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Nurse scholars are urged to consider the benefits and limitations of inquiry within each paradigm, and the theoretical needs of the discipline.

What is engineering? What do engineers do? How is engineering related to, but distinct from, science? These questions all relate to the nature of engineering (NOE), and as engineering is incorporated into K-12 education across the United States (Moore et al., 2015), the nature of engineering is becoming increasingly important for students and teachers. While many policy documents call for students to learn more about the structure of the engineering discipline (e.g., NAE, 2008; NAE & NRC, 2009; NRC, 2014), little has been done to define the NOE construct. This paper presents key dimensions of the nature of engineering via a framework synthesized from studies of the engineering discipline from philosophical, historical, and sociological perspectives, as well as perspectives from within the engineering field. The framework identifies and elaborates nine features of engineering, each of which capture an important aspect of the nature of engineering. For teachers, these features serve as points of entry for discussing nature of engineering ideas with students. For researchers, the features provide a set of constructs to guide future inquiries into teachers' and students' nature of engineering knowledge.

Many educators today advocate the use of historical narratives as one of a number of possible contexts for teaching science. However, several pedagogical and epistemological issues arise when implementing narratives in the classroom. In this paper, we are interested in expanding our view of narrative, specific to integrating the history of science and science teaching, and we extend our argument beyond simple anecdotal references to recognise the benefits of the historical narrative in a variety of ways. At the same time, we address pedagogical concerns by broadening perceptions of the manner and contexts in which narratives can be developed so as to include imaginative and manipulative elements that provide interactive experiences for students that are more conducive to implementation by science teachers.Several practical examples are presented as illustrations of historical narratives with imaginative and manipulative elements that by design facilitate a more meaningful implementation in the science classroom.

Learning and effective teaching are both complicated acts. However, many administrators, teachers, parents, and policymakers appear not to recognize those complexities and their significance for practice. Fueling this perception, recommendations from isolated research findings often neglect the complexities in learning and teaching, and when implemented in classrooms often fall well short of the advertised effect. Consequently, education research is generally ignored, and the resulting research-practice gap raises concerns regarding the utility of university-based teacher education, and education research more generally. However, the strength of education research resides in the synergy resulting from its integration into a unifying system that guides, but does not determine, decision-making. Dewey (1929) argued for teacher decision-making guided by education research, but recently several writers have justly criticized education researchers for not providing comprehensible assistance to educators and policymakers (Good, 2007;Shymansky, 2006;Windschitl, 2005). This paper proposes a decision-making framework for teaching to help beginning and experienced teachers make sense of education research, come to understand crucial teacher decisions, and how those decisions interact to affect student learning. The proposed decision-making framework for teaching has significant utility in the design of science methods courses, science teacher education programs, effective student teacher supervision experiences, and professional development workshops.

Issues regarding understanding of evolution and resistance to evolution education in the United States are of key importance to biology educators at all levels. While research has measured student views toward evolution at single points in time, few studies have been published investigating whether views of college seniors are any different than first-year students in the same degree program. Additionally, students choosing to major in biological sciences have largely been overlooked, as if their acceptance of evolution is assumed. This study investigated the understanding of evolution and attitude toward evolution held by students majoring in biological science during their first and fourth years in a public research university. Participants included students in a firstyear introductory biology course intended for biological science majors and graduating seniors earning degrees in either biology or genetics. The portion of the survey reported here consisted of quantitative measures of students' understanding of core concepts of evolution and their attitude toward evolution. The results indicate that students' understanding of particular evolutionary concepts is significantly higher among seniors, but their attitude toward evolution is only slightly improved compared to their firstyear student peers. When comparing first-year students and seniors, students' theistic position was not significantly different.

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Few, if any, studies have examined the impact of nature of science (NOS) instruction on science teachers’ practices 2 or more years after completing a science teacher education program. Extant studies on preservice and first‐year teachers’ NOS teaching practices have had disappointing results, with few teachers valuing NOS as a cognitive objective or teaching it in ways consistent with literature regarding effective NOS instruction. In addition, little is known about teachers’ specific NOS practices due to a lack of observation protocols to assess teachers’ NOS instruction. This study examined teachers’ NOS instructional practices 2–5 years after completing an intensive secondary science education program that included a NOS course and attention to NOS instruction throughout all other science education coursework. Twelve of the 13 study participants explicitly taught NOS, and 9 of the 13 did so at moderate to high levels. This paper also presents a NOS Classroom Observation Protocol (NOS‐COP) designed to make evident many facets of teachers’ NOS implementation practices that have not always been clear in prior research. This study raises important issues about achieving the goal of NOS instruction. Accurate and effective NOS instruction appears achievable, but may require far more effort than found in typical science teacher education programs. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 97:271–309, 2013