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The authors start this chapter with a reconceptualization of science literacy and proceed to discuss why science literacy matters and why discourse in various forms matters to science literacy. Then, drawing on their recent research study on science literacy integration, the authors center on the teacher-student interactive discourses revolving around science concepts and literacy skills. They particularly examined some of the seemingly off-topic classroom dialogues. Doing so aims to explore how the potential opportunities of science literacy integration can be discursively co-constructed by the teacher and the students in naturally occurring classroom activities. Further, doing so aims to show science literacy integration can become more enjoyable to students. Meanwhile, the authors advocate that both science and literacy teachers should see themselves as teachers of language as well as examine and think how their classroom discourse can be orchestrated for the purposes of integrating science and literacy.

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.

This study investigated how student teachers used their mathematical knowledge for teaching and pedagogical knowledge to design and modify mathematical tasks. It also examined the relationship between teacher knowledge and the cognitive demands of a task. The study relied heavily on the framework in Hill, Ball, and Shilling (2008), which describes the different domains of knowledge in mathematical knowledge for teaching, and the framework on the cognitive demands of mathematical tasks in Stein, Smith, Henningsen, and Silver (2000). Results of the study indicated that the student teachers used their common content knowledge when they lacked sufficient knowledge in other domains, especially specialized content knowledge, to perform a particular job of teaching. There was often a decrease in the cognitive demands of a task when it was modified by the student teachers. These drops were often associated with a lack of specialized content knowledge.

Mathematics students often define themselves by their grades, test scores, how they compare to other people, how comfortable they feel in mathematics class, and so on. These experiences are all part of a student's mathematical life story. Students assume positions with particular rights and duties for themselves and for the actors in the stories they tell. Those positions reflect certain types and levels of status. Those types and levels of status have been shown to either inhibit or open a student's access to learning mathematics. Thus, a student's status in mathematics education is an issue of equity. Mathematics educators and mathematics education researchers alike have argued that equity is a critical issue to their field. This serious issue has motivated me to study status and associated positions from a student's perspective. Thus, I have analyzed students' mathematical life stories of two high school students for positions with concomitant rights and duties and associated these with types of status. Positions, which are situated in storylines (or larger narratives about interactions), have been identified which add to the field's definitions and understanding of status. Both student participants focused on different types of status in sharing their experiences, one focusing on academic status and the other focusing on peer status. Therefore, the positions for each student illuminate the relationship between positions and types of status. Contributions to the research which reflect this relationship are discussed as well as what teachers can learn from these stories to shape access to mathematics learning and to students' mathematical socialization.

The purpose of this study was to examine the patterns of dialogue that were established and emerged in one experienced fifth-grade science teacher's classroom that used the argument-based inquiry (ABI) and the ways in which these patterns of dialogue and consensus-making were used toward the establishment of a grasp of science practice. Most current studies on ABI agree that it does not come naturally and is only acquired through practice. Additionally, the quality of dialogue is also understood to be an important link in support of student learning. Few studies have examined the ways in which a teacher develops whole-class dialogue over time and the ways in which patterns of dialogue shift over time. The research questions that guided this study were: (1) What were the initial whole-class dialogue patterns established by a fifth-grade science teacher who engaged in ABI? (2) How did the science teacher help to refine whole-class dialogue to support the agreeability of ideas constructed over time? This eighteen week study that took place in a small city of less than 15,000 in Midwestern United States was grounded in interactive constructivism, and utilized a qualitative design method to identify the ways in which an experienced fifth-grade science teacher developed whole-class dialogue and used consensus-making activities to develop the practice of ABI with his students. The teacher in this study used the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach to ABI with twenty-one students who had no previous experience engaging in ABI. This teacher with 10 of years teaching experience was purposefully selected because he was proficient and experienced in practicing ABI. Multiple sources of data were collected, including classroom video with transcriptions, semi-structured interviews, after lesson conversations, and researcher's field notes. Data analysis used a basic qualitative approach. The results showed (1) that the teacher principally engaged in three forms of whole-class dialogue with students; talking to, talking with, and thinking through ideas with students. As time went on, the teacher's interactions in whole-class dialogue became increasingly focused on thinking through ideas with students, while at the same time students also dialogued more as each unit progressed. (2) This teacher persistently engaged with students in consensus-making activities during whole-class dialogue.These efforts toward consensus-making over time became part of the students' own as each unit progressed. (3) The classroom did not engage in critique and construction of knowledge necessarily like the community of science but rather used agreeing and disagreeing and explaining why through purposeful dialogic interactions to construct a grasp of science classroom practice. The findings have informed theory and practice about science argumentation, the practice of whole-class dialogue, and grasp of science practice along four aspects: (1) patterns of dialogue within a unit of instruction and across units of instruction, (2) the teacher's ability to follow and develop students' ideas, (3) the role of early and persistent opportunities to engage novice students in consensus-making, and (4) the meaning of grasp of science practice in classroom. This study provides insight into the importance of prolonged and persistent engagement with ABI in classroom practice.

School reform programs focus on making educational changes; however, research on interventions past the funded implementation phase to determine what was sustained is rarely done (Beery, Senter, Cheadle, Greenwald, Pearson, et al., 2005). This study adds to the research on sustainability by determining what instructional practices, if any, of the Teaching SMART[reg] professional development program that was implemented from 2005-2008 in elementary schools with teachers in grades third through eighth were continued, discontinued, or adapted five years post-implementation (in 2013). Specifically, this study sought to answer the following questions: What do teachers who participated in Teaching SMART[reg] and district administrators share about the sustainability of Teaching SMART[reg] practices in 2013? What teaching strategies do teachers who participated in the program (2005-2008) use in their science classrooms five years post-implementation (2013)? What perceptions about the roles of females in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) do teachers who participated in the program (2005-2008) have five years later (2013)? And, What classroom management techniques do the teachers who participated in the program (2005-2008) use five years post implementation (2013)? A mixed method approach was used to answer these questions. Quantitative teacher survey data from 23 teachers who participated in 2008 and 2013 were analyzed in SAS v. 9.3. Descriptive statistics were reported and paired t-tests were conducted to determine mean differences by survey factors identified from an exploratory factor analysis, principal axis factoring, and parallel analysis conducted with teacher survey baseline data (2005). Individual teacher change scores (2008 and 2013) for identified factors were computed using the Reliable Change Index statistic. Qualitative data consisted of interviews with two district administrators and three teachers who responded to the survey in both years (2008 and 2013). Additionally, a classroom observation was conducted with one of the interviewed teachers in 2013. Qualitative analyses were conducted following the constant comparative method and were facilitated by ATLAS.ti v. 6.2, a qualitative analysis software program. Qualitative findings identified themes at the district level that influenced teachers' use of Teaching SMART[reg] strategies. All the themes were classified as obstacles to sustainability: economic downturn, turnover of teachers and lack of hiring, new reform policies, such as Race to the Top, Student Success Act, Common Core State Standards, and mandated blocks of time for specific content. Results from the survey data showed no statistically significant difference through time in perceived instructional practices except for a perceived decrease in the use of hands-on instructional activities from 2008 to 2013. Analyses conducted at the individual teacher level found change scores were statistically significant for a few teachers, but overall, teachers reported similarly on the teacher survey at both time points. This sustainability study revealed the lack of facilitating factors to support the continuation of reform practices; however, teachers identified strategies to continue to implement some of the reform practices through time in spite of a number of system-wide obstacles. This sustainability study adds to the literature by documenting obstacles to sustainability in this specific context, which overlap with what is known in the literature. Additionally, the strategies teachers identified to overcome some of the obstacles to implement reform practices and the recommendations by district level administrators add to the literature on how stakeholders may support sustainability of reform through time.

Kindergarten - Grade 12 (K-12) students identified as gifted in mathematics in the United States are not being appropriately challenged. Teachers are the most important school-related factor that contributes to student success; however, researchers have not explored the experiences of teachers who work with gifted students in inclusive mathematics classrooms. The purpose of this qualitative, transcendental phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of K-12 teachers who provide instruction for gifted students in inclusive mathematics classrooms. Bandura's social cognitive theory framed the study. Interview data were collected from 12 teachers who provide mathematics instruction for gifted students in inclusive classrooms and analyzed using a modification of the Van Kaam method of analysis for phenomenological data. Several themes emerged from the interview data that may positively or negatively impact teacher self-efficacy. Based on those themes, recommendations were made that include utilizing a common gifted identification process, providing gifted-specific training opportunities for educators, promoting collaboration among educators of gifted students, providing opportunities for teachers to reflect on the impact of their instructional practices on gifted students, and creating libraries of math-specific gifted resources at each school site. This study has the potential to contribute to positive social change by advancing knowledge in the field of gifted instruction, improving teacher preparation programs, improving teacher job satisfaction, and improving the mathematics learning of gifted students in inclusive mathematics classrooms.

The Georgia Department of Education requires students to earn 4 course credits in the area of mathematics in order to graduate from high school. Academic success for mathematics students in a school district in southern Georgia has been encumbered because teachers lack cultural competency in mathematics instruction, which has hindered minority students from developing reasoning, critical analysis, and problem-solving skills needed to earn these required math credits. The purpose of this project study was to examine teachers' perceptions of using culturally relevant teaching strategies to influence the academic performance of minority students in the mathematics classroom. The conceptual framework was Dewey's progressive education theory. Six high school math teachers were purposefully selected for face-to-face interviews. Interview transcripts were coded using the Coding Analysis Toolkit and analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings showed that culturally competent mathematics instruction is important when teaching minority students; however, math teachers were not adequately prepared to teach minority students. Based on the findings, a professional development program was developed for secondary math teachers. Implications for positive social change include increasing math teachers' cultural awareness during instruction to help minority students increase academic proficiency in mathematics.