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The assertion that general reform-based science teaching practices (GRBSTPs) can facilitate nature of science (NOS) instruction has been mentioned in the literature, but rigorous and transparent empirical substantiation for this claim has not been made. This investigation empirically demonstrates an association between thirteen experienced teachers' NOS implementation practices and their GRBSTPs. While effectively implementing GRBSTPs does not ensure the NOS will be taught, the findings show that these practices are associated with high levels of NOS instruction. In this study, teachers who implemented higher levels of reform-based practices were also observed to enact more instances of planned and spontaneous effective NOS instruction. Furthermore, these teachers were more likely to recognize and capitalize on NOS teaching opportunities when they unexpectedly arose in the context of their GRBSTPs. Just as NOS understanding must be assessed when determining factors associated with teachers' NOS implementation, teachers' GRBSTPs should also be empirically and transparently established to ensure they do not mask or confound other factors associated with NOS implementation.

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about their teaching and their classroom practices based on interviews and classroom observations across eight elementary science teachers. A quantitative research analysis showed there was a statistically positive correlation between their beliefs and practices. However, only three teachers’ belief categories were coherent with classroom practices. We argue that there is a complex understanding of tension between the two entities. Those teachers with traditional teaching profiles noted that centralized exams and a strict curriculum limited their classroom practices. Implications for this study about the practice of reform-based teaching are discussed.

The inclusion of engineering practices poses a challenge for many science teachers trying to meet the expectations of the Next Generation Science Standards because they lack formal training in engineering. This, however, may provide an opportunity for science teacher educators striving to improve the use of learner-centered teaching practices by science teachers. The exploratory study in this article describes the impact to teachers' practices of a professional development program on the inclusion of engineering in high school chemistry. Survey data and a case study of 1 of the participants were used to assess the professional development program. By the end of the program, teachers described using engineering activities in their classroom along with more general changes to other aspects of their teaching. The subject of the case study included new student-centered teaching methods in his teaching practice in the year following the professional development. In line with conceptual change theory and transfer of learning theory, the results of this study led to the hypothesis that learning to include engineering in their classrooms may improve secondary science teachers' use of learner-centered practices throughout their teaching.

Science education reform standards have shifted focus from exploration and experimentation to evidence-based explanation and argumentation to prepare students with knowledge for a changing workforce and critical thinking skills to evaluate issues requiring increasing scientific literacy. However, in urban schools serving poor, diverse populations, where the priority is on students’ assessment results in reading and math, students may not receive reform-based science. The rationale for this qualitative study was to examine how two elementary teachers from high-poverty urban schools planned for reform-based science in response to a quality state science assessment in conjunction with their training and resources. Their state assessment included an inquiry task requiring students to construct responses to questions based on their investigation data. From evaluating evidence using Zembal-Saul’s continuum for teaching science as argument, the findings indicated that both teachers adopted an investigation-based and evidence-based approach to science teaching to prepare students for the inquiry task. However, one teacher provided argument-based science teaching from her explicit training in that approach. The results suggested that the teachers’ training and resources informed their interpretation of the focus areas on the science assessment inquiry task and influenced the extent to which they offered students an equitable opportunity to develop higher-order thinking from reform-based science.

Purpose This study examines the impact of the 108 Curriculum Guidelines (108CG) over the past decade on Taiwan's educational reforms, providing an in-depth analysis of the challenges encountered during its implementation. By conducting this comprehensive review, this study aims to offer recommendations for future policy improvements. The research objectives are as follows: (1) to investigate the distribution of academic research on the 108CG; (2) to identify research hotspots and analyze developmental trends in 108CG-related research to inform future educational policy-making. Main Theories or Conceptual Frameworks The 108CG, introduced by Taiwan's Ministry of Education in 2014 and fully implemented in 2019, marked a shiftfrom traditional ability-based education to a competency-oriented model focused on \"spontaneity,\" \"interaction,\" and \"the common good.\" This study employs bibliometric analysis to synthesize post-implementation research and trace the academic development and key thematic trends in this evolv

This study first analyses the development of teacher education in Taiwan since 1994, such as the changes from deregulation, standards-based to evidence-based, and adopts a post-structural perspective of ontological politics to point out the instrumental thinking tendency of mainstream teacher education research methods. Secondly, noninstrumental thinking is examined and criticized through discussions on topics such as \"the contradiction of teacher education ideas,\" \"technicalisation of teacher quality management,\" and \"re-conception of teacher education curriculum ideology.\" Finally, this study presents conclusions and follow-up suggestions regarding the transition and current situation of teacher education, the future challenges of current teacher education policies, and the value of post-structural education research. The author anticipates providing a different perspective on Taiwan's teacher education development in the past 30 years.

Regardless how you interpret the statistics, the divorce rate in the United States is staggering. But, what if thegovernmentcould change this? Would families be better off if new public policies made it more difficult for couples to separate? This book explores a movement that emerged over the past fifteen years, which aims to do just that. Guided by certain politicians and religious leaders who herald marriage as a solution to a range of longstanding social problems, a handful of state governments enacted \"covenant marriage\" laws, which require couples to choose between a conventional and a covenant marriage. While the familiar type of union requires little effort to enter and can be terminated by either party unilaterally, covenant marriage requires premarital counseling, an agreement bound by fault-based rules or lengthy waiting periods to exit, and a legal stipulation that divorce can be granted only after the couple has received counseling. Drawing on interviews with over 700 couples-half of whom have chosen covenant unions-this book not only evaluates the viability of public policy in the intimate affairs of marriage, it also explores how growing public discourse is causing men and women to rethink the meaning of marriage.

\"In 1999, Noelani Goodyear-Ka'opua was among a group of young educators and parents who founded Halau Ku Mana, a secondary school that remains one of the only Hawaiian culture-based charter schools in urban Honolulu. The Seeds We Planted tells the story of Halau Ku Mana against the backdrop of the Hawaiian struggle for self-determination and the U.S. charter school movement, revealing a critical tension: the successes of a school celebrating indigenous culture are measured by the standards of settler colonialism. How, Goodyear-Ka'opua asks, does an indigenous people use schooling to maintain and transform a common sense of purpose and interconnection of nationhood in the face of forces of imperialism and colonialism? What roles do race, gender, and place play in these processes? Her book, with its richly descriptive portrait of indigenous education in one community, offers practical answers steeped in the remarkable--and largely suppressed--history of Hawaiian popular learning and literacy. This uniquely Hawaiian experience addresses broader concerns about what it means to enact indigenous cultural-political resurgence while working within and against settler colonial structures. Ultimately, The Seeds We Planted shows that indigenous education can foster collective renewal and continuity\"-- Provided by publisher.

Health care costs make up nearly a fifth of U.S. gross domestic product, but health care is a peculiar thing to buy and sell. Both a scarce resource and a basic need, it involves physical and emotional vulnerability and at the same time it operates as big business. Patients have little choice but to trust those who provide them care, but even those providers confront a great deal of medical uncertainty about the services they offer.Selling Our Soulslooks at the contradictions inherent in one particular health care market-hospital care. Based on extensive interviews and observations across the three hospitals of one California city, the book explores the tensions embedded in the market for hospital care, how different hospitals manage these tensions, the historical trajectories driving disparities in contemporary hospital practice, and the perils and possibilities of various models of care. As Adam Reich shows, the book's three featured hospitals could not be more different in background or contemporary practice. PubliCare was founded in the late nineteenth century as an almshouse in order to address the needs of the destitute. HolyCare was founded by an order of nuns in the mid-twentieth century, offering spiritual comfort to the paying patient. And GroupCare was founded in the late twentieth century to rationalize and economize care for middle-class patients and their employers. Reich explains how these legacies play out today in terms of the hospitals' different responses to similar market pressures, and the varieties of care that result. Selling Our Soulsis an in-depth investigation into how hospital organizations and the people who work in them make sense of and respond to the modern health care market.

In the late 1990s, treatment-related deaths or “complications\" were the fifth leading cause of death for Americans. Spurred by the crisis, a group of dedicated physicians like Paul Batalden and Don Berwick made it their goal to study the concepts of “quality improvement\" used at Toyota and NASA, and to apply them to the practice of medicine. This book tells their story, and how these “heretical\" ideas have blossomed into a movement, bringing the focus back to where it should have always been: the patient.