In this study, the effects of teacher education on preservice secondary science and mathematics teacher readiness (defined as an understanding of how to implement current standards, how to teach English learners, and the belief teachers have about their abilities and skills as educators) and teacher performance assessment (edTPA) scores were examined. Its purpose was to provide insight into ways to better prepare teachers to teach their discipline in reform-based ways to all students. To do so, a subset of preservice teachers (teacher candidates) enrolled in a teacher education program at one of six California public universities participated. To determine teacher readiness, participants completed a survey, composed of both five-point Likert scale questions and open-ended response questions, at the beginning and end of their program. Their responses to both surveys were scored based on a rubric used in previous, related studies. The scores were compared between preservice teachers who had completed undergraduate STEM education programs and those who had not at the beginning of their teacher education programs. The scores were then analyzed for significant changes in teacher readiness between the beginning and end of the program using repeated measures analysis. The scores were also analyzed for differences among participants attending fifth-year, post-baccalaureate teacher education programs and an experimental undergraduate program. Further teacher performance assessment (edTPA) scores were analyzed to determine possible associations with teacher readiness using canonical correlation analysis. Undergraduate STEM education programs were effective in developing standards-based instruction. Fifth-year, post-baccalaureate teacher education programs were effective in developing language, literacy, and EL instruction, whereas an experimental undergraduate teacher education program was not. Both undergraduate STEM education programs and teacher education programs were not very effective in developing teacher efficacy. Findings suggest that teacher educators and curriculum developers involved in undergraduate STEM education programs should consider how to address and include the topic of language, literacy, and EL instructions in their programs. Teacher educators involved in teacher education programs should consider how to improve preservice teachers’ understanding of standards-based instruction through their programs as well.

Preservice mathematics teachers today are charged with the challenging yet vital task of learning how to authentically engage their future students in the Standards for Mathematical Practice. These eight practices specify the various levels of competence that mathematics teachers of all levels should explore to see their students flourish. While they are a critical component of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and are based on longstanding processes and mathematical proficiencies established in mathematics education, there is little research to date that has looked at how preservice mathematics teachers understand, implement, and engage their students in these practices. This dissertation sought to understand how preservice mathematics teachers conceptualized the Standards for Mathematical Practice throughout their teacher education. Data collection consisted of initial and follow-up interviews and completed edTPA portfolios from 47 preservice mathematics teachers from three separate cohorts across four different university teacher education programs in California. I analyzed the data for this dissertation in three separate ways. First, I looked at which of the Standards for Mathematical Practice preservice mathematics teachers reported in interviews as the most important to teach, as well as which ones they needed further help in understanding (Chapter 2). I looked to see how their responses compared across initial and follow-up interviews, as well across the four universities participants were from. Participants overwhelmingly considered Practices 1 and 3 to be the most important to teach regardless of pre- or post-interview and which university they attended. The same applied to which practices preservice mathematics teachers reported needing further support in understanding, which were Practices 4 and 8. Next, I investigated how the participants in this study incorporated the Standards for Mathematical Practice in their edTPA (Chapter 3). By coding preservice mathematics teachers’ edTPA video clips according to the MCOP2, I was able to create a correlation coefficient between participants’ MCOP2 scores with their edTPA instructional commentary and overall edTPA score, therefore understanding the extent to which preservice mathematics teachers incorporated the practices in their edTPA. Finally, I looked at how a subset of preservice mathematics teachers drew on the Standards for Mathematical Practice through the use of cognitively demanding tasks in their edTPA (Chapter 4). Through the correlation I created in Chapter 3, I selected six participants, three of who scored high and three low, and investigated the levels of cognitive demand of the tasks they incorporated into their edTPA planning section, as well as which Standards for Mathematical Practice these tasks incorporated. Participants who received high edTPA scores tended to include tasks that were of higher demand, which not only reflected a higher number of the practices, but also engaged students in Practices 1 and 3. Those who received low scores had a higher frequency of low demand tasks, which included less practices overall, with Practices 1 and 3 frequently absent. My work extends the literature on preservice mathematics teachers’ understanding of the Standards for Mathematical Practice and supports the need for future research that will continue to support the successful education of our preservice mathematics teachers.

The field of science education has historically focused on developing mastery of discrete content at the expense of scientific practices (Zeidler, 2016). This emphasis has shifted in recent years through a new vision for science education put forth in documents such as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS; NGSS Lead States, 2013). New standards like the NGSS focus on developing well-rounded students by incorporating practices and concepts that accurately reflect the real-life work of scientists. However, these standards do not adequately consider the social-political and cultural perspectives of the students they are meant to serve. For example, if issues such as climate change are considered only as science dependent, students are not exposed to the impacts that climate change has on communities that are disproportionality those of color (Feinstein & Kirchgasler, 2014). Since preservice teachers are trained in their teacher education programs to teach the NGSS, they are not being adequately trained to address these perspectives as well. In this study, I utilized an exploratory sequential design to examine how 66 preservice teachers reported being prepared and empowered to address social justice science issues, specifically climate change. From interviews with science education and climate change experts, I identified core ideas for climate change education and a developed a survey for preservice teachers as a result. I then collected and analyzed teacher responses from the survey utilizing a framework that integrates key concepts from culturally empowering pedagogy, justice-centered pedagogy (Morales-Doyle, 2017), civic science education (Rudolph & Horibe, 2016; Levy et al., 2021), youth participatory science (Morales-Doyle & Frausto, 2019), and professional teacher agency (Priestley et al., 2016). Results from this study provide areas of focus for teacher education programs to consider in order to empower teachers to be agents of change to help develop transformative students. Implications from this study offer a framework for teacher education programs to utilize to empower teachers as agents of change and strategies for educators to utilize to support the development of their students as transformative individuals.

With school populations across the country becoming increasingly representative of students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, new considerations must be made to promote equitable and engaged science learning for all students (National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering, & Institute of Medicine [NAEEM], 2011). The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) respond to a need for equity by explicitly calling on science teachers to “acquire effective strategies to include all students regardless of racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic, and gender backgrounds” (NGSS Lead States, 2013, Appendix D, p. 38). Some prior research has criticized the NGSS for simply being another set of standards that constrain what it means to know and do the discipline, and thus, do not allow for diverse ways of knowing that do not align with the standards (Rodriguez, 2013; Miller et al., 2018). As such, there needs to be greater understanding about what effective strategies teachers use to teach diverse learners within the context of a reform-oriented science education landscape that calls for actively engaging students in science practices (Ko & Krist, 2019). The overarching goal of this dissertation is to examine one such strategy, specifically how middle school science teachers in California provide opportunities for epistemic agency by drawing on students’ funds of knowledge. Epistemic agency is a construct which helps us to understand inequity in science education (Carlone et al., 2015). By attending to who has more or less power to direct the intellectual work of the classroom, we come to see patterns in who is afforded more or less power. One approach to attending to issues of power in the classroom and respecting children, their intelligence, and the communities they come from is to utilize a funds of knowledge perspective (Moll et al., 1992). A funds of knowledge approach to teaching and learning encourages teachers to draw on the cultural and community knowledges that students bring from outside of the classroom (e.g., home and family) to counteract deficit perspectives of diverse student populations. This mixed-methods study seeks to understand how teachers both draw on students’ funds of knowledge and enact their epistemic agency in the context of NGSS-aligned instruction. Participants included grades 6-8 science teachers across California, some who participated in targeted, extensive professional learning about the NGSS and some who received little training. The study was conducted in Fall 2018 through the end of Spring 2020. Data were collected and analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods that included teacher and student survey data, classroom observations, and teacher interviews. Overall, there were increases in teachers’ reported average implementation for epistemic agency and funds of knowledge across study years. However, while teachers reported increased enactment of epistemic agency over study years, students reported that the source of the questions and investigations in their class was more often derived from a source external to them (like a textbook, worksheet, or other material that was given by the teacher) rather than being derived from the students themselves or from their communities. Findings reinforce prior literature that question the NGSS as a set of standards that suggests students be the “do-ers” of science, so long as they are doing the science that is outlined in the standards (Berland et al., 2019; Lowell et al., 2020; Miller et al., 2018). Students’ ideas and questions were not frequently the basis of investigations in class and enactment of epistemic agency only went so far as eliciting student ideas that are recognizably aligned to the standards.

In this study, I sought to identify differences in the views and understandings of engineering design among individuals along the learning-to-teach continuum. To do so, I conducted a comprehensive review of literature to determine the various aspects of engineering design described in the fields of professional engineering and engineering education. Additionally, I reviewed literature on the methods used in teaching engineering design at the secondary (grade 7-12) level – to describe the various models used in classrooms, even before the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Last, I defined four groups along the learning-to-teach continuum: prospective, preservice, and practicing teachers, as well as teacher educators.

The context of this study centered around a California public university, including an internship program where undergraduates engaged with practicing mentor teachers in science and engineering teaching at local high schools, and a teacher education program where secondary science preservice teachers and the teacher educators who taught them participated. Interviews were conducted with all participants to gain insights into their views and understandings of engineering design. Prospective and preservice teachers were interviewed multiple times throughout the year and completed concept maps of the engineering design process multiple times as well; practicing teachers and teacher educators were interviewed once.

Three levels of analyses were conducted. I identified 30 aspects of engineering discussed by participants. Through phenomenographic methods, I also constructed six conceptual categories for engineering design to organize those aspects most commonly discussed. These categories were combined to demonstrate a participant’s view of engineering design (e.g., business focused, human centered, creative, etc.) as well as their complexity of understanding of engineering design overall (the more categories their ideas fit within, the more complex their understanding was thought to be).

I found that the most commonly referenced aspects of engineering design were in line with the three main dimensions described in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013). I also found that the practicing teacher participants overall conveyed the most complex and integrated understandings of engineering design, with the undergraduate, prospective teachers not far behind. One of the most important factors related to a more integrated understanding of engineering design was having formal engineering experience, especially in the form of conducting engineering research or having been a professional engineer.

Further, I found that female participants were more likely than their male counterparts to view engineering as having a human element—recognizing the need to collaborate with others throughout the process and the need to think about the potential user of the product the engineer is solving the problem for. These findings suggest that prior experience with engineering, and not experience in the classroom or with engineering education, tends to lead to a deeper, more authentic view of engineering. Finally, I close with a discussion of the overall findings, limitations of the study, potential implications, and future work.

The field of engineering continues to be highly male dominated, with women receiving only 20% of undergraduate degrees in the US and comprising only 15% of the workforce. Barriers to entry are experienced by girls as early as age five, when children become cognizant of the stereotype that girls are worse than boys at math. This dissertation sought to understand the barriers to entry and success faced by women in engineering, as well as the types of inclusive instructional pedagogy, from elementary school to college, that could help remove those barriers. We identified the most common barriers through survey data collected from 176 undergraduate engineering students at a university in Southern California. We subsequently analyzed the impact of a novel partnership program developed between a freshman mechanical engineering course and after school elementary program on the participating undergraduates and elementary students. We relied on pre-post student interviews, video-recorded program sessions, and documentation of student work to investigate the elementary students’ engineering identities and the undergraduates’ self-efficacy beliefs, as they developed over the course of the 10-week program. Three themes emerged from our analysis. First, barriers to entry and success in engineering for women began early and were unrelenting (Chapter 2). Women were introduced to engineering later in their lives and once enrolled in undergraduate programs, women were significantly more likely to have low beliefs in their engineering abilities and expectancies for future success, even after controlling for ability. Second, well designed undergraduate engineering curricula can substantially help boost engineering students’ self-efficacy beliefs (Chapter 3). Scaffolded project-based learning helped novice students develop the mastery experiences necessary to feel confident in their abilities and client-led design gave students the opportunity to identify as engineers. Elementary children proved to be ideal clients for freshman engineering students because they simulated the engineer-client relationship in a low-stress environment. Third, highly collaborative engineering programs which leverage peer groups, role models, and inter-group collaboration can help elementary students develop identities as engineers; this was especially impactful for girls (Chapter 4). Working with peers on a collaborative project encouraged students who were initially uninterested in engineering to engage in the activities and engineer role models helped students better identify as engineers. Our work supports and extends the literature by identifying common barriers for girls and women in the field of engineering and analyzing the link between well-designed engineering education and both elementary and undergraduate students’ ability beliefs. Our results suggest that to narrow the gender gap in engineering young girls need more regular exposure to engineering in highly collaborative environments and undergraduate engineering programs should be designed to support women’s development of engineering competence beliefs through mastery experiences with clear connections to engineering as a career.

Students designated as English learners (ELs) are the fastest growing group of students in K-12 public schools across the United States. As such, it is important for teacher education programs across the country to support their preservice teachers in attending to the academic and linguistic needs of ELs in order to foster learning opportunities in the classroom. Moreover, given the push for rigorous and equitable science instruction, preservice science teachers of ELs must also learn how to make cognitively demanding work accessible and understandable so that all students can benefit.

In this qualitative study, I investigated the lesson series of 20 preservice science teachers from four research universities by qualitatively analyzing their edTPA portfolios. These 20 preservice science teachers represented 37% of all preservice science teachers enrolled in these four programs across the two years of this study. Moreover, I separated my preservice teacher participants into two distinct groups: participants who did not have any EL students when completing their second semester takeover and participants who had at least one EL student in their classrooms at that time. For participants in the EL group, their EL students spoke a variety of home languages and ranged in English proficiency from emerging, to expanding, to bridging (beginning, intermediate, advanced). Further, I then narrowed down my two group samples to only include the participants with the top five and bottom five edTPA scores within each of the two groups. As a result, my final research sample included 20 preservice science teachers, including 10 participants from the EL group and 10 from the non-EL group

Using a lens of Task Analysis Guide in Science (TAGS), I tracked the NGSS science and engineering practices and science content included in tasks so as to evaluate both the kind and level of student reasoning and sensemaking required. To do so, I examined if and how preservice secondary science teachers (PSTs) contributed to ways to support ELs in both the content and language of science as well as provided opportunities to integrate complex science content and practices in their instruction. More specifically, I analyzed preservice secondary science teachers’ integration of science practices with content and implementation of cognitively demanding tasks as well as whether or not their teaching varied by those preservice teachers who had ELs in their classroom and those who did not. I also examined preservice secondary science teachers’ support of academic language demands, and whether or not those types of support differed between those PSTs who taught ELs and those who did not.

One of the major findings was that the PSTs’ instructional task content-practice integration and use of cognitively demanding work were clearly related to how successful they were during their performance assessment, as specified by their total edTPA scores. In fact, those 10 participants who scored high on the edTPA (both PSTs with ELs and PSTs without ELs) were placed in the TAGS Quadrant I: Their instruction showed a high level of integration between science content and practices, and a high level of cognitive demand. In contrast, those 10 participants who had the bottom edTPA scores in each group (both PSTs with ELs and PSTs without ELs) were placed in the TAGS Quadrant III: They were neither able to successfully integrate the subject content and NGSS practices nor high cognitively demand during instructional tasks.

A second major finding was in terms of the number and types of academic language supports for ELs identified across PSTs. Overall, I found that participants described types of language support at the discursive level the most often and supports at the syntactic level the least often, with discussion of supports at the lexical level falling in between. In addition, those participants who did not teach ELs were still able to implement many of the same types of support across all three levels when compared to those PSTs with ELs. However, when compared to participants in Quadrant I, Quadrant III participants exhibited a greater variation in terms of supports across both groups (PSTs with ELs and those without ELs) and implemented fewer number of supports in general.

In sum, my findings indicate that some preservice secondary science teachers learned to recognize and appreciate their role in promoting reform-based science classrooms that support all students, especially ELs, better than others. Some PSTs were also able to develop a deeper understanding about academic language at the lexical, syntactic, and discursive levels than others. As such, this study suggests that the four teacher education programs were partially effective in supporting PSTs in developing effective instruction for ELs and implementing ambitious teaching practices aligned with the NGSS framework and cognitively demanding tasks. I conclude by providing recommendations for teacher education programs to better prepare reform-minded secondary science teachers capable of teaching all students, especially English learners.

Scholars note that teacher preparation is a critical part of addressing equity and justice in K-12 school settings (Goodwin & Darity, 2019; Kretchmar & Zeichner, 2016; Zeichner et al., 2016). However, despite efforts to make teacher education programs more equitable and diverse, many continue to underprepare preservice teachers to center social justice and meet the academic needs of culturally and racially diverse students (Mensah, 2021) and inequity and racism persist in teacher education (Kohli, 2022). Therefore, it remains crucial to investigate how preservice teachers in teacher education programs can gain experience in learning how to enact teaching that decenters whiteness, fosters criticality, fosters rigorous scientific learning, provides a context which values the epistemologies of diverse cultures, and supports students in working to change social inequities (Ladson-Billings, 2000; Trigos-Carrillo & Rogers, 2017).The need for social justice teacher education is perhaps even more critical for preservice teachers of STEM subjects, as justice-centered discourses are often absent from science and mathematics classrooms and teacher education contexts (Rodriguez, 2015). Science preservice teachers who make socially just science instruction the foundation of their classrooms adopt curriculum that is academically rigorous and relevant to students (Ladson-Billings, 2020), teach students about the historically racist and inequitable aspects of science practices and products (Morales-Doyle, 2017), and also teach that science is a critical tool in alleviating equity and social justice issues. In this study, I utilized a multiple case study design to examine a science teacher educator and a cohort of preservice secondary science teachers’ understandings and enactments of justice-centered science pedagogy (Morales-Doyle, 2017). Justice-centered science pedagogy engages students in academically rigorous learning based on social and environmental justice issues. The three domains of this framework are antiracist and equitable science education, social justice science issues, and youth as transformative intellectuals. Using semi-structured interviews, observations, and content analysis of their course website, data were gathered over the course of the yearlong program to understand the teacher educator and preservice teachers’ opportunities to learn about justice-centered science pedagogy, as well as the ways that they were actually taking this work up. Results from this study demonstrate that the pandemic created limitations to the enactment of justice-centered science pedagogy, and that while preservice teachers reported focusing on academics, eliciting student ideas, framing students as producers of knowledge and culture, and prioritized building positive relationships with students, few reported utilizing social justice science issues in their science lessons. Implications from this study offer that explicit instruction and professional learning communities in both reform-based and justice-centered science practices can prepare preservice teachers to more fully enact justice-centered science teaching.