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The importance of early and developmentally appropriate science education is increasingly recognized. Consequently, creation of common guidelines and standards in early childhood science education has begun (National Research Council (NRC), 2012), and researchers, practitioners, and policy makers have shown great interest in aligning professional development with the new guidelines and standards. There are some important issues that need to be addressed in order to successfully implement guidelines and make progress toward accomplishing standards. Early childhood teachers have expressed a lack of confidence in teaching science and nature (Torquati, Cutler, Gilkerson, & Sarver, in press) and have limited science and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (Appleton, 2008). These are critical issues because teachers’ subject-matter knowledge is a robust predictor of student learning outcomes (Enfield & Rogers, 2009; Kennedy, 1998; Wilson, Floden, & Ferrini-Mundy, 2002) and is seen as a critical step toward improving K-12 student achievement (National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century (NCMST), 2000; NRC, 2000). We argue that the same is true of preschool teachers.

This chapter discusses: (a) theories and practices in early childhood science education (i.e., preschool through 3rd grade) in relation to teaching for conceptual change, (b) research on methods of professional development in early childhood science education, and (c) innovative approaches to integrating scientific practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas with early childhood professional development.

Learning through formal and informal experiences is critical for building content knowledge, pedagogical skills, and self-efficacy/confidence for preservice teachers. teachHOUSTON offers numerous teacher enhancement opportunities outside the teacher education courses which allows preservice teachers to connect to the real world which includes being able to relate to a diverse population of students and to understand how the course content can be related to them, their families, and communities in their everyday experiences. Through formal and informal experiences such as professional development workshops, discipline specific courses, research experiences, and internships, preservice teachers have the opportunity to engage in hands-on science activities they can use with their students, develop lessons, and gain knowledge on how to deliver this content while managing their classroom. This chapter will give an overview of the formal and informal experiences offered through teachHOUSTON with a highlight on the structure and content of the six week Noyce Internship Program which engaged interns as counselors and teaching assistants in a summer STEM camp for underserved middle school students and introduces the interns to interactive sessions that model promising practices for teaching.

The authors are developing a model for rural science teacher professional development, building teacher expertise and collaboration and creating high-quality science lessons: technology-mediated lesson study (TMLS).

TMLS provided the means for geographically distributed teachers to collaborate, develop, implement and improve lessons. TMLS uses technology to capture lesson implementation and collaborate on lesson iterations.

This paper describes the seven steps of the TMLS process with examples, showing how teachers develop their content and pedagogical knowledge while building relationships.

The TMLS approach provides an innovative option for teachers to collaborate across distances and form strong, lasting relationships with others.

This chapter briefly reviews the research related to the construct of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) over the past 25 years. Despite the remarkable implications of the PCK conceptualization, questions remain concerning the vagueness of the construct and the studies conducted on the PCK research line, questions which may lead to new developments in defining the nature of the conceptualization, its validity, and its utility. However, agreement exists concerning the need to portray specific cases of PCK of successful teaching. The work argues for a need to develop models of teacher learning and professional development that are subject matter specific. The chapter ends with a call for basing professional development on the conceptualization of PCK.

This chapter traces the career trajectories of the teachHOUSTON science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers since the inception of the program. It asks whether the National Science Foundation (NSF) investment of millions of dollars in STEM education produced more STEM teachers of high quality for the diverse, urban area. The chapter is filled with descriptive statistics and stories. Two major findings are that the teachHOUSTON program produced double-digit physics teachers when the Greater Houston area had not had a freshly prepared physics teacher in over a decade. Additionally, teachHOUSTON graduates have distinguished themselves by being named recipients of several awards such as beginning teacher of the year awards, district teacher of the year awards, among other distinctions. teachHOUSTON alumni are also serving in a variety of leadership capacities for high-need public school districts. The chapter ends with a discussion of the program's strengths as well as the areas in which it continues to grow. Three new NSF grants allow for continued improvement and transition this work into two additional books proposed in this three-volume series.

The overarching goal of the research is to understand strategies that can support utility and access to high-quality teacher professional development (PD). This study aims to examine the design and delivery of an online asynchronous course for science teachers using the edX massively online open course (MOOC) platform. The conceptual framework considers three areas of research: high-quality PD characteristics for K12 teachers, the development of social capital and known challenges in MOOC and computer-supported collaborative learning and participation.

This is an empirical mixed-methods study that details the design of the PD course and implementation strategies that instantiate the conceptual framework. The authors collected three data sources from 41 teachers who completed the course. These included post course satisfaction surveys, teacher semi structured interviews and discussion board contributions.

Survey findings revealed high satisfaction among teachers in the areas of overall course design, module construction and delivery and usability of materials in teaching. Interview findings showed positive perceptions of the social capital framing in developing tie quality, trust, depth of interactions and access to expertise. Analyses of discussion board contributions also demonstrated high degrees of information exchange resulting from prompts intentionally constructed to foster collaboration.

This study offers a set of strategies to build networked teacher PD communities in asynchronous online PD platforms and shows promising evidence of addressing quality and access issues.

Designing experiences to build teachers’ social capital shows promising potential to support high quality PD that may, in turn, raise the quality of science education for students and classrooms both locally in the US and globally.

The conceptual framework provides a novel approach to theorizing and operationalizing best practices for teacher PD and online participation.

This research examines the influence of parents on students studying the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and entering STEM careers. Participating youths were awarded scholarships from large funded US grant programmes. Cases of two graduate students (one female, one male) and one undergraduate student (male) are featured. The first two students in the convenience sample are biology and physics majors in a STEM teacher education program; the third is enrolled in computer science. National reports emphasizing the importance of parents on their children's education are presented, along with diverse international literature. The use of narrative in STEM curriculum and narrative inquiry in STEM research are also documented. Experience, story, and identity form the study's conceptual frame. The narrative inquiry research method employs broadening, burrowing, and storying and restorying to elucidate the students' academic trajectories. Incidents of circumstantial and planned parent curriculum making surfaced when the data were serially interpreted. Other noteworthy themes included: (1) relationships between (student) learners and (teacher) parents, (2) invitations to inquiry, (3) modes of inquiry, (4) the improbability of certainty, and (5) changed narratives = changed lives. While policy briefs provide sweeping statements about parents' positive effects on their children, narrative inquiries such as this one illuminate parents' inquiry moves within home environments. These actions became retrospectively revealed in their adult children's lived narratives. These small stories, while not generalizable, map how students, shaped by their parents' nurturing, enter the STEM disciplines and STEM-related careers through multiple pathways in addition to the identified pipeline.

This paper aims to unveil opportunities for promoting teacher ethics through quality school-based professional development (S-BPD) programmes to improve teachers’ ethical conduct in Tanzanian primary schools.

This qualitative study uses an institutional ethnography design. The data were collected through interviews, focus group discussion, observation and documentary review. Data analysis was guided by Braun and Clarke’s (2006) framework of thematic analysis.

Opportunities to promote teacher ethics drew on quality S-BPD programmes. These opportunities include interactions with morally committed teachers, introduction of the civic and moral subject, prevalence of teacher misconduct, ideal school leadership and development and access to affordable technology.

The study provides useful insights into how to reshape teachers’ ethical competences and to link theory and practice in teaching. Moreover, the study suggests school-based solutions to the problem of resource scarcity for teachers to retool their professional competences.

The opportunities revealed are critical for promoting teacher ethics through quality S-BPD programmes in primary schools because teacher ethics is learned. The study offers insights into how to improve teacher ethics in primary schools. It concludes that internalising these opportunities as a whole is vital, as they have the potential to promote teacher ethics in Tanzanian public primary schools.