This study explores questioning practices adopted by elementary teachers while facilitating science inquiry discussions prior and subsequent to their participation in a summer institute in which they were provided with scholarly descriptions of inquiry-based teacher questioning (i.e., typologies of questions used by discourse analysts to categorize and understand teacher questioning) and conducted video-based discourse analysis. Teachers' questioning is examined in light of their social understandings (i.e., how teachers understand social aspects of oral questioning in inquiry-based science classrooms). The reported findings show that, as a result of developing an increased awareness of social aspects of teacher questioning during the institute, teachers' referential questions (oral queries aimed at encouraging students to articulate their own ideas, understandings, experiences and personal opinions) were twice as frequent after the institute as they were before, hence suggesting an increased degree of student-centeredness. Furthermore, their student-centered questions prompted longer and more articulated student responses, promoted higherlevel student thinking, positioned students as complementary experts, prompted students to provide tentative responses, and encouraged students to conduct authentic investigations. Based on these findings, it is argued that educators who set out to prepare teachers to become effective questioners in the context of science inquiry discussions ought to go beyond cognitive issues and the simple provision of static and ill-defined labels such as ''guide'' and ''active inquirer.'' ß

This paper reviews the literature on emergent technologies from the field of science education. In an effort to summarize the current state of research, and identify specific types of technologies that have recently “emerged” in K‐12 science classrooms, we review papers featured in leading science education venues in recent years. The reported trends suggest that, as a field, science education has become increasingly characterized by hermeneutic and alterity relations wherein the physical world is experienced indirectly through technological representations or has become secondary to students' experiences as it is “pushed aside” by emergent technological artifacts such as computer simulations, virtual labs, mobile devices, robots, games, and digital photography and drawing. As a result, science educators are faced with the challenge of helping students view technological instruments not as transparent and neutral devices that simply “depict reality” (naïve instrumentalism) and reveal what is “really” there (naïve realism), but as powerful epistemic tools that help co‐constitute the reality being investigated, often (re)shaping what counts as “real” in revolutionary ways. It is argued that new technologies do not actually emerge in sociocultural vacuum and that more attention needs to be been given to sociocultural aspects of technological innovation in science classrooms.

This study examines cognitive and social processes in group interactions that shape collaborative learning in science classrooms. Three small groups of students were observed while working collaboratively on explaining the burning of a candle under a jar. The learning environment served as a context for examination of conceptual convergence, a process wherein students construct shared meanings for science concepts through gradual refinement of ambiguous, partial meanings presented in group space. Despite engaging in the same activity with very similar instructional supports, the groups displayed very different patterns of interaction and achieved varied degrees of conceptual convergence. One group collaborated effectively and displayed evidence of individual conceptualizations of science content converging to establish a more well-informed shared conceptualization. The other groups were not as successful, each for unique reasons. Problems demonstrated in one group included lack of self-confidence, poor monitoring of group learning, and active avoidance of potentially fruitful conceptual conflicts. The other group struggled primarily because of a combative social context. The major educational significance of this study was the identification of social context and interactive patterns, group approaches to conceptual conflicts, and instructors' roles in collaborative activities as crucial aspects of productive group learning. ß 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 2008

This paper explores the potential of civic science education (CSE), which includes experiences that have been intentionally designed to foster or enhance individuals’ interactions with and/or engagement in science‐related public matters. To begin, we provide a theoretically‐grounded definition of CSE, including three sub‐categories: foundational, exploratory, and purposefully active. We then explore the scholarly arguments for why enacting CSE could help to support students’ science learning and civic engagement and also strengthen civil society. Next, the paper examines current educational practices related to CSE, such as citizen science, exploring socioscientific issues, and various civic education pedagogies, detailing what researchers have learned from empirical studies of these practices. Building on this prior theory and research, we argue that CSE could motivate students both to learn science and become engaged in civic issues, with slightly different expected outcomes across the three CSE categories. We conclude by encouraging educators and researchers to explore the great potential of such practices, providing specific recommendations for curriculum development and empirical studies.

This study explores how elementary teachers and students use hedges (tentative words such as maybe) and boosters (expressions of certainty such as clearly and obviously) during science inquiry discussions. Drawing upon semiotic theory, we examine explicit thematic patterns (semantic meaning relations among science concepts) as well as hidden social, nature of science (NOS), and epistemological meanings co‐constructed and communicated by teachers and students. It was found that a kindergarten teacher's discussion was mostly unhedged and boosted (absolutely), with the use of hedges (may, might, could) limited to an unexpected encounter with an undeveloped egg toward the end of the lesson. In contrast, a fourth‐grade teacher's discussion was predominantly hedged, with the use of boosters limited to isolated episodes concerning the nature of scientific inquiry and experimental variables. Unhedged and boosted communication led to the co‐construction of an unproblematic or factual body of scientific knowledge (transitivity, circumstantial, and nominal meanings), whereas hedged communication produced a problematic or tentative body of scientific knowledge (logical and taxonomic meanings). It is emphasized that unproblematic knowledge communication may be paralleled by NOS miscommunication. We argue that teachers should be provided with professional development that can increase their awareness of the risk of NOS miscommunication. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 96:652–684, 2012

This study examines how a first‐year biology teacher facilitates a series of whole‐class discussions about evolution during the implementation of a problem‐based unit. A communicative theoretical perspective is adopted wherein evolution discussions are viewed as social events that the teacher can frame intellectually (i.e., present or organize as exchanges of an intellectual nature). Furthermore, we characterize teacher framing of evolution discussion in terms of five communicative components: focus, orientation, social structure, mood, and participatory nature. Our video‐based analyses revealed that the teacher paid little attention to the conceptual contents and history of evolutionary theory, framing evolution discussions as moderately playful and partially mandatory events focused mainly on student sharing of ideas (i.e., personal opinions) and polite communication of evolution. Within this framing, the teacher adopted the role of a neutral (though admittedly biased) facilitator with an intermediary expert status (less knowledgeable than evolutionary biologists) and who was legally required (though also inclined) to discuss evolution. The main significance of this study is that it provides new and useful insights into social phenomena such as respect, politeness, and humor in the context of evolution discussion as well as a robust theoretical framework for analyzing evolution discussion from a social perspective. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 257–280, 2011

This study examines how participation in a verbal exchange during an inquiry-based classroom activity allows three college students and their science instructor to use linguistic signs (choices of words, grammatical structures, discursive structures, prosody and poetic discourse) to construct authority and expertise. Our work explores linguistic and interactional processes of identification (the dynamic construction and transaction of expert identity) and examines how discursive strategies adopted by the professor at different moments of the verbal exchange influence the students' subsequent discursive practices and perceptions of authority. We adopt a dialogic, socio-constructivist perspective on identity, viewing personal identities as being partially constructed via interactional positioning. Our findings reveal that the attainment of expertise involves two different types of language-mediated processes: the transmission of a professional vision or intension and the emergence of a perception of agency among students. The former is centered on referential-denotative meanings of speech (elicitation of standard account and operational definition) while the latter requires effective use of pragmatic-performative functions of speech (nonevaluative and more than minimal recipient practices). Consideration is given to the need for science instructors to be able to utilize pragmatic functions of language strategically to encourage students to position themselves within the identity of science expertise.

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