Attending to Preservice Teachers' Assets: Beliefs and Practices for Supporting Expansive Sensemaking in Elementary Science

ABSTRACT Preservice elementary science teachers' beliefs and practices influence the kinds of adaptations they make to curriculum materials and the extent to which they are able to enact justice‐oriented science lessons. Through this qualitative study, we explored the beliefs and practices of five focal preservice teachers through an analysis of their lesson plans, recorded enactments, and interviews about their science teaching throughout their student teaching experience. We developed a conceptual framework for expansive sensemaking that explores beliefs and practices related to four key themes, each of which work to center approaches to justice and equity in the context of sensemaking: (1) believing in children's brilliance, (2) building a collaborative classroom culture, (3) expanding what counts as science, and (4) positioning children as epistemic agents. While teachers varied in their beliefs about and approaches to each of these themes, they demonstrated strengths that illustrate what may be possible for early career teachers, like working to integrate many ways of knowing and being into science lessons, connecting to embodied knowledge, or supporting children to be scientific decision‐makers. We discuss implications for teacher preparation programs and for theory development related to justice‐oriented teaching in general and expansive sensemaking in particular.