ABSTRACT
The three chapters in Section III each describe a coherent set of science teacher learning experiences along with some evidence of the success of these experiences in helping teachers understand, value, and use teaching practices that engage student sensemaking in science. In Chapter 13 Betsy Davis and colleagues report on a practice-based teacher education program. Chapter 14 focuses on 20 years of partnership work between Pennsylvania State University and a local school district to develop a professional development school (PDS) that supports both preservice and inservice teachers. In Chapter 15 Hopkins and colleagues report on a small one-year pilot effort to reshape a professional development (PD) program for inservice teachers so that it better fits the policies and practices of a partner school district in a nascent immigrant community to support the needs of emergent bilingual children. I was interested in examining both the commonalities and the unique features of these efforts that might contribute to deepening our thinking and questioning about supportive contexts for science teacher learning.
