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This study investigates how a professional learning approach that draws on elements from collaborative autoethnography (CAE) can support science teachers' learning about argumentation. It provides an account of how six secondary science teachers collectively explored their views and understandings of the importance of relationships for fostering argumentative sensemaking in classrooms. The educators partnered across four sessions to identify themes that emerged from their autoethnographic writings and discussions. The construct of "diffraction" later helped provide a situated, entangled analysis of how ideas traveled within the group over time. Findings highlight how teachers surfaced the importance of cultivating trusting classroom relationships (between teachers and students as well as between students with one another) to foster the social dialogic elements of argumentation and collective sensemaking. This insight is one not generally emphasized in teacher professional development related to argumentation and has only recently been examined in the research literature. Teachers also reclaimed the idea of "rigor" to encompass discourse that is connected to students' lives and engages them in knowledge-building with others. This study demonstrates how a CAE-inspired teacher professional development model that emphasizes teacher agency and professional knowledge can help educators develop nuanced understandings of argumentation. As more classrooms focus on engaging students in argumentative practices, this study suggests the need for the field of science education to shift its focus to attend more fully to the role of classroom relationships, vulnerability, and trust. This study also suggests promising strategies for helping teachers increase their commitment to enacting productive and expansive classroom argumentation practices that center students' experiences, value diverse sensemaking, and increase equitable opportunities for learning.

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This paper describes the "Explorers Virtual Internship" (EVI), which was designed and presented in the 2020-21 school year by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Despite our initial wariness about creating a virtual internship, the shift helped us make valuable innovations to our programming. EVI paired 11 high school interns with mentors to work on individual research projects. We designed our program to foster a sense of belonging and "rightful presence" in biomedical research among the interns, all of whom came from backgrounds underrepresented in science. In addition to the research experience, we also focused on ethical issues, career awareness, community building, identity/belonging, and leadership/agency. Interns reported increases in their perceptions of the overlap of their identity and those of STEM professionals. They also reported increases in their knowledge of STEM concepts and capacity to demonstrate STEM skills (n=10). Open-ended survey responses indicated that students' uptake of scientific practices and sense of belonging were interrelated with their relationship with their mentors, and that students felt a sense of community with other students despite being in a virtual environment. We also provided programming for mentors, who indicated that learning and thinking about rightful presence and belonging was helpful for their role.

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A belief that high school students have the cognitive ability to analyze and assess moral choices and should be encouraged to do so but have rarely been helped to do so was the motivation for developing Exploring Bioethics, a six-module curriculum and teacher guide for grades nine through twelve on ethical issues in the life sciences. A multidisciplinary team of bioethicists, science educators, curriculum designers, scientists, and high school biology teachers worked together on the curriculum under a contract between the National Institutes of Health and Education Development Center, a nonprofit research and development organization with a long history of innovation in science education. At the NIH, the Department of Bioethics within the Clinical Center and the Office of Science Education within the Office of the Director guided the project.Our overarching goal for Exploring Bioethics was to introduce students to bioethics as a field of inquiry and to enable them to develop ethical reasoning skills so they could move beyond "gut reactions" to more nuanced positions.

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We investigated the effects of our Bio-ITEST teacher professional development model and bioinformatics curricula on cognitive traits (awareness, engagement, self-efficacy, and relevance) in high school teachers and students that are known to accompany a developing interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. The program included best practices in adult education and diverse resources to empower teachers to integrate STEM career information into their classrooms. The introductory unit, Using Bioinformatics: Genetic Testing, uses bioinformatics to teach basic concepts in genetics and molecular biology, and the advanced unit, Using Bioinformatics: Genetic Research, utilizes bioinformatics to study evolution and support student research with DNA barcoding. Pre-post surveys demonstrated significant growth (n = 24) among teachers in their preparation to teach the curricula and infuse career awareness into their classes, and these gains were sustained through the end of the academic year. Introductory unit students (n = 289) showed significant gains in awareness, relevance, and self-efficacy. While these students did not show significant gains in engagement, advanced unit students (n = 41) showed gains in all four cognitive areas. Lessons learned during Bio-ITEST are explored in the context of recommendations for other programs that wish to increase student interest in STEM careers.

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Developing a position on a socio-scientific issue and defending it using a well-reasoned justification involves complex cognitive skills that are challenging to both teach and assess. Our work centers on instructional strategies for fostering critical thinking skills in high school students using bioethical case studies, decision-making frameworks, and structured analysis tools to scaffold student argumentation. In this study, we examined the effects of our teacher professional development and curricular materials on the ability of high school students to analyze a bioethical case study and develop a strong position. We focused on student ability to identify an ethical question, consider stakeholders and their values, incorporate relevant scientific facts and content, address ethical principles, and consider the strengths and weaknesses of alternate solutions. 431 students and 12 teachers participated in a research study using teacher cohorts for comparison purposes. The first cohort received professional development and used the curriculum with their students; the second did not receive professional development until after their participation in the study and did not use the curriculum. In order to assess the acquisition of higher-order justification skills, students were asked to analyze a case study and develop a well-reasoned written position. We evaluated statements using a scoring rubric and found highly significant differences (p<0.001) between students exposed to the curriculum strategies and those who were not. Students also showed highly significant gains (p<0.001) in self-reported interest in science content, ability to analyze socio-scientific issues, awareness of ethical issues, ability to listen to and discuss viewpoints different from their own, and understanding of the relationship between science and society. Our results demonstrate that incorporating ethical dilemmas into the classroom is one strategy for increasing student motivation and engagement with science content, while promoting reasoning and justification skills that help prepare an informed citizenry.

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