Supporting Scientific Practices in Elementary and Middle School Classrooms

We aim to support pedagogical reasoning in science classrooms by engaging pre-service science teachers in a new practice—pedagogical argumentation—that makes grappling with student ideas a socially necessary aspect of pedagogical reasoning. This collaborative discourse practice can create a community environment that will support pre-service teachers as they attend to and explore responses to student ideas. The study addresses these questions:
1.) What cognitive, social, and/or contextual resources do pre-service teachers bring to bear during pedagogical argumentation?
2.) How can we support the development of those resources?
3.) How does developing and refining such resources impact teachers’ pedagogical reasoning?