A new paper was published in the July issue of Science Education.
Zangori, L. & Forbes, C.T. (2014). Scientific practices in elementary classrooms: 3rd-grade students’ scientific explanations for seed structure and function. Science Education, 98(4), 614-639.
This research focuses on 3rd-grade students’ scientific explanations for plant-related phenomena as part of the FOSS Structures of Life curriculum module across multiple classrooms. Drawing from a diverse array of data, the study explores connections between teachers’ conceptions, their observed instructional practices, and student. The study provides evidence that teachers’ professional ideas and pedagogical reasoning about evidence-based explanation in science – a crucial scientific practice highlighted in the Next Generation Science Standards – play an important role in their instructional practices to support students’ explanation-construction in the classroom.