Learning science involves an ongoing process in which learners construct and reconstruct self‐explanations and evaluate their relative soundness. This work coordinates and aligns complementary methodological and theoretical approaches to learning to both unpack sensemaking and better understand the conditions that facilitate it. I conceptualize people's sense of what constitutes a good explanation as taking place along a multidimensional metric and discuss three dimensions of this metric that are central to the evaluation of explanations of phenomena in the physical world: (1) intuitive knowledge, (2) mechanism, and (3) framing. The study operationalizes each dimension in terms that can be empirically tracked in students’ talk, gestures, and social interactions. The power and function of the multidimensional metric is illustrated through its account of the evolution of self‐generated explanations of two seventh‐grade girls who attempt to understand why a plastic bottle shrinks when air is pumped out of it. The analysis demonstrates that the framework can explain conviction in an explanation, preference for one explanation over another, and the complex conditions that facilitate this change. Methodological and practical implications are discussed.

Pursuing both disciplinary authenticity and personal relevance in the teaching and learning of science in school generates tensions that should be acknowledged and resolved. This paper problematizes and explores the conceptualizations of these tensions by considering personal relevance, disciplinary authenticity, and common school science as three perspectives that entail different educational goals. Based on an analysis of the literature, we identify five facets of the tensions: content fidelity, content coverage, language and discursive norms, epistemic structure and standards, and significance. We then explore the manifestations of these facets in two different examples of the instruction and learning of physics at the advanced high school level in Israel and Italy. Our analysis suggests that (1) the manifestations of these tensions and their resolution are highly contextual. (2) While maintaining personal relevance and disciplinary authenticity requires some negotiation, the main tension that needs to be resolved is between personal relevance and common school science. (3) Disciplinary authenticity, when considered in terms of its full depth and scope, can be equipped to resolve this tension within the discipline. (4) To achieve resolution, teachers’ expertise should include not only pedagogical expertise but also a deep and broad disciplinary understanding.

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Research experience is increasingly considered an important component of science education at the secondary school and undergraduate levels. This paper presents a case study of students learning in a unique apprenticeship model in which students are engaged in long-term (18 month) open-ended research projects in physics that are done at the laboratory in school, and in which the project advisor is a physics teacher supported by a community of teacher-researchers. The goals of the study were to characterize what the students learned, how they perceived their inquiry and their role in it, the features of mentorship they received and the social-infrastructure in which they and their advisor functioned. Qualitative data were collected over a whole school year through interviews, weekly observations, and content analysis of the final research reports. Participants were the focus advisor, and some of his former and current project mentees. Data on the larger educational context were collected from other project advisors and their mentees. The study documented students' learning gains such as learning of scientific content and skills, internalization of scientific habits of thought as well as developing passion, interest, and agency with regard to science. It documented features of students' engagement that reflect deep involvement in the technical and epistemic aspects of the inquiry, and highlighted the specific features of mentorship, and the social infrastructure that fostered this learning and engagement. It concluded with a theoretical examination of the interaction between a cultural discipline (i.e., physics), the social infrastructure in which the advisor and the students function, the advisor's mentorship style, and the students' learning and engagement. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. #

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