Many elementary school teachers have difficulty adopting reform-oriented practices
because they have insufficient knowledge of science content and content specific
teaching strategies.
Cohen and Hill found that teachers who had engaged in
large-scale professional development often blended reform-oriented practices with
traditional practices. For example, teachers might engage students in hands-on
activities or ask them to pose their own questions, but fail to help students make
sense of the data they collected or ask the students for evidence-based explanations.
Many elementary school teachers have additional difficulties teaching science to
ELL students .
They assume that ELL students must acquire English before learning science, are
unaware of linguistic and cultural influences on science learning, do not consider
‘‘teaching for diversity’’ as their responsibility, or overlook linguistic differences
and accept inequities as a given condition.
With ELL students, English language ,and literacy development should be seen as
integral to subject area instruction. ELL students confront the demands of academic
learning through a yet unmastered language. Subject area instruction provides a
meaningful context for English language and literacy development, while language
processes provide the medium for understanding academic content. Hands-on, inquiry-based science is particularly
effective for ELL students, as it bridges contextualized exploration of natural
phenomena, authentic language activities, and communication of ideas in a variety
of formats, including written, oral, gestural, and graphic . Doing so fosters the creation of classroom environments that promote ELL students’ development of general and content-specific academic language.