Melissa J. Luna

Teachers’ Noticing of Students’ Thinking in Science Through Classroom Artifacts: In What Ways Are Science and Engineering Practices Evident?

ABSTRACT Building on the work of teacher noticing, this study investigated teachers’ noticing of students’ thinking evident in artifacts from their science teaching context. Prior work on teachers’ noticing in science has generally focused on noticing students’ thinking surrounding specific disciplinary content. We asked 20 elementary teachers to identify and discuss an artifact that represented their students’ thinking in science. Rather than discuss specific disciplinary content, teachers described what students were “doing” in producing that artifact. The results of this study demonstrate attending to what students are doing is one way teachers notice students’ thinking in science, and in these descriptions of “doing” lie important connections to the scientific and engineering practices of the Next Generation Science Standards. This study can inform the design of teacher learning experiences in which artifacts and teachers’ tendency to focus on what students are doing can be leveraged toward learning to notice students’ thinking in science.

What Does it Mean to Notice my Students’ Ideas in Science Today?: An Investigation of Elementary Teachers’ Practice of Noticing their Students’ Thinking in Science

Abstract Efforts toward improving K-12 science education emphasize teachers noticing students’ thinking as they engage in disciplinary practices and reasoning. This noticing requires specialized teacher knowledge and skills as it involves attending to students’ ideas, as well as making sense of and responding to those ideas so that the disciplinary substance in them is recognized, made explicit, and supported. This study investigates three elementary teachers’ in-the-moment noticing of students’ ideas while teaching science and their thinking about what it means to engage in this teaching practice. Results indicate that teachers notice many different kinds of student science ideas, and also that teachers have different ways of thinking about which student ideas are substantive during a science lesson. This research contributes to our theoretical understanding of the nature of teacher noticing in science. Noticing students’ science ideas involves not only the presence of ideas and the ability to notice them, but also a teacher’s understanding of this teaching practice in the moment.

Science as Experience, Exploration, and Experiments: Elementary Teachers' Notions of "Doing Science".

ABSTRACT Much of the literature on science teaching suggests that elementary teachers lack relevant prior experiences with science. This study begins to reframe the deficit approach to research in science teaching by privileging the experiences elementary teachers have had with science – both in and out of schools – throughout their lives. Our work uses identity as a lens to examine the complexities of elementary teachers’ narrative accounts of their experiences with science over the course of their lives. Our findings identify components of teachers’ science-related experiences in order to lay the groundwork for making connections between teachers’ personal experiences and professional practice. This work demonstrates that teachers’ storied lives are important for educational researchers and teacher educators, as they reveal elements of teaching knowledge that may be productive and resourceful for refining teachers’ science practice.