used in teaching science; and (4) What should be considered when teaching with models? Each of these is considered along with relevant examples from high school students' modeling activities.

Declining interest and low persistence is well documented among undergraduate students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math in the United States. For geoscience, field trips are important attractors to students, however with high enrollment courses and increasing costs they are becoming rare. We propose in this concept paper that the contextualized learning and engagement of field trips can be simulated by virtual field trips for smart mobile devices. Our focus is on utilizing the geo-referencing capabilities of smart devices within spatially scaled educational games. This technology is increasingly ubiquitous amongst undergraduate students, and consequently is an untapped pedagogical resource. The objective of our games is to give students real-world experience in selected fundamental principles of geology. Set in Grand Canyon, each module features images of exceptional geologic sites illustrating these principles. Students navigate "downstream" using their devices' GPS and complete at least one interactive activity per location to progress to the next point. Student response to a pilot game suggests that this indeed is a viable method for making geoscience instruction engaging and enjoyable, and hopefully will result in greater motivation to pursue the geosciences.

This article addresses two gaps in the literature related to science department chairs: the axiological relationship between the chair and science, the subject, and the perceptions of the chair with respect to teaching and learning within their departments. In this work, axiology is used to understand how the chair's values toward the subject influenced his own perceived capacity to lead learning within his department in a reformed discourse. A narrative inquiry methodology was used to consider the chair's experiences in the development of his identify over his life span in the form of two stories: (1) the relationship between the chair and science, the subject, and (2) the perceptions of the chair with regards to teacher learning within the department. The findings revealed that the work and career of the chair in this study were authored by strong elements of personal continuity and points of stability around the valuing of science, the subject, even as this valuing evolved from being more focused on epistemic values early in his career, to being more concerned with universal values connected to his legacy and his department later in his career.

This research investigates the assumptions underlying the work of a research-practice partnership (RPP) made up of university science teacher educators and mentoring science teachers. With increased attention to what have been described as significant shifts proposed in science teaching and learning connected to recent standards documents in the United States, increased attention and possibilities exist for collaborative work with in-service mentoring teachers to not only focus on professional learning connected to these standards documents but to do so in ways that can increase the coherence between science teacher education programs and the local schools that preservice science teachers find themselves navigating as they learn to teach. Drawing on the design-based research paradigm connected to conjecture mapping, this current research articulated and tested, using qualitative methods, the design conjectures underlying mentor teachers' experience within professional learning as part of the RPP. In the end, design conjectures that supported teachers to take on "learner hat" experiences in early stages of the RPP followed by engagement in curriculum codesign and implementation supported mentor teachers in beginning to reconceptualize visions of their teaching and learning while also appropriating and tuning high-leverage tools to support a focus on student ideas in science classrooms. Finally, issues related to the complexity of teacher education programs were identified for needed increased attention into the future.

Service learning has many documented benefits for students. The benefits to the communities are less clear. This study examines the unfolding of an environmental service-learning partnership from the perspective of one participating community liaison. We examine a new model of university-community engagement, where undergraduate students are paired with a local community to address environmental issues in courses that focus on adaptation and mitigation. We use actor-network theory (ANT) to explore the experiences of one community liaison, focusing specifically on factors that helped build and maintain the partnership and produced benefits for the community. Findings highlight the community liaison's agency in negotiating partnership goals and determining the definition and treatment of environmental concerns. We conclude by identifying the insights an ANT perspective holds for service-learning and community-engagement research and practice. Plain Language Summary: Service Learning as Community Partnership Service learning has many benefits to students, but the impact on the community is less clear. This study explores a university-community environmental service-learning partnership from the community's perspective. Undergraduates take courses in environmental issues and are paired with local communities to help address these issues. We focused on one partnership that produced benefits for the community and found that nonhuman entities helped this partnership develop. Additionally, agency and representation play an important role in how the community and environment are defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of more recent events connected to the ongoing and lasting legacy of systemic racism in our society and the sparsity of research focused on both disciplinary teacher leadership (TL) and centering social justice and equity in teacher leadership literature reviews, this research investigated the ways in which science teacher leadership (STL) emerged in the context of a science department engaged in a year‐long professional learning experience aimed at teaching science for social justice. Drawing on a community of practice teacher leadership identity model as a theoretical framework and qualitative research methods, we sought to characterize STL that centered social justice. Written teacher reflections, semi‐structured interviews, and science lessons were collected from the six female science teachers and a female school administrator. The research revealed how STL supportive of teaching science for social justice was grounded in, among other characterizations of teacher leadership, competences like content and pedagogical knowledge, performances like inclusiveness and lesson design, and support from the structure of the year‐long professional learning, and engagement in a community of practice. This research provides insights into the complex characterization and emergence of STL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As western society becomes increasingly reliant on scientific information to make decisions, citizens must be equipped to understand how scientific arguments are constructed. In order to do this, pre-service teachers must be prepared to foster students' abilities and understandings of scientific argumentation in the classroom. This study investigated how instruction in the Toulmin Argumentation Protocol (TAP) impacted pre-service science teachers' ability to write sound and logical scientific arguments. The study occurred in the context of a pre-service methods class on the socio-scientific realm of secondary science education at a university in the USA. Through the use of quantitative methods, investigation findings indicate that there was a positive impact on pre-service science teachers' ability to construct sound scientific arguments through instruction in the TAP within the one semester course where this research took place. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.)

This study examined the similarities and differences among 171 Grade 7-12 science teachers from three different countries (54 U.S, 63 Bolivian, and 54 Turkish) with respect to their attitudes toward environmental education (EE) and instructional practices. The instrument employed explored how teachers' knowledge, instructional practices, decision-making process, and cultural features influenced their EE attitudes and praxis. The instrument, which was translated into Spanish and Turkish and then back into English, contained a personal data form that included demographic questions and a three-part questionnaire. Based on the analysis completed, significant differences were found between these three countries with respect to 1) teacher's knowledge about global environmental issues, 2) teachers rationales for including environmental education in their science classroom instruction, and 3) while there were no significant differences in the importance of religion in the teachers lives, there were significant differences in the extent to which teachers reported religion influencing instructional decisions. In addition, there were differences regarding the resources that teachers reported drawing on as they included EE in their classrooms. There were no significant differences found when comparing the three countries with respect to extent to which each country reported including technological and/or environmental problems in science classroom instruction. Finally, generally there was agreement regarding teachers' goals and objectives in science classrooms with respect to EE and the most important global environmental problems/threats. (Contains 8 tables and 3 figures.)

Science students should use mathematical and computational thinking to explain phenomena, but few examples of teachers engaging students in this important scientific practice have been found. This article describes a strategy for enhancing a lesson in which students use a mechanistic model to explain friction by adding mathematical and computational thinking. This helps students express their ideas more precisely with models that have predictive power. The approaches described in this article could be a framework to engage students in mathematical and computational thinking in other topics in physics (e.g., studying collisions related to drop height and resultant bounce height for a ball) and in other disciplines (e.g., the study of population ecology in the life sciences). Adding mathematical and computational thinking is appropriate and important for all students as they go about making sense of the world in science class.