Designing and Enacting Coherent Science Teacher Education

For years, research and policy have been calling for science teaching that motivates student learning through relevant phenomena and problems, provides students with opportunities for meaningful peer collaboration, and focuses on building a need-to-know about a small set of core science ideas during a series of connected learning experiences. We refer to such instruction as “coherent”, and while coherent instruction has long been advocated within science teacher education programs, new teachers struggle to implement pedagogical approaches emphasized within science teacher education programs and abandon those in favor of more traditional methods.