Book Summary: Its not enough for teachers to read through the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and correlate their content to the established curriculum. Teachers must prepare to make the vision of the NGSS come alive in their classrooms. Editor Jack Rhoton maintains that the preparation will be most effective if it begins in undergraduate coursework and is sustained by ongoing professional development designed to bring about real change. The goal of Preparing Teachers for Three-Dimensional Instruction is to contribute to that preparation and that change. It showcases the many shifts that higher education science faculty, teacher education faculty, and others are already making to bring the standards to life.Preparing Teachers was written specifically for preservice science teachers, but science education faculty and practicing K 12 teachers can also benefit from it. The authors of the 18 chapters are outstanding classroom practitioners and science educators at all levels. Section I provides examples of teaching models that fulfill the intent of the NGSS. Section II describes approaches to professional development that can improve practice. Sections III and IV consider what can be done in both teacher preparation courses and undergraduate science courses for preservice science teachers. Section V explores ways to enlist the business community and other partners in support of the changes the standards can bring about. Rhoton calls the book a motivating resource for the science education community. Use it to achieve the ultimate goal of the NGSS: to move science education away from the formulaic classroom methods many students are now experiencing and instead support them in becoming true practitioners of science.

We will share examples of hands-on investigations combining the 5Es and the CER Framework with supporting literacy activities to help upper elementary students demonstrate learning.

The purpose of this study was to characterize ways in which teaching practice in classroom undergoing first semester implementation of an argument-based inquiry approach changes in whole-class discussion. Being that argument is explicitly called for in the Next Generation Science Standards and is currently a rare practice in teaching, many teachers will have to transform their teaching practice for inclusion of this feature. Most studies on Argument-Based Inquiry (ABI) agree that development of argument does not come easily and is only acquired through practice. Few studies have examined the ways in which teaching practice changes in relation to the big idea or disciplinary core idea (NGSS), the development of dialogue, and/or the development of argument during first semester implementation of an argument-based inquiry approach. To explore these areas, this study posed three primary research questions: (1) How does a teacher in his first semester of Science Writing Heuristic professional development make use of the "big idea"?, (1a) Is the indicated big idea consistent with NGSS core concepts?, (2) How did the dialogue in whole-class discussion change during the first semester of argument-based inquiry professional development?, (3) How did the argument in whole-class discussion change during the first semester of argument-based inquiry professional development? This semester-long study that took place in a middle school in a rural Midwestern city was grounded in interactive constructivism, and utilized a qualitative design to identify the ways in which the teacher utilized big ideas and how dialogue and argumentative dialogue developed over time. The purposefully selected teacher in this study provided a unique situation where he was in his first semester of professional development using the Science Writing Heuristic Approach to argument-based inquiry with 19 students who had two prior years' experience in ABI. Multiple sources of data were collected, including classroom video with transcripts, teacher interview, researcher field notes, student journals, teacher lesson plans from previous years, and a student questionnaire. Data analysis used a basic qualitative approach. The results showed (1) only the first time period had a true big idea, while the other two units contained topics, (2) each semester contained a similar use for the given big idea, though its role in the class was reduced after the opening activity, (3) the types of teacher questions shifted toward students explaining their comprehension of ideas and more students were involved in discussing each idea and for more turns of talk than in earlier time periods, (4) understanding science term definitions became more prominent later in the semester, with more stating science terms occurring earlier in the semester, (5) no significant changes were seen to the use of argument or claims and evidence throughout the study. The findings have informed theory and practice about science argumentation, the practice of whole-class dialogue, and the understanding of practice along four aspects: (1) apparent lack of understanding about big ideas and how to utilize them as the central organizing feature of a unit, (2) independent development of dialogue and argument, (3) apparent lack of understanding about the structure of argument and use of basic terminology with argument and big ideas, (4) challenges of ABI implementation. This study provides insight into the importance of prolonged and persistent professional development with ABI in teaching practice.

In 2013, a new set of science standards was introduced for K-12 science education, called the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which focused on three dimensions of science learning that work together: disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices. These standards are novel in their emphasis on students needing more than only content knowledge to learn science and engineering. The NGSS science and engineering practices (SEPs) stress the importance of students engaging in the authentic practices of scientists and engineers to help them think like a scientist, practice science themselves, and overcome the misconception that science is a collection of isolated facts (NRC, 2012a). These SEPs include: asking questions and defining problems, developing and using models, planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, using mathematics and computational thinking, constructing explanations and designing solutions, engaging in argument from evidence, and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. We performed a qualitative study to determine the conceptions of undergraduate students, the majority of whom were enrolled in STEM majors, about the SEPs. With a theoretical framework of phenomenography guiding our study's design, we conducted deep, open-ended interviews with 59 undergraduate students. The analysis consisted of transcribing interviews, coding transcriptions, writing descriptions of the codes to identify a limited number of distinct categories that describe how students viewed individual SEPs, and analyzing relationships among these categories to create outcome spaces for the ways students viewed the SEPs. In the current dissertation, we present the students' specific conceptions of each of the SEPs. Although the students had a better understanding of some of the SEPs than others (e.g., they understood planning and carrying out investigations and using mathematics and computational thinking best), we found that undergraduates did not have a high level of understanding of any SEP. This is similar to conceptions of undergraduates in the literature, which mostly consisted of preservice teachers. The undergraduates in this study conflated many of the SEPs, misinterpreted SEPs based on the everyday meaning of terms in the practices (i.e., they discussed an everyday meaning of words like "questions" instead of focusing on the unique meaning of "questions" in a scientific context), and perceived that the structured learning activities in which they engage in their current coursework limit their abilities to engage in the SEPs. These results suggest that STEM students need more opportunities to authentically engage in the SEPs in open-ended environments, coupled with explicit instruction that emphasizes the difference between everyday usages of words in the SEPs and their scientific meanings.

As zoos and aquariums have become increasingly focused on conservation education, their menageries of unique and diverse learning opportunities have been underutilized. Through a new postsecondary-level animal behavior laboratory experience at an aquarium (“ZooU”), this study demonstrates that active learning pedagogy aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) could facilitate expansion of education at zoos and aquariums beyond their conservation education niche. Generally, students indicated that ZooU provided new opportunities for them to explore their own interests, demonstrate their learning, and augment their previous laboratory and aquarium experiences. Following both self- and researcher assessments of the students’ work, integrated analyses revealed that students who engaged in more active learning activities at the aquarium demonstrated a greater increase in skills aligned with the NGSS. Additionally, a novel intra-individual analysis was utilized to embrace the variation between learners that typically confounds the results of education studies with repeated measures design. Common challenges for education at zoos and aquariums are discussed through the context of ZooU as a foundation for future investigations. A practical NGSS-aligned guide to field trips at zoos and aquariums—written specifically for science teachers—is also included to support broader utilization of zoos and aquariums as educational resources.

This presentation will illustrate the ways that the teacher practices within the Cycle of Inquiry system (COI) align with the practices of scientists recommended by the National Research Council and guide emergent inquiry with children that aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The COI and NGSS are organized around constructivist principles for teaching, learning, and research.

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The past two decades of research on how students develop their science understandings as they make sense of phenomena that occur in the natural world has culminated in a movement to redefine science educational standards. The so-called Next Generation Science Standards (or NGSS) codify this new definition into a set of distinct performance expectations, which outline how students might reveal to what extent they have sufficient understanding of disciplinary core ideas (DCIs), science practices (SEPs), and crosscutting concepts (CCCs). The latter of these three dimensions is unique both in being the most recent to the field and in being the least supported by prior science education research. More crucially, as a policy document, the NGSS alone does not provide the supports teachers need to bring reforms to their classrooms, particularly not summative assessments. This dissertation addresses both of these gaps using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. First, I analyze differential categorization of problems that require respondents to engage with their CCC understandings via confirmatory factor analysis inference. Second, I use a set of Rasch models to measure preliminary learning progressions for CCCs evident in student activity within a computer-assisted assessment experience. Third, I analyze student artifacts, think-aloud interviews, and post-task reflective interviews via activity theory to adapt the progression into a task model in which students explain and predict aspects of Earth systems. The culmination of these three endeavors not only sets forth a methodology for researching CCCs in a way that is more integrative to the other dimensions of the NGSS, but also provides a framework for developing assessments that are aligned to the goals of these new standards.

We will combine hands-on science investigations with supporting literacy activities to help students conduct original research on animal behaviors and communicate their findings.

We will combine hands-on science investigations with supporting literacy activities to help students build conceptual models of photosynthesis.