This book reviews the current state of theoretical accounts of the what and how of science learning in schools. The book starts out by presenting big-picture perspectives on key issues. In these first chapters, it focuses on the range of resources students need to acquire and refine to become successful learners. It examines meaningful learner purposes and processes for doing science, and structural supports to optimize cognitive engagement and success. Subsequent chapters address how particular purposes, resources and experiences can be conceptualized as the basis to understand current practices. They also show how future learning opportunities should be designed, lived and reviewed to promote student engagement/learning. Specific topics include insights from neuro-imaging, actor-network theory, the role of reasoning in claim-making for learning in science, and development of disciplinary literacies, including writing and multi-modal meaning-making. All together the book offers leads to science educators on theoretical perspectives that have yielded valuable insights into science learning. In addition, it proposes new agendas to guide future practices and research in this subject.

Identifies strengths and challenges within and across competing theories

1.Introduction: Theorizing future research for the science classroom; Vaughan Prain and Brian Hand.- SECTION ONE: Mapping the Big Picture.- 2. Merging cognitive and sociocultural approaches: Towards better understandings of the processes of developing thinking and reasoning; Paul Webb and Bill Whitlow.- 3. Frameworks, Committed Testers, and Science as a Form of Life; Jim Gee.- 4. Writers in Community Model: 15 Recommendations for Future Research in Using Writing to Promote Science Learning; Steve Graham.- SECTION TWO: Theorizing Aspects of Science Learning.- 5. An Exploratory Neuroimaging Study of Argumentative and Summary Writing Using Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy; Richard Lamb, Brian Hand and Sae Yeol Yoon.- 6. Scientific Practices as an Actor-Network of Literacy Events: Forging a Convergence between Disciplinary Literacy and Scientific Practices; Kok-Sing Tang.- 7. Immersive approaches to science argumentation and literacy: What does it mean to "live" the languages of science?; Brian Hand, Andy Cavagnetto, and Lori Norton-Meier.- 8. Writing as an Epistemological Tool: Perspectives from personal, disciplinary, and sociocultural landscapes; Ying-Chih Chen.- 9. Scientific Literacy Practices from a concept of Discourse Space: Focusing on Resources and Demands for Learning; Sae Yeol Yoon.- 10. Future research in learning with, through and from scientific representations; Vaughan Prain.- 11. "I'm not a writer": Shaping the literacy-related attitudes and beliefs of students and teachers in STEM disciplines; Lisa Emerson.- SECTION THREE: Review.- 12. Critical dialogues for emerging research agendas in science education; Greg Kelly.