ABSTRACT
The newest science reform documents focus on the integration of core disciplinary ideas, scientific and engineering practices, and cross-cutting concepts. The science classroom as a whole consists of a community of learners, each with their own thoughts, comfort levels, and ways of doing science, including the teachers. Due to the use of ethnographic methods the following approaches to data collection were chosen for my study: video recording of student discourse, student interviews, ethnographic field notes, photographs of student science notebooks and additional artifacts, teacher informal interviews, and a parent/guardian questionnaire. The goal of participant observation is to observe with direction, while allowing for new patterns and practices to unfold and to be able to zoom in and zoom out throughout the process in order to achieve a more complete analysis of the culture. The chapter discusses the variety of identities-in-practice for science learning through classroom science instruction focused on explanation building with evidence.
