(2006)

1) [|College science teachers' views of classroom inquiry] Authors: Patrick L. Brown 1 *, Sandra K. Abell 1, Abdulkadir Demir 1, Francis J. Schmidt 2 Abstract: The purposes of this study were to (a) gain an understanding of the views of inquiry held by faculty members involved in undergraduate science teaching and (b) describe the challenges, constraints, and opportunities that they perceived in designing and teaching inquiry-based laboratories. Participants included 19 college professors, representing both life and physical science disciplines, from (a) 2-year community college, (b) small, private nonprofit liberal arts college, (c) public master's granting university, and (d) public doctoral/research extensive university. We collected data through semistructured interviews and applied an iterative data analysis process. College science faculty members held a full and open inquiry view, seeing classroom inquiry as time consuming, unstructured, and student directed. They believed that inquiry was more appropriate for upper level science majors than for introductory or nonscience majors. Although faculty members valued inquiry, they perceived limitations of time, class size, student motivation, and student ability. These limitations, coupled with their view of inquiry, constrained them from implementing inquiry-based laboratories. Our proposed inquiry continuum represents a broader view of inquiry that recognizes the interaction between two dimensions of inquiry: (a) the degree of inquiry and (b) the level of student directedness, and provides for a range of inquiry-based classroom activities. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. //Sci Ed// **90**:784-802, 2006

2)[|"Teaching and learning in the science classroom: The interplay between teachers' epistemological moves and students' practical epistemology"] Authors: Malena Lidar *, Eva Lundqvist, Leif Östman Abstract: The practical epistemology used by students and the epistemological moves delivered by teachers in conversations with students are analyzed in order to understand how teaching activities interplay with the how and the what of students' learning. The purpose is to develop an approach for analyzing the process of privileging in students' meaning making and how individual and situational aspects of classroom discourse interact in this process. Here we especially focus on the experiences of students and the encounter with the teacher. The analyses also demonstrate that a study of teaching and learning activities can shed light on which role epistemology has for students' meaning making, for teaching and for the interplay between these activities. The methodological approach used is an elaboration a sociocultural perspective on learning, pragmatism, and the work of Wittgenstein. The empirical material consists of recordings made in science classes in two Swedish compulsory schools. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. //Sci Ed// **90:**, 148-163, 2006

3) [|Contextual epistemic development in science: A comparison of chemistry students and research chemists] Authors: Ala Samarapungavan 1 *, Erik L. Westby 1, George M. Bodner 2 Abstract: This study investigated the ways in which beliefs about the nature of the science vary as a function of an individual's chemistry expertise and chemistry research experience across the range from high-schools students, whose exposure to chemistry occurs in the classroom, to practicing research chemists. Interviews conducted with a total of 91 participants probed three key research questions: Do the participants' epistemic beliefs vary as a function of chemistry expertise? Are there discipline-specific values and heuristics that guide chemistry research? How does research experience influence participants' epistemic beliefs? We found that participants' epistemic beliefs varied significantly with chemistry expertise and with exposure to authentic research in chemistry. Differences in both the duration and the nature of participation in research had a significant effect on how participants conceptualized science and scientific research. We noted that only the practicing scientists saw a productive role for empirical anomalies that arise in the course of doing research. We found that research chemists thought about their scientific work in terms of a building or engineering model of science, rather than the classic hypothetico-deductive model of science invoked by some science educators. We concluded that current characterizations of the nature of science in science education may underrepresent important discipline-specific aspects of science. These results are discussed in terms of implications for science education. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. //Sci Ed// **90**:468-495, 2006

4) [|Understanding teacher responses to constructivist learning environments: Challenges and resolutions] Authors: Melodie Rosenfeld 1 *, Sherman Rosenfeld 2 Abstract: The research literature is just beginning to uncover factors involved in sustaining constructivist learning environments, such as Project-Based Learning (PBL). Our case study investigates teacher responses to the challenges of constructivist environments, since teachers can play strong roles in supporting or undermining even the best constructivist environments or materials. We were invited to work as mediators with a middle-school science staff that was experiencing conflicts regarding two learning environments, PBL (which was the school's politically correc learning environment) and traditional. With mediated group workshops, teachers were sensitized to their own and colleagues' individual learning differences (ILDs), as measured by two styles inventories (the LSI - Kolb, 1976; and the LCI - Johnston & Dainton, 1997). Using these inventories, a learning-environment questionnaire, field notes, and delayed interviews a year later, we found that there was a relationship between teachers' preferred styles, epistemological beliefs, and their preferred teaching environment. Moreover, when the participating teachers, including early-adopters and nonvolunteers to PBL, became more sensitive to their colleagues' preferences, many staff conflicts were resolved and some mismatched teachers expressed more openness to PBL. We argue that having teachers understand their own ILDs and related responses to constructivist learning environments can contribute to resolving staff conflicts and sustaining such environments. We present a cognitive model and a strategy which illustrate this argument. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. //Sci Ed// **90**:385-399, 2006