ABSTRACT
How new, reform-oriented elementary teachers teach science in schools is of great interest to the science education research community, as well as to the larger community concerned with continuous teacher education. This chapter first delimits and summarizes research directions in the cultural perspective. Second, it presents a sample of research that takes a cultural perspective to investigate what happened to a new elementary science and mathematics specialist teacher in her first 2 years of full-time classroom teaching. The chapter concludes by calling for increased use of the school culture theoretical perspective in science education research. The school culture perspective has the potential to help foster a better understanding of new, reform-oriented elementary teachers' science teaching experiences both in the workplace and in their career decisions.
