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Indigenous students may find that science education can be a discouraging experience. Science content often seems disconnected from their cultural beliefs, values, and heritage. The disconnection can create a sense of alienation, making it difficult for students to relate to or engage with the traditional classroom “science-as-taught” curriculum. As Michie, Hogue, and Rioux (2018) noted, […]

My Journey to Growth-Based Grading Over more than two decades of teaching, I’ve come to understand that true education is about fostering each student’s growth—not by focusing on where they start, but on how far they progress relative to their starting point. As society evolves, so too must our instructional methods to meet the changing […]

The promise of approximations to enhance teacher learning is exciting, yet their design and implementation require careful consideration. This blog builds on the previous post from Bondurant and Howell (2025), where they defined and examined approximations in alignment with the Teaching for Robust Understanding (TRU) framework (Schoenfeld, 2023). An approximation is a structured, scaled-down version […]

This is the first of two blogs centered on effective approximations of practice in mathematics teacher education. In a 2024 position statement on linking mathematics education research and practice, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) states that “research should identify high-leverage, effective, equitable mathematics practices shared in useful, actionable ways” (NCTM, 2024). In […]

All students should have the opportunity to learn about science in the context of real-world issues. Using the context of socioscientific issues to center science teaching and learning helps students see the relevance of science to their everyday lives and the lives of others, and the role science plays in speaking to complex real-world issues […]