Cultivating Science Teachers’ Understandings of Science as a Discipline

Current visions of science education advocate that students should engage with science in the classroom in ways that mirror the work of scientists in order to develop science proficiency. For this goal, teachers are tasked with the complex responsibility of supporting students in understanding not only the conceptual knowledge of science, but also its disciplinary practices, norms, and epistemologies. In order for teachers to teach in such ways, they must be afforded opportunities to develop and reflect on their own disciplinary understandings about science. Research Experiences for Teachers’ (RETs) programs, in which teachers engage in research with scientists, may be fertile contexts for the development of teachers’ robust understandings about science. As such, the purpose of this naturalistic single-case study is to explore the ways in which one elementary teacher (Ava) describes shifts in her disciplinary understandings about science after participating in a 6-week summer Research Experience for Teachers’ program. Through examination of interviews and observations, this study takes a critical event narrative analysis approach to unpack the ways in which Ava interprets certain disciplinary understandings about science in light of events during her research experience that to her had lasting and important impact on her understandings of science. We conclude by discussing the implications of this work for research and professional development design.