Christa Haverly is a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University. Her talk was titled "Developing Urban Elementary Teachers' Responsiveness to Students' Scientific Sense-Making."

Abstract

Traditional elementary science teaching is documented as limited, fact- and activity-based, and disconnected from students’ lived experiences and scientific sense-making. Responsive science teaching has the potential to disrupt this status quo in order to increase science literacy for students who have been historically marginalized in science and school science. However, responsive science teaching is challenging due to the nature of its uncertainty and how different it is from most teachers’ “apprenticeships of observation” (Lortie, 1975). In this talk, I will share findings from my research in which I studied urban elementary teachers’ responsiveness in their science teaching with a disciplinary lens on students’ science sense-making, as well as an equity lens on teachers’ orientations towards social justice. In addition, my findings illuminate the types of professional learning experiences which may support teachers with responsive science teaching and some constraints on teachers’ professional learning.