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Culturally Relevant Science Learning
Creating learning opportunities for students to culturally connect in the science classroom is crucial to ensuring inclusivity and accessibility for all. This article describes how multicultural picture books that use visuals to capture diverse repre...
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Journal Article
Reading Like a Scientist: Teaching Students to Strategically Read Multimodal Science Texts
Calls for disciplinary literacy instruction in elementary schools encourage teachers to provide authentic opportunities for students to read and write like scientists. Enacting disciplinary literacy with problem-based learning practices to inquire ab...
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Journal Article
Transforming Science Education in an Age of Misinformation
Scientific misinformation has reached alarming proportions. Here, we summarize a new expert report, Science Education in an Age of Misinformation, that outlines what science education can do to address this problem and, given the urgency, must do. I...
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Journal Article
Inoculation theory, which applies the biological concept of vaccination to misinformation, provides a range of ways to effectively build resilience against misinformation. In this article, we define and organize the various types of inoculation, whic...
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Discover student thinking while analyzing data…and having fun! (Data Literacy 101)
Our students rarely practice data skills with data not related to our science content, which makes sense given all we must teach. But always asking our students to succeed at the data skill move (e.g., graphing, analyzing, interpreting) and the conte...
Journal Article
Does Drinking Milk Cause Strong Bones?
In 1935, individuals living in the United States began to encounter eye-catching posters communicating a variety of public program messages from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), established under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. ...
By Jacqueline Katz
Journal Article
For as long as people have had stories to tell, folklore and tall tales have been a part of social gatherings. Storytelling helps us convey our history and learn our languages (Bowman and Carpenter 2004; Mzimela 2016). In addition, many of these tale...
By Kimberly Ideus and Miles Engell
Journal Article
The Use of Storytelling to Model NGSS Science and Engineering Practices
An important strand of three-dimensional learning in the Next Generation Science Standards is science and engineering practices (SEPs; NGSS Lead States 2013). The SEPs also are one of four critical attributes of sensemaking (NSTA, n.d.). These practi...
By Adrienne Larocque and Anna Babarinde
Journal Article
Translanguaging as an Essential Practice in Socially Just Science Classrooms
In this interaction, Manuel and Rico (all names are pseudonyms) expertly mix Spanish and English to communicate as they collect data in a ninth grade physics lab. Your reaction to this mixture of English and Spanish, what users sometimes call “Span...
By Sarah Braden and Taylor Dexter
Journal Article
Teaching Students to Read Equations
The laws of nature are expressed in equation form in all physics courses. How these laws are taught can vary widely. In this article, I expand on previous Focus on Physics articles, particularly the March 2022 article “The Importance of Reading Equ...
By Paul G. Hewitt
Journal Article
Science concepts connect us to the wonders of the natural universe. Why is the sky blue? [Air molecules behave much like tiny little tuning forks.] Is there gravity in space? [Yes, it extends to infinity.] What do fish “breathe” underwater? [It�...
By John Suchocki
Journal Article
Promoting Learning for All Through Explore-Before-Explain
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) highlight the importance of creating more equitable learning environments and engaging all students in science (NGSS Lead States 2013). In professional learning, we target the hands-on, minds-on experience...
By Patrick Brown, Jay McTighe, and Rodger Bybee
Journal Article
Scientific Literacy: Lives could depend on it!
Carl Sagan famously said “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology” (Sagan, 1990, p. 264). As demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, all adults ne...
By Charlotte Moser
Journal Article
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said, “There are those who fear reason as cold, bleak, cheerless, unpoetic. That’s not just untrue; it’s the very opposite of true. Science is the poetry of reality” (Dawkins 2016). Science is reminiscen...
By Katie Coppens