Disciplinary Literacy and the 4Es: Rigorous and Substantive Responses to Interdisciplinary Standards

Interdisciplinary Views of Standards

From an early age, science achievement is significantly linked to reading and math achievement, so reforms focused on only one of these areas may fall short in improving science achievement (Morgan et al., 2016). National Assessments of Educational Progress results in both science and reading have found that only about one third of students assessed are at or above Proficient achievement levels (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017). These findings, compounded by a leveling-off of interest in science around age 11 (J. Osbourne et al., 2003), open opportunities for rich, rigorous, interdisciplinary research to inform teaching practice and impact student achievement. Lee (2017) and Lee et al. (2013) analyzed interconnections of NGSS and CCSS-ELA and the overlap of ELA, science, and math standards, providing support for an interdisciplinary approach. To visualize these possibilities, Stage et al. (2013) designed a triple Venn diagram showing the ways ELA, science, and math standards come together to support and inform knowledge growth. This visual helps situate the interdisciplinary teaching practices of our focus teachers.

Literacy Through Disciplinary Lenses

Despite these intersections, an unhappy history of literacy educators and specialists attempting to infuse specific narrative and rhetorical strategies into content area classes has resulted in pushback from disciplinary educators and specialists. This is well deserved, since strategies for ELA do not translate wholesale to other disciplines. The “academic and pedagogical hubris” (Hinchman & O’Brien, 2019, p. 527) behind such assumptions can stem from a belief that literacy specialists are best positioned to prescribe all literacy work, when in fact, disciplinary specialists are far better suited to understanding and teaching literacies used in their area (C. Shanahan et al., 2011). Recent research has promoted partnerships between disciplinary and literacy specialists, emphasizing the ways literacy specialists should privilege disciplinary teachers’ expertise while supporting infusion of literacy in ways that honor the discipline and the classroom context (Hayden et al., 2019; Snow, 2015). This emphasis is integral to our research.

A Theoretical Framework for Disciplinary Literacy and Socially Just Teaching

Research on disciplinary literacy has evolved from describing differences between content area literacy and disciplinary literacy (T. Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, 2012), to exploring collaboration across disciplines (Fang & Coatoam, 2013; Hayden et al., 2019) and providing theoretical grounding for disciplinary literacy pedagogies (Carney & Indrisano, 2013; Moje, 2007, 2015; Shulman, 2005). Carney and Indrisano (2013) illuminated connections between disciplinary literacy and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK; Shulman, 1986), the professional knowledge for teaching that combines content knowledge and pedagogy in ways that honor needs and abilities of the learners at hand. Shulman (2005) provided specification of PCK for practice by describing “signature pedagogies” (p. 52) that include “surface structure” teaching behaviors for a discipline, “deep structure” best practices, and “implicit structure” (p. 54–55). Implicit structure includes moral dimensions: beliefs, attitudes, values, and dispositions that members of the discipline hold; and it is here that Moje’s (2007) theories on “[fusing] the moral and intellectual in a way that produces socially just subject-matter instruction” (p. 1) can frame research on instruction.

Moje (2007) proposed that by honoring discourses, texts, and traditions of a discipline concurrently with what students bring to learning, teachers provide students with equitable opportunities to gain access and develop expertise in the discipline. With that access, students gain tools needed to question and critique accepted knowledge in ways that can expand knowledge and produce social justice. Providing students with these disciplinary tools empowers them to engage in discourse that pushes individual and collective knowledge forward. In this potential to move collective knowledge forward, disciplinary literacy may transcend the boundaries of a construct and move into the realm of theory. Unrau and Alvermann (2013) defined theory as a “propositional [network] commonly used to help…researchers and practitioners understand, explain, and make predictions about key concepts and processes in a particular field” (p. 49). Enacting Moje’s (2007) propositions by honoring discourses, texts, and traditions along with the skills students bring to learning can lead to instruction that provides all students with the tools necessary to access literacy across disciplines and can frame socially just ways of teaching, learning, and knowing that can be observed and better understood.

Moje (2015) grounded this theory in inquiry with the 4Es’ heuristic, rendering disciplinary literacy performative and observable. During inquiry, students Engage in hands-on minds-on work of a discipline, and the knowledge and skills Elicited by the learning task can be leveraged by teachers to Engineer students’ engagement with the disciplinary knowledge needed. While engaged in such work teachers can prompt students to Examine the language, symbols, and other codes of the discipline, navigating discourse practices and learning how to question, read, write, and talk in ways that fit the discipline. Examination is further developed as students Evaluate language practices for a discipline: a kind of code-switching, meta-language activity when students practice different uses of new and known language within the lexicon of the discipline.

Moje and Ellison (2016) as well as Hinchman and O’Brien (2019) promoted hybrid approaches to teaching and research, with interdisciplinary teams. Hybrid approaches that include literacy specialists with expertise in reading and writing, and disciplinary specialists with expertise in resources for sense-making in the discipline, could result in equitable and lasting disciplinary literacy methods. The overlapping NGSS and CCSS-ELA present rich opportunities for exploring hybrid disciplinary literacy practices in science, and our interdisciplinary authorial partnership for this article brings attributes from both literacy and science to the analysis. We focus on experiences of three classroom science teachers implementing both NGSS and CCSS.

Context

The three teacher cases described here emerged from a sample of 72 classroom science teachers in an urban, public school district, who participated in the first three years of a 5-year professional development initiative, the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership (ISEP). The district had 31,000 students and a 53% graduation rate (below the state average) and had not met annual yearly progress goals in multiple areas at elementary and secondary levels for several years prior to ISEP.

ISEP included educational and community partners: the school district, a research university, a local 4-year college, and private industrial, research, and manufacturing firms in engineering and scientific fields. To help participating teachers develop science inquiry skills, the initiative provided a range of summer research experiences. Teachers were able to choose a different summer experience every year of their participation from four options: scientific research with a university or private research partner, engineering design projects with local industry and manufacturing partners, university coursework focused on supporting elementary teachers to develop classroom inquiry projects, or curriculum writing with fellow science educators.

To support integration of these summer experiences into classroom instruction, monthly professional development meetings led by university science educators focused on implementing NGSS using inquiry and overlapping CCSS-ELA standards. Topics included defining the interdisciplinary science inquiry framework (Liu, et al., 2013), schoolwide implementation and engineering design within the framework, and CCSS-ELA. Culminating projects included student science summits and teacher poster sessions. Both focused on classroom application of learning and were hosted by private research partners.

Case Selection for This Research

Ten focus teachers were initially selected to explore enactment of NGSS and CCSS-ELA standards within inquiry-based instruction. These 10 were representative of the entire cohort in terms of attendance at monthly meetings and participation in at least one summer research experience. They represented the range in grade levels and science subjects taught.

Preliminary research (Eades-Baird, 2015) revealed that these 10 teachers’ enactment of ELA standards during science sorted into five profiles based on knowledge, values, and observed practices: ELA-centered, exam-focused, in-the-middle, engineering design, and reform-based. Half the 10 teachers represented an exam-focused profile, where preparation for mandated standardized tests drove instruction. This focus led to a preponderance of direct instruction across grade levels, with science inquiry only occurring in highly structured and confirmatory ways, and literacy occurring primarily as note-taking. The argument for and against an exam-focused orientation is not one we can address adequately here, but the stance was not surprising given the context, where district graduation rates were low and progress targets unmet. Although exam-focused instruction had not yet resulted in student improvement on these global indicators, it is probable that teachers were strongly encouraged to maintain the stance in order to improve test scores.

We explored profiles of teachers who did not take this exam-focused approach, teachers who worked to incorporate literacy aspects of both NGSS and CCSS-ELA into science instruction using inquiry. We refined our sample further by selecting three teachers, each representing one of three profiles most distinct from one another but giving a flavor for the entire spectrum of standards enactment. Danielle (ELA-centered), Simon (in-the-middle) and Bryce (reform-based) were contrasting cases, developed individually and then examined in cross-case analysis to explore how they implemented NGSS and CCSS reforms. All three teachers reported minimal knowledge of literacy standards supporting NGSS and only general knowledge of disciplinary literacy for science.

Data

Teaching observations, interviews, and surveys were completed. Observations were first conducted during the summer research experience prior to Year 1 school-year implementation. Observations continued through each year, and during the final year of data collection, the three teachers were observed for 5–7 consecutive instructional days. A pre-observation written interview was utilized in addition to a field observation form and a post-observation rating form that organized standards implemented during the observation (Stage et al., 2013).

Semi-structured interviews were conducted yearly with each teacher, with follow-up to clarify responses. The protocol included background information, questions about summer research experiences, goals and approaches to science teaching, understanding and use of inquiry, factors influencing implementation, understanding and valuing of literacy standards and skills for science, and self-efficacy for implementing literacy. A 15-item Likert-type survey was implemented in Year 3 exploring knowledge and valuing of literacy within science, and literacy integration.

Analysis

A panel of five university science educators analyzed interviews and classroom observations using in vivo and open coding (Saldaña, 2009). Interviews were first coded holistically for general themes. Second cycle coding utilized a combination of in vivo and open coding (Table 1). Surveys were analyzed for descriptive statistics. Data from observations were plotted on the triple Venn diagram (Stage et al., 2013) illustrating implementation of science and ELA standards. The triple Venn analysis tool provided a way to triangulate teachers’ observed implementation of science and literacy standards with their stated beliefs from interviews and surveys.

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Table 1.

Selected General Themes for Science Teaching and Learning and Second-Cycle Codes.

General Themes	Second-Cycle Codes
Approach	Exam preparation Hands-on “Inquiry” mentioned by teacher Basic skills before inquiry Student-driven
Goals/purposes	Build science understanding “Real world” understanding Exam preparation Discovery of scientific phenomena
Expectations	Exam readiness Application to “real world” Skills: collaboration, measurement, research, critical thinking
Understanding of inquiry	Higher order thinking Interdisciplinary Student-centered Problem-based
Perceived goals/expectations for CCSS-ELA	Nontraditional literacies: graphing, data tables Reading and writing Essays, projects, summaries, lab write-ups
Challenges to implementation	Curriculum and assessment Lack of materials Student skills, behavior, work ethic

ELA-Centered: Danielle

As a sixth-grade classroom teacher, Danielle taught all content areas. Her first summer research experience was the university course to develop inquiry skills (Year 1). She moved on to conducting medical science research with university researchers, compiling cross sections of a mouse brain affected by methamphetamines (Year 2) and studying factors that influenced plant growth (Year 3). Danielle had 14 years of experience, and her multifaceted role certainly influenced her enactment of inquiry, NGSS, and CCSS-ELA.

The NGSS in particular require integrative science inquiry practices that several researchers have found elementary teachers were not prepared with during their preservice training (McNeill et al., 2016; J. F. Osbourne et al., 2019). These researchers have called for ongoing professional development to support elementary teachers with integrating science inquiry practices into classroom instruction. Danielle seemed to struggle with implementation of both sets of standards. Some lessons were primed for inquiry but lacked student involvement, such as the water demonstration described below. Others focused on fundamental literacy activities, such as constructing vocabulary foldables.

During interviews, Danielle described her science teaching as “interactive,” “hands-on,” and “problem-based.” Her purpose was to “allow students to explore, learn, and create new knowledge.” She expected students “to observe, measure, analyze, make hypotheses, [and] interpret data.” She connected these expectations to her summer research, which “required me to think outside the box…using higher order thinking skills and a lot of times my team had to sit down and understand all the vocabulary associated with our project.” Danielle’s expectations, combined with the standards she enacted could have Engaged her students in disciplinary literacy by involving them in “inquiry that allows [them] to gain insight into how questions are asked and examined and how conclusions are drawn, supported, communicated, contested, and defended” (Moje, 2015, p. 257). However, teaching observations revealed mismatches between Danielle’s purposes and enactment of inquiry.

Danielle’s science instruction enacted standards that fell solely in the science domain: S4 analyzing and interpreting data, and S6 constructing explanations and designing solutions; and one standard that fell solely in the ELA domain: E1 demonstrating independence reading complex texts and writing and speaking about them. She also enacted overlapping standards: S8 obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information; E2 building a strong base of knowledge through content rich texts; and E3 obtaining, synthesizing, and reporting findings clearly and effectively (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Triple Venn (Stage et al., 2013) used to document standards enacted in teachers’ instruction.

Observations of Danielle’s teaching revealed increased frequency of science instruction and depth of inquiry. This growth mirrored her summer research experiences that moved from more structured learning experiences with the university course (Year 1) to laboratory techniques and conducting active research (Years 2, 3). Lessons observed in Years 2 and 3 were highly scaffolded and teacher-directed, but in Year 3, students were slightly more engaged in hands-on activity and fundamental literacy tasks.

In Year 2, Danielle demonstrated Earth’s water availability in a lesson with no hands-on student engagement. After pouring out different amounts of water from a bottle to show proportions of fresh and salt water available, students completed a worksheet at their desks. In Year 3, a week of observations revealed that over half of science class time was spent on mastery of science vocabulary, constructing foldables for memorization. However, other lessons during the week demonstrated Engaging practices: working with data from science journals and observations of plants with seed and soil variables and producing a Venn diagram. Each student group presented their diagram to the class, communicating evidence from their experiments. These activities enacted overlapping science standards S8 and E3 (Figure 1), but one key disciplinary way scientists use literacy was notably absent from all observations and descriptions of science activity: argumentation from evidence. Danielle’s students did not use data collected during inquiry to make claims with supportive evidence.

NGSS supports argumentation beginning in kindergarten, but ELA standards have traditionally focused on fact/opinion in primary grades, persuasion in middle grades and finally argumentation in late high school (Lee, 2017). Argumentation is essentially a newly highlighted expectation for ELA, and although there is a growing body of literacy research in this area (Ghiso, 2015; Shi et al., 2019), experienced teachers like Danielle would benefit from professional development specifically focused on this genre. Danielle’s incorporation of literacy for science leaned most heavily on ELA standards. Seatwork following demonstrations engaged students in close reading and interpretation of science text and extensive time learning vocabulary. This illustrated her attempts to bridge gaps between her students’ below-level reading performance and engagement in literacy skills for science. Danielle noted that CCSS demanded more rigor and higher order thinking, and while survey responses indicated that she placed high value on CCSS-ELA, she was not confident the standards would lead to improved student learning or were appropriate due to “high variability in background knowledge” and “below-level reading skills.”

Although Danielle missed opportunities to Elicit/Engineer by infusing science vocabulary into inquiry-based activities (Moje, 2015), her focus on vocabulary was well founded. Difficulties with science language often keep students from mastering content (Hayden et al., 2020; Pearson, 2010), and in her summer research, Danielle had experienced firsthand the challenges of science vocabulary. Moje (2015) noted that “learning [definitions] of the technical language of disciplinary subjects is not as useful…if students are not engaged in disciplinary inquiry, because they have no way to apply the language they are learning” (p. 255). But in Danielle’s science classroom, and in Simon’s, infusing disciplinary language by connecting it to conceptual understanding gained through inquiry did not occur.

In-the-Middle: Simon

With 13 years of experience, Simon taught seventh- and eighth-grade general science and advanced eighth-grade living environments. His summer research experiences spanned a range of research and engineering; he shadowed a researcher at a cancer center (Year 1), worked alongside Danielle at the university medical school compiling cross sections of a mouse brain (Year 2), and worked with a private industrial engineering partner to create a teaching and demonstration model for cell membrane diffusion (Year 3). His goals for students evolved from an initial focus on exam preparation, to helping them “develop as positive individuals with awareness of real-world issues, equipped with tools to solve problems” that required science knowledge, and “develop[ing] base science content.”

Simon enacted the same number of ELA standards as Danielle and more science standards but fewer overlapping standards. His teaching approach included both literacy and inquiry but with no intersection. Like Danielle, Simon assigned literacy activities as seatwork separated from inquiry: “half the class doing literacy-based work, finding [answers], book work, and the other half [doing an] inquiry-based lab.” These literacy practices enacted standards related to reading complex texts (E1) and building a strong base of knowledge through content-rich texts (E2). Science activities were focused on skill building with low inquiry, and Simon’s instruction did not include argumentation.

Simon’s binary approach was reflected in standards enacted during teaching observations when time was split equally between direct instruction of facts and developing foundational science skills. ELA standards E1 and E2 were met through bookwork separate from inquiry activity. Science standards S1, S2, S3, S4, and S6 were observed during low-inquiry activities, such as building cell cake models with candies representing organelles, and during highly scaffolded skill activities for microscope use and pipetting. The only enacted standard that overlapped science and ELA was E2 when students spent time reading and answering questions with the textbook.

Simon reported evolving literacy practices in Year 2, when he included a focus on student writing and in Year 3 to include presentation skills. He described ways he intersected literacy with science, including leading students in close reading of science text, pausing to help with vocabulary and comprehension, and incorporating student writing. These activities enacted ELA standards, but the only science element was the textbook. Classroom observations during writing activities revealed a focus on proofreading (using correct form of “their”) rather than writing from evidence, and no student presentations were observed during seven consecutive lessons in Year 3.

During Year 3 observations, Simon led highly scaffolded literacy and low-inquiry activities that included completing teacher-constructed charts as well as close reads of a review book. In the first lesson, half of Simon’s seventh-grade class conducted a close-read on parts and functions of the microscope, while the other half completed a hands-on microscope activity. The close-read group developed comprehension questions that could be answered by the passage, and halfway through the class students switched tasks. This “literacy/inquiry” rotation continued in all lessons that week, and Simon continued to facilitate close-reads of science text and provide lists of cell vocabulary.

Simon transferred the science skills and model building from his summer research into his instruction but not the scientific and engineering practices that they were embedded within. In Years 2 and 3, he placed increased attention on developing students’ pipetting and microscope skills, but these were divorced from any inquiry-based problem-solving. Likewise, the focus on cell cake models in Year 3 was more about building a three-dimensional visual representation of a biological structure than using it to explain scientific phenomena (Year 3). Had the cell cakes been used to explain phenomena they would have provided a strong example of Engaging students through use of varied media to produce knowledge (Moje, 2015). The knowledge Elicited could have been used to Engineer literacies specific to science. But all these skill and model building activities were kept separate from inquiry in Simon’s classroom instruction.

Like Danielle, Simon’s interviews and survey revealed contradictory views on CCSS-ELA, and he also seemed to feel tension between fundamental reading skills needed by his students and disciplinary literacies needed for science. Simon was unsure of his self-efficacy for teaching ELA skills, and this may explain his infusion of literacy focused on fundamentals: close reading, vocabulary lists, and proofreading. He had taken several literacy courses during preservice training, but this background did not seem to help him recognize the skills for interpreting and acting on science text that he could impart as a science teacher. Science teachers have the expertise students need to Examine texts in their field: to read and interpret science text, language, and visuals. However, like many secondary content area teachers, preservice coursework may not have provided the training Simon needed to meet interdisciplinary standards.

Reform-Based: Bryce

Bryce had 10 years of experience teaching high school physics, as well as experience teaching reform-based science practices at a partner university. He worked with engineers in all three summer research experiences: building both a computer simulation to diagnose diseases for use in his medical physics course, and a Schlieren photography apparatus for use in his conceptual physics course. Bryce used these models to Engage students directly with scientific phenomena, including providing firsthand discovery of how light reflects off different surfaces. Students’ inquiry-based interactions with these models, particularly the Schlieren apparatus, Elicited primary source data that provided the knowledge and skills needed for understanding disciplinary concepts, in this case, refractive light and how it could be used to visualize movement in fluids. Bryce leveraged this discipline-specific knowledge to Engineer students’ development of an important discourse practice for science—argumentation—when students were able to Examine the ways evidence and data are used to make and support claims about phenomena.

Bryce was an exemplar among the 72 teachers participating in the professional development initiative. His practices demonstrated how disciplinary literacy could be infused with inquiry, merging NGSS and CCSS-ELA standards. Bryce described his teaching as student-driven, with teacher as facilitator of student learning. His goal was to help students develop 21st-century skills, allowing them to learn by exploring, and he expected students to learn skills for lab activities, group work, critical thinking, and to know that science is a “fluid body of knowledge.” Bryce expressed the highest level of understanding of inquiry among these three teachers and placed inquiry first in his instruction, allowing students freedom to explore science materials and, as he describes:

make mistakes and more importantly, realize their mistakes…we’re quick to say, “that’s not going to work,” whereas I love seeing a student going down the wrong roads, see that it’s not working, [and] make their own plan for how to get back.

Year 2 observations enacted standards S1, S2, S3, and S4. In Year 3 students generated and recorded findings (S6, S8, E3, E5), and standards E1 and E2 were met via laboratory write-ups connected to inquiry. In both years, Bryce was the only teacher in the cohort who incorporated S7, E4, and E5: overlapping standards focused on argumentation using evidence from inquiry (Figure 1).

Bryce’s instructional approach merged NGSS and CCSS-ELA standards. Every lesson included seven NGSS practices, with only S5, overlapping science and math, not observed; and four ELA standards: E2, E3, E4, and E5. Bryce was the only teacher whose practice enacted S7, S8, E4, and E5 focusing on oral presentation and argumentation using inquiry evidence, and although he expressed the lowest self-efficacy of the three teachers for implementing ELA with science, his practice demonstrated the highest implementation. By contrast, Danielle and Simon reported higher self-efficacy for implementing ELA, but fewer standards were observed during their instruction. Bryce recognized connections across disciplines, and the value of inquiry, as shown in his interview:

Very few, if any, of my students are going into careers that require specific knowledge covered during my courses. However, each of them will be required to think critically and make appropriate decisions in every aspect of their lives. I like to think I’m teaching the art of critical thinking through the context of physics.

Enacting the 4Es

Nearly all disciplinary practices Moje (2015) described as Engaging were used in the light investigation described above. Bryce reframed his inquiry lesson to focus on an essential question about light dispersion that emerged from students’ interactions with materials: smooth and rough surfaces provided during the inquiry. The question stimulated interest and sparked curiosity of his students, who worked with the data on hand, classifying numerous objects as shiny or smooth using varied media including a disciplinary tool: the microscope. Students collaboratively synthesized their findings, developing and communicating a claim about light dispersion supported by evidence from their inquiry. Tools to Elicit/Engineer learning were bound up within this activity, when students were thinking and acting like scientists.

Elicit/Engineer is a time when learning tools “originally presented as content literacy strategies find a place in…disciplinary literacy” (Moje, 2015, p. 267). Pearson (2010) described explicit connections between the ways we practice inquiry in ELA and in science. In ELA inquiry, we set purposes for reading with content area tools like KWL (What I Know, Want to know, and Learned) charts (Ogle, 1986). In science, we do the same, but we call purposes “research questions.” In ELA, text is the material for our inquiry, and we make inferences from text evidence, confirming or rejecting after close reading and interaction. In science, the material for inquiry is encountered during investigations, and we organize and report evidence discovered.

In these ways, content area strategies and disciplinary strategies can synergize, and teachers can guide students to Examine these synergies, focusing attention on the language and discourse practices of specific disciplines. The light dispersion inquiry provided a natural opportunity to use the microscope as a disciplinary tool, perfect for collecting data students needed for their essential question and for developing the “disciplined perception” (Moje, 2015, p. 268) used by scientists. Hands-on investigation of different surfaces also provided the opportunity to connect important concepts about light with the vocabulary labels for these concepts: reflection and dispersion. Teaching science language in such interactive ways is crucial to developing ownership of science concepts (Hayden et al., 2020; Pearson, 2010). “Drawing attention to the technical language” (Moje, 2015, p. 268), in this case, means recognizing subtle differences between knowing what a reflection in a mirror is and understanding the principles of light reflection and dispersion learned in science. A connection is formed between a known word and a new definition, exemplifying the way Tier 2 words (Beck et al., 2002) are used within science.

Noticing these subtle differences in how language is used in science, for example, what “reflection” means when talking about light on paper versus an image in a mirror, helps students Evaluate findings by putting their feet in different worlds, navigating “across and between their own everyday habits of mind” (Moje, 2015, p. 268). Thinking like a scientist means thinking differently about everyday concepts. Moje provides the example of a chemistry teacher explaining how numbers are rounded in mathematics versus chemistry, and Bryce utilized this Evaluation of language in science when talking about speed:

When you look at distance covered and the time period it was measured over and understand how those relate to the motion of the object [that’s] a much more effective way of introducing the [concept] of speed. It’s a ratio and I have always been a fan of “a name is nothing more than a term that allows me to understand what you’re saying and you to understand what I’m saying.”

Limitations

Because this research reports the practices of three science teachers, broad generalization is not possible. Additionally, all of these teachers chose to participate in a professional development experience focused on improving their implementation of NGSS and literacy standards. As such, they are all exemplars due to their interest and willingness to learn. While this openness to learning may have influenced the findings, it may also have presented a realistic view of the challenges science teachers face. Even highly motivated science teachers will face challenges in implementation of reform standards. They deserve the ongoing support of the research community.