This study examined the influence of field placements settings with varying demographic profiles on preservice elementary teachers. Data were gathered at three points during the participants' final year in their teacher preparation program in order to chart changes over time in science teaching self‐efficacy beliefs. These measures were supplemented by interviews to investigate attitudes about teaching science in diverse settings. Gee's identity framework (2000) and the dimensions of teacher development described by Bullough et al. [Bullough et al. [2004] Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 10:365–394] were employed as interpretive tools. Statistical analyses of teaching self‐efficacy scores revealed marginal changes over time. Individual interviews revealed no discernible influence upon the teacher candidates' perceptions of science teaching selves that could be attributed to the demographics of their field placements. Emerging from this study was the previously underappreciated value of self‐doubt as a factor in motivating preservice teachers. The findings call into question the tendency to use heightened teaching self‐efficacy as an indicator of individual or programmatic success. This examination of preservice teacher development over the final year of a preparatory program, especially when considered in light of student diversity, demonstrates the soundness of Dewey's claim that uncertainty is a crucial component of learning and knowing. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 102–125, 2009

The work of Bishop and Anderson (1990) plays a major role in educators' understanding of evolution education. Their findings remind us that the majority of university students do not understand the process of evolution but that conceptual change instruction can be moderately effective in promoting the construction of a scientific understanding. The present article details two studies that represent an effort to focus on and define the limits of the Bishop and Anderson (1990) study. Study A describes a close replication of the work of Bishop and Anderson (1990) using the same conceptual‐change teaching module to teach a unit on evolution to students enrolled in a biology course for nonmajors. Study B, a case of comparison, used the same evaluation instrument used in Bishop and Anderson (1990) and Study A, but high school students were the participants and the instruction was based on the inquiry approach to science. Like Bishop and Anderson (1990), Study A showed that the amount of prior instruction and students' beliefs in evolution were not found to be large factors in students' use of scientific conceptions. Unlike the original study, the students in Study A showed only a meager increase in their use of scientific conceptions for evolution. In Study B, students in the experimental group showed significant increases in their use of scientific conceptions. These findings suggest a need to investigate more closely the teachers' theories of learning, their reliance on instructional conversations, and the amount of time devoted to the topic of evolution as we study conceptual change in this area.

Several studies have examined the alternative conceptions that students possess about the process of natural selection. The goal of this study was to explore the nature of the changes in students' explanations of evolutionary scenarios. Fifty names were randomly selected from a pool of over 200 high school students who took a pretest prior to and a posttest following instruction about evolution. Teleological and Lamarckian explanations accounted for over half of the students' explanation on the pretest, but dropped to less than 20% on the posttest. Most of the students that, on the pretest, attributed evolutionary change to individual need for a trait or extended use or disuse of some part of the body shifted, on the posttest, to explanations that described the role of a population's variation to the evolutionary process. Explanations that included the idea of spontaneous genetic mutations increased, but this totalled less than 10% of all posttest responses.

This conceptual article examines the in¯uence of the current standards-based reform upon science education policies and practices within urban schools. We identify four negative yet unforeseen effects of the reform movement: undermining urban teachers' professionalism, eroding teacher±student relationships, diluting the science curriculum, and disparate instruction based on predicted individual test performance. Our awareness of these nuisances emerged from our ®rst-hand engagement with urban science teaching and through our collegial relationships with exemplary urban teachers. In closing, we propose mechanisms by which university-based science educators might address these issues by assisting exemplary urban teachers to resist the reform-induced perils and by incorporating the urban milieu as a substantive aspect of science teacher education. ß

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Even though school administrators and their leadership practices are rarely explored within science education research, our recent efforts to understand organizational influences on achievement disparities induced an elevated regard for elementary school principals. In this paper, we report on policy buffering by principals at schools whose science test scores exceed statistical expectations. We approached principals to learn more about their science program and the potential leadership and organizational infrastructures that might explain their schools' exemplary performance with students from diverse backgrounds. As street-level bureaucrats, principals are expected to translate formal policy while also ensuring the school is supportive of the teachers and the students. By applying a structure/agency perspective, principals were found to engage in the cognitive professional practice of buffering in four ways: adjusting school structures to accommodate new policies; negotiating compromises with central office about policy implementation; shielding teachers from low-priority policies; and occasionally encouraging teachers to preemptively engage in district-level representation to shape policy implementation. In addition, we uncovered many instances where principals were unwilling to deflect policy and worked with teachers accordingly. We learned that buffering is a cognitive act in which principals make rationale choices about policy and in certain instances will shield their school out of compassion for the teachers and students. It is likely that principal buffering contributes to the equitability and excellence of student performance on their schools' statewide science test. # 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52:503-515, 2015.

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