Development of the NOS Community
We now share insights from each of the NOS community meetings, to illustrate the
development of the CoP. Early in the semester, the preservice teachers focussed on
sharing strategies for teaching NOS, and raised requests for feedback from the university
professor and doctoral student. This focus on teaching strategies is evidence of
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building a shared repertoire. For example, at the first meeting, Angela shared how she
was using NOS to wrap up a unit on water by using a writing prompt for her fourth
graders ‘how are you creatively exploring hot red water, and cold blue water, and
how do you know which is less dense?’ Holly described how she was preparing to
‘add NOS stuff, but still need to teach by the book. I can tell full option science
system (FOSS) (Lawrence Hall of Science. Full Option Science Systems, 2009)
doesn’t emphasize NOS explicitly, but I want to do so in my own teaching’. Kelly
shared a fossil hunter guide that she used to connect NOS to fossil activities in her
class. She talked about how one of her students asked whether observations were
simply facts, and that she responded with ‘just like colors are perceived differently
by different people, so are observations’. She wanted feedback regarding the sociocultural
influences on observations. We spent some of the time scheduling classroom
observations for the upcoming weeks. This scheduling conversation prompted
Kelly to request feedback on NOS instruction, and for the observers to agree to
share field notes with those being observed. The request for feedback is evidence of
mutual engagement—that not only the facilitators were interested in what the teachers
were doing, but they were interested in teaching NOS as well.