Preparing Science Teachers Through Practice-Based Teacher Education

This comprehensive volume advances a vision of teacher preparation programs focused on core practices supporting ambitious science instruction. The book advocates for collaborative learning and building a community of teacher educators that can collectively share and refine strategies, tools, and practices.

A renewed interest in practice-based teacher education paired with increasingly rigorous requirements, notably the Next Generation Science Standards, has highlighted the importance of teachers’ deep disciplinary knowledge. This volume examines the compelling ways teacher educators across the country are using core practices to prepare preservice teachers for ambitious and equitable science teaching.

With contributions from a wide network of teacher educators focusing on science education in various geographical and institutional contexts, Preparing Science Teachers Through Practice-Based Teacher Education serves as a valuable resource both for teacher educators and for administrators.

David Stroupe, PhD, is an associate professor of teacher education and science education at Michigan State University. He also serves as the associate director of STEM Teacher Education at the CREATE for STEM Institute at MSU. He has three overlapping areas of research interests anchored around ambitious teaching practice. First, he frames classrooms as science practice communities. Using lenses from Science, Technology, and Society and the History and Philosophy of Science, he examines how teachers and students negotiate power, knowledge, and epistemic agency. Second, he examines how beginning teachers learn from practice in and across their varied contexts. Third, he studies how teacher preparation programs can provide support and opportunities for beginning teachers to learn from practice. Stroupe is the recipient of the AERA Exemplary Research Award for Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education), and the Early Career Research Award from the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. He also has a background in biology and taught secondary life science for four years.

Karen Hammerness, PhD, is the director of educational research and evaluation at the American Museum of Natural History. At the museum, her research centers on educator and youth learning inside and outside of school, and how equity and access can be addressed. She is especially interested in the professional development of science teachers along the teacher learning continuum (from preservice to novice to experienced) and in how teacher educators support teachers’ exploration of theoretical principles, vision, and classroom practices. She is currently a co–principal investigator of two research studies funded by the National Science Foundation: one follows the trajectories of New York City youth who have been mentored in an immersive science research program (across twenty-one informal science institutions); the other examines the development of a Next Generation Science Standards middle school ecology curriculum and professional development experiences for teachers. She also researches the design and pedagogy of teacher education not only in the United States, but also internationally, examining a variety of teacher education programs from teacher residencies to “context-specific” programs to college and university-based programs both in the United States and in other countries, including Chile, Finland, and Norway. Hammerness is a coeditor of Inspiring Teaching: Preparing Teachers to Succeed in Mission-Driven Schools (Harvard Education Press) and the lead author of Empowered Educators in Finland: How Leading Nations Design Systems for Teaching Quality (Jossey-Bass).

Scott McDonald, PhD, is a professor of science education at the Pennsylvania State University and director of the Krause Studios for Innovation in the PSU College of Education. He received his undergraduate degree in physics with a focus on astronomy and astrophysics. He was a high school physics teacher for six years before returning for a PhD in learning technologies and science education at the University of Michigan. McDonald takes a design-based approach to research on science teacher learning and student learning in the geosciences. His research focuses specifically on teacher learning, framed as professional pedagogical vision for ambitious and equitable science teaching practices. He is also engaged in the development of learning progressions in earth and space sciences as part of a series of NSF-funded projects, including Geological Models for Explorations of Dynamic Earth (GEODE) and GeoHazard: Modeling Natural Hazards and Assessing Risks.