ABSTRACT
A bifurcated emphasis on language and mathematics literacies in U.S. elementary schools, the use of students' standardized test results, and the implications arising from these practices has led district level and school-based administrations to send messages to teachers about the relative value of learning in different curriculum areas. The content of many of these messages is that a curriculum stressing language and mathematics performance is the prime focus of elementary schooling (National Science Teachers Association [NSTA], May/June 2002). Within such an educational context, science learning is likely to occur only within an interdisciplinary orientation to learning. Further complicating the teaching of elementary science is the widely acknowledged finding that elementary teachers who lack confidence in their abilities to teach science tend to avoid spending time on science (e.g., Abell & Roth, 1992; Czerniak & Lumpe, 1996; Smith & Neale, 1989). Consequently, in elementary science teacher education programs, there tends to be an emphasis on teaching science using interdisciplinary approaches.
