Applying the science of learning to teacher professional development and back again: Lessons from 3 country contexts

“Good luck on your first day as an assistant professor, Dr. Tanner! Have a great class!” On the wall above my desk, these words scream out from an otherwise encouraging note that is adorned with many exclamation points. This note has hung on my wall since my very first day as an Assistant Professor of Biology. As I was charging off to teach my first class, a senior faculty member who had been on my hiring committee slipped this note under my office door. In moments of pause years later, I still stare up at that note and breathe a sigh of relief that I had much more than luck to guide me on my first day as a college-level teacher. Although I continue to have much to learn—as all of us do no matter the number of years of teaching experience—I did arrive at the university with both formal and informal training in science education. I had had plenty of exposure to innovative pedagogical approaches, questioning strategies, and techniques for engaging diverse audiences in learning science. As a scientist educator, I had had the privilege of many years of collaboration with outstanding K–12 educators as well as a postdoctoral fellowship in science education. However, my training has been, to say the least, unconventional compared with that of my fellow junior faculty and unique in its preparation in regard to the teaching and learning of my discipline. It will not be news to anyone reading this article that university and college teaching is to a large extent a profession with no formal training. It’s startling but true that the majority of faculty members—and lecturers who often teach large numbers of students—have no formal training in the teaching and learning of their discipline. In fact, the hiring process in university science departments is structured primarily to evaluate a faculty candidate’s ability to be a productive researcher, with success measured in number of publications and magnitude of grant funds raised. Depending on the type of institution, for example, research university, state-level university, or liberal arts college, there may be a component of the faculty interview process that probes a candidate’s teaching ability, for example, requesting a statement of teaching philosophy and requiring the candidate to teach a sample lecture class. However, this sample lecture often screens for gross inadequacies, rather than looking for stellar innovations or pedagogical skills. This lack of formal, accredited training for university and college instructors stands in stark contrast to the requirements for a high school teacher who is charged with the education of students only a year junior to college freshmen. High school teachers in the United States must be credentialed as a secondary science teacher, demonstrate subject matter competency in every subject that they will be teaching, and must continually engage in professional development in the teaching and learning of their discipline throughout their career as a science teacher. With the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind legislation, the onus is upon each precollege science teacher to become “highly qualified” in terms of formal university-level training in science education. However, no such required professional training or measurable standards for teaching are required in institutions of higher education. Many policy documents have suggested standards of teaching practice in postsecondary science education (National Research Council, 1996, 1997; Siebert and McIntosh, 2001), but the extent of implementation of these ideals is unclear and has gone relatively unstudied, although national and regional accreditation boards do look at outcomes, asking colleges and universities to assess what their students have gained from four years of study at their institutions. Nonetheless, there is a striking reversal of accountability that happens when one crosses the precollege teaching to college-level teaching boundary (Table 1). During the K–12 school years, society expects K–12 teachers to be responsible for student learning. Salaries of teachers in many states are tied to student test scores, and poor student performance can potentially invoke penalties. At a college or university, several variables in the educational universe shift. Students are the ones responsible for learning. The evaluation and compensation of college-level teachers is not DOI: 10.1187/cbe.05–12–0132 Address correspondence to: Kimberly Tanner (kdtanner@sfsu.edu). CBE—Life Sciences Education Vol. 5, 1–6, Spring 2006

The Elementary School Journal Volume 84, Number 4 S1984 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 001 3-5984/84/8404-0004$01.00 Assumptions, even assumptions that seem logical and reasonable, can make it difficult or impossible for people to understand scientific concepts. Everyone makes assumptions about the way the world works, assumptions like "When the sky is cloudy and dark, it will probably rain" or "Bits of wood float in water." People often use those assumptions to explain how things work: "I can see myself in a mirror because light bounces off me to the mirror and off the mirror to my eyes." Such explanations or conceptions are often based on experience and common sense; however, experience and common sense can sometimes

This study used the Relevance of Science Education (ROSE) survey (Sjoberg & Schreiner, 2004) to examine topics of interest and perspectives of secondary science students in a large school district in the southwestern U.S. A situated learning perspective was used to frame the project. The research questions of this study focused on (a) perceptions students have about themselves and their science classroom and how these beliefs may influence their participation in the community of practice of science; (b) consideration of how a future science classroom where the curriculum is framed by the Next Generation Science Standards might foster students' beliefs and perceptions about science education and their legitimate peripheral participation in the community of practice of science; and (c) reflecting on their school science interests and perspectives, what can be inferred about students' identities as future scientists or STEM field professionals? Data were collected from 515 second year science students during a 4-week period in May of 2012 using a Web-based survey. Data were disaggregated by gender and ethnicity and analyzed descriptively and by statistical comparison between groups. Findings for Research Question 1 indicated that boys and girls showed statistically significant differences in scientific topics of interest. There were no statistical differences between ethnic groups although. For Research Question 2, it was determined that participants reported an increase in their interest when they deemed the context of the content to be personally relevant. Results for Research Question 3 showed that participants do not see themselves as youthful scientists or as becoming scientists. While participants value the importance of science in their lives and think all students should take science, they do not aspire to careers in science. Based on this study, a need for potential future work has been identified in three areas: (a) exploration of the perspectives and interests of non-mainstream students and urban students whose representation in this study was limited; (b) investigation of topics where students expressed low interests topics; and (c) development and design of authentic communities of practice in the science classroom.

Research suggests that by allowing English Learner (EL) students to use their home languages in science class, they can better express their thinking and build content knowledge through underlying crosslinguistic awareness between languages. However, EL students’ educational backgrounds and home languages are incredibly varied. In this case study, we employ grounded theory to explore students' perceptions of their experiences in the context of a Physical Science and Language Development class [10]. We use a phenomenological approach to describe how the students experience their home language within this model of a science and language development class. Observation data, online video assignments, and small group, semi-structured interviews were used to find themes related to experiences of using home language in science class. The findings indicate varied student perspectives on the use of their home languages in science class. Some students preferred to use class time to practice using English, while others found value in using their home languages to help better understand science concepts. Student ideologies regarding English-only or multilingual practices for EL students varied. The findings also indicated that providing an opportunity for EL students to use their home languages in an asynchronous online communication platform outside of class was an effective strategy to allow time for students to practice English during science class, yet provide an opportunity to translate between home languages and English.

Despite being an interdisciplinary issue, climate change concepts have typically been taught in Earth and environmental science classes at the secondary level. However, few high school students can take these classes. This means few high school graduates know or have learning experiences with these topics. This study assessed core science (biology, chemistry, and physics) teachers’ ideas “many of whom also teach Earth or environmental science,” via an extensive survey including Likert scale and open-ended questions distributed electronically across the United States to secondary science teachers. We looked at where they believe climate change should be taught, had them identify which climate concepts they connected to their subject, and identified barriers teachers encountered when incorporating climate concepts in their classes. We found that most teachers felt all core sciences should integrate climate change within their content areas. Our findings also reveal topics related to climate change that these teachers make within all science disciplines. These results have implications for science teacher professional development (PD) providers, science teacher professional associations, and preservice science teacher educators as they show there is unequal access to Earth and environmental science courses with their associated climate science content, as well as a inconsistent catalog of climate change topics being addressed in the core sciences suggesting the need for additional PD and climate change curricula be made available to all science teachers.

In the polarized sociopolitical context of the United States, K-12 teachers may increasingly find themselves in the crossfire of conservative rhetoric and legislation that run counter to the work of social justice and equity-centered efforts in education. This is a wicked problem for science teachers in particular, as science issues that have been considered largely settled in the scientific community—such as climate change, vaccine safety, and trust in the scientific enterprise—have a history of being called into question by conservative political platforms and constituents. In this chapter, we present an illustrative vignette of a science teacher who encountered this wicked problem in her teaching practice. We propose solutions in light of this vignette that may address this wicked problem by emphasizing changes in leadership practices and support for teachers at more systemic levels. Specifically, we focus on the role of school and district leadership in communicating with parents and community members about justifications for curricular decisions and supporting teachers' overall well-being. As wicked problems are—by definition—highly complex and likely to resist simple fixes, we view these solutions as partial but promising.

This paper discusses the history of the relationship between science education and environmental education in Australian and international contexts and argues that - given the on-going resistances to environmental education in schools, the static nature of science education practices, and declining student interest in studying traditional science subject - it is time to reconsider the relationship. If we are to achieve sustainable development, then science education must have a role in encouraging ecological thinking. However, the science education that can be an appropriate 'host' for environmental education is not necessarily that currently practised, but a reconceptualized form could well be what is needed. From a historical perspective this paper suggests that it might be time to reconsider science education's function as a 'host' for environmental education and try to imagine a more mutualistic relationship.

This qualitative study explores the role of laboratory facilities in supporting science learning at the pre-secondary level in Uailili, Baucau Timor-Leste. The study aims to examine how laboratory facilities contribute to students’ understanding and engagement in science learning. The research design adopted is qualitative with a descriptive approach, conducted at EBC Pre-Secondary School in Uailili from February to May 2025. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with one science teacher, the school director, and 16 students from Grades 7–9, as well as through document analysis of lesson plans and laboratory materials. Purposive sampling was used to select participants, and member checking was applied to ensure data validity. Data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach following an inductive process. The findings reveal that laboratory facilities though limited play a significant role in promoting students’ active participation, motivation, and conceptual understanding in science. Teachers’ creativity in utilizing local materials compensates for inadequate facilities, fostering hands-on learning experiences. However, challenges such as insufficient equipment, space constraints, and limited teacher training hinder effective implementation. The study concludes that improving laboratory resources and teacher support is essential to enhance science learning outcomes in resource-limited contexts like Timor-Leste.

This essay centers on the voices of leading scholars in science and STEM education on how equity can and should be centered in reviewing proposals for granting organizations. As the decisions made as a result of the reviewing process significantly impact the future directions of the field, we recognize the urgency in considering how equity is considered in this process. Through their experiences, four researchers offer the science and STEM community a call to action. The scholars interviewed highlighted that equitable reviewing and funding research and professional development will require changes within the science education and STEM funding ecosystem. Three overarching themes include (1) changing the ideologies and culture of science and STEM education research funding will require centering the needs of the communities being served; (2) institutions and granting organizations should adopt equity‐focused and holistic rubrics and models; and 3) we each have an individual responsibility to employ equity during the review process. Thus, this essay has the potential to both inspire and provide explicit examples of how we can all center equity as we strive to transform the future of science and STEM education.

The paper examined professional development of senior secondary school biology teachers on inquiry-based teaching. To become and remain a competent biology teacher requires a continuous process that starts from pre-service experiences in undergraduate years to the end of a professional career. Science knowledge is constantly changing and expanding its relevance to societal issues therefore, these teachers needs constant opportunities to build their understanding and abilities in the same direction. Consequently, the National Science Education Standards (NSES) presented a vision of learning and teaching science in which students will have the opportunity to become scientifically literate. (NSES)(NRC,1996: 56). In the vision, science teachers are professionally responsible for their own professional development and for the maintenance of their teaching profession, hence this paper. Professional development is a specialized training, formal education or advanced professional learning to offer help to administrators, teachers and other educators improve their professional knowledge, skill and effectiveness in the teaching of biology in the classroom (hidden curriculum, 2014). The paper considered some majors issues that leads to teacher professional development which includes: professional development for biology teachers on inquiry-based teaching,  teachers current teaching of biology, concept of inquiry-based teaching, student learning of biology, consensus  or standards for professional development programme, impact of professional development programme, researches on professional development programme, challenges of professional development programme,  the paper was concluded by stating that  coaching and support for teachers at points of implementation should be encouraged,  professional development programs should be for a longer period of time more than what is obtainable presently, proper monitoring and evaluation of training received and its implementation among others.

Curriculum materials serve as a key conceptual tool for science teachers, and better understanding how science teachers use these tools could help to improve both curriculum design and theory related to teacher learning and decision-making. The authors review the literature on teachers and science curriculum materials. The review is organised around three main questions: What do teachers do when using science curriculum materials?, What happens when teachers use science curriculum materials? and Why do teachers make the decisions they do? For each question, the authors first summarise the findings of two key reviews from the mathematics education literature, then situate the findings from science education in juxtaposition with those findings. The review uncovers that relatively little is understood about the mechanism underlying how teachers interact with curriculum materials. To try to address this gap, complementing and extending the field’s existing understandings of the teacher–curriculum relationship, the authors make four propositions, grounded in the literature on self-regulation. The propositions reflect a mechanism for teacher curricular decision-making. The self-regulation perspective also helps to develop more targeted support for science teachers aimed at the uptake, adaptation and enactment of curriculum materials in ways that are intended, and that teachers themselves experience as an improvement in their teaching. The authors conclude with a call for research that further explores the ways in which individual science teachers’ decision-making is situated within the wider sociocultural context.

Aim: This study examined pedagogy and subject content needs for Professional Development (PD) to improve teachers’ skills in teaching science in secondary schools in Mbeya, Tanzania.
 Study Design: The study employed a quantitative research approach and cross-sectional survey design.
 Methodology: The main instrument used for the study was questionnaire. In this study, schools were randomly selected, and 256 respondents, science teachers were selected through stratified sampling technique. The data collected were analyzed quantitatively.
 Results: Science teachers need Professional Development (PD) in Pedagogical Knowledge (PK), masterly of science subject contents and technological skills of modern teaching. There was no significant difference in the mean scores for components of pedagogy knowledge between teachers who teach math subject and those who teach physics, chemistry and biology at using independent samples t-test. Teachers need of PD in subject content in topics were as follows: accounts (61.7%), genetics (46.2%), electromagnetism (44.2%), electronics (40.4%), circles and the Earth as a sphere (29.6%), statistics and probability (28.4%), inorganic chemistry (25%), and ionic theory and electrolysis (24.1%).
 Conclusion: Science and mathematics teachers in Secondary schools need PD intervention in the subject content of science subjects.

Science learning in elementary schools requires Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), so supportive learning model is needed. This research aims to: 1) describe the application of HOTS in science education at elementary level; 2) describe the RADEC learning model for science learning, and 3) describe the factors that support and hinder the application of RADEC to improve HOTS in science education in elementary schools. This research uses a systematic literature review method or literature review, which focuses on the process of reviewing and analyzing widely and carefully several literature relevant to the research topic. The results of this study show: 1) HOTS is indispensable in science learning; 2) The introduction of RADEC greatly improves the science HOTS skills of elementary students; 3) The application of RADEC to improve students' HOTS is influenced by many factors, including teachers' understanding and competence of the RADEC model, facilities and infrastructure, and teacher support.

ABSTRACTThis study aimed to investigate the relationships among the middle school students’ perceptions of science teacher support, students’ motivation and students’ engagement in learning science. Student motivation was addressed with task value and academic self-concept while student engagement included aspects of agentic, behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement. In the study, survey method was used and the data were collected though previously validated self-report questionnaires. Valid data were obtained from 1006 middle school students enrolled in one of the nine public schools in Turkey. The path analysis revealed that perceived science teacher’s support positively predicted students’ task value and academic self-concept in science. Furthermore, students who reported high levels of task value and academic self-concept showed higher levels of engagement in science. Accordingly, it seems important for science teachers to listen to the students, behave fairly and help them to solve their problems in order to motivate them for learning science and increase their engagement in science class.

Context: Justice-centered science education has come about as a means to challenge the often ahistorical and acultural nature of traditional science teaching and learning to address the social, political, and scientific ways science can be used to (re)produce, but also address, (in)justice. Despite these efforts, the complex emotional, physical, and moral dimensions of engaging in justice-centered practices are under-conceptualized, especially for youth living in areas historically and contemporarily affected by social, political, and environmental change. More specifically, there remains one injustice that has gone largely unexplored in the science education literature: trauma. Purpose of Study: When we consider the historic and contemporary racist paradigms of the scientific discipline and how that has bled into science teaching and learning, coupled with rates of multiple, intersecting forms of trauma—including those that are the result of science and schooling—the need for trauma-informed science learning becomes abundantly evident. In this conceptual article, we present a framework for trauma-informed science (TIS) as a critical pedagogical approach that builds upon and extends trauma-informed and justice-centered science literature to situate trauma, healing and well-being as an integral part of justice. We argue that this framework can support educators in constructing science learning experiences that center the healing and well-being of their students as a practice of justice. Research Design: We use the cell, the most basic unit of life, and its organelles, each of which performs a specialized function, as metaphors to conceptualize TIS as a foundational building block of justice-centered science. Just as a cell could not survive without all its organelles working together, the principles of TIS work in conjunction to help teachers reimagine the political and pedagogical ways in which they approach justice-centered science teaching. TIS is made up of six principles: (1) engage in justice-centered science practice; (2) focus on the role of race, racism, and other systems of domination; (3) center love as praxis and protection; (4) ground learning in safety, dignity, and belonging; (5) attune to emotionality and embodiment; and (6) situate healing as an active and ongoing process Conclusion: Because of the historical and contemporary ways that science, scientific enterprise, and science education have been used to perpetrate and justify trauma, coupled with rising rates of childhood trauma, there is a moral and pedagogical imperative that makes science education a ripe place to address trauma and center healing. We offer TIS not as a simple instructional shift or a pedagogical add-on, but as a fundamentally different pedagogical, epistemological, and political approach to the practice of justice-centered science teaching to support life-giving and life-affirming science learning experiences. Ultimately, we argue that we cannot say we are working toward justice-centered science education and classrooms if we remain unwilling to center the healing and well-being of students, families, and communities.