Implementation Of “Ambitious Science Teaching” Framework With Pre-service Teachers

In science education research, it is frequently observed that science classes can transform into exclusive domains, constraining student participation. This exclusivity arises from various, context-dependent factors, including the uneven distribution of knowledge accountability. The prevalent image of scientific knowledge, coupled with traditional teacher approaches, often hinders genuine student engagement. This results in a perception of school science as a static, prescriptive set of laws and theories, leaving little room for discourse or personal sense-making of the subject matter (Sjøberg, 2001). Consequently, many students fail to discern a “personal relevance” in science education. This issue may be categorized as an instance of “epistemic injustice,” and it can be addressed through programs that encourage “epistemic agency” instead. This paper presents an implementation of the “Ambitious Science Teaching” (AST) framework (Windschitl et al., 2012), which is specifically designed to foster epistemic agency in teaching. This implementation, conducted by Prof. Stroupe (a co-creator of the framework) in collaboration with the first author, took place between March and April 2022 and involved 21 pre-service physics teachers at the University of Bologna, Italy. These pre-service teachers engaged with AST from two perspectives: as educators, they studied and applied the framework in designing a physics teaching module; as learners, they experienced the framework’s four practices through a simulation involving the scientific phenomenon of coupled metronomes’ synchronization. Upon completing the lectures, the pre-service teachers were surveyed to gather their perspectives on the AST framework, both as educators and students. Additionally, six participants were selected for interviews to provide deeper insights into the issues identified in the survey. The collected data were analyzed to evaluate the implementation’s effectiveness in terms of inclusion, safety, and agency— key pillars of the AST framework. Notably, the interviews and surveys revealed that engagement with scientific practices facilitated the development of skills, which participants identified as “citizenship skills”. An unexpected, context-specific outcome also emerged from the interviews. On the one hand, Italian students not accustomed to and frightened of being responsible for knowledge production were supported to overcome such fear by the unusually safe and open environment. On the other hand, keeping the AST practices strictly bound to physics knowledge (students’ background) helped them to “resonate” (Rosa, 2019b) with such practices. This study hence suggests that in this particular context, the core epistemic elements of physics, combined with the framework’s inclusive classroom practices, established a “mutual scaffolding mechanism".