ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the teacher’s co-design and use of a Claims–Evidence–Reasoning -informed content storyline as being critical to her ability to shift responsibility for sensemaking from herself to students. It deals with the goal of addressing the rest of the story—what comes before negotiating claims from evidence as fundamental to the sensemaking process. Scholars have characterized sensemaking in science as attending not only to what students understand about the world, but also their ways of and processes for knowing. Sharing more responsibility for the intellectual work of doing science, both what to investigate and how, as well as accepting students’ ways of knowing, are fundamental to the sensemaking process. Scholars have documented that teachers have reduced expectations for who they perceive to be “low ability” students. Engaging teachers in the co-design of content storylines is a powerful mechanism for professional learning and the development of “near horizon vision”.
