Sensemaking Opportunities for Students Experiencing Difficulty: A Mixed Methods Study

All students deserve to be engaged in high-quality science instruction that moves beyond memorization and recall of facts and offers opportunities for sensemaking. Science achievement is alarmingly low signifying there is a large percentage of students experiencing difficulty in science. The low science achievement may be symptomatic of gaps in opportunities for sensemaking within the science classroom. Using an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, the current study explored the relationship between middle school science teacher beliefs and opportunities students experiencing difficulty in science had to participate in sensemaking discussions. Integrated findings from the study suggest that teachers’ beliefs influenced the opportunities students experiencing difficulty had to participate in sensemaking discussions and, at times, there was a mismatch between teacher beliefs and practice. The current study addresses an important gap in the research literature on opportunities students experiencing difficulty have for sensemaking in science classrooms, a grossly under researched area of inquiry.