This study introduces a new group of students to the postsecondary science agenda: latecomers to science. Latecomers, who enter postsecondary science through alternative routes because they are missing prerequisites, are less likely to graduate than traditional science students. Challenges to latecomers' persistence are explored through two questions: (1) What trends in science identity trajectories are latecomers to science able to construct during their first year in a college science program? (2) How are latecomers' identity trajectories constrained by or improvised with the cultural models and associated resources available in the figured world of a college science program? These questions are investigated through an analysis of educational activities, reflective writings, and interviews of nine latecomers. We view identification as analogous to velocity and demonstrate how recurring forces exerted by figured worlds and cultural models within them create patterns of acceleration towards or away from science, thus supporting or hindering persistence as identity trajectories gain or lose momentum. Findings show that latecomers' persistence was greatly constrained by two cultural models from the science program: good science students follow a paradigmatic sequence of courses and consistently earn good grades. Occasionally, latecomers improvised to resist these constraints. We illustrate our findings through three cases exemplifying inbound, outbound, and peripheral trends, offering a method of representing trajectories that may lead to new understandings of persistence. We also suggest implications for better supporting latecomers and connect this research to recent developments in the theoretical and methodological use of identity trajectories in understanding access to science.

As colleges and universities aim for greater diversity in their undergraduate populations, one population researchers consider is first-generation students, or students whose parents do not have a college education. The research reported here addresses first-generation college students' discipline of study (e.g., biology) and its impact on their persistence. Exploring how female, low-income, first-generation college students evaluate their persistence within undergraduate science learning environments contributes to understanding how gender and social class influence persistence in STEM fields. Two White, female, low-income, first-generation college students were interviewed during their last year in college. Using constant comparative coding methods and Ricoeur's (Ricoeur [1984] Time and narrative, Volume I (K. McLaughlin & D. Pellauer, Trans.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press) description of narrative construction, common tensions were identified related to participants' descriptions of undergraduate science as competitive. These persistence-related tensions are (1) differing experiences in lecture and lab, (2) managing time to work, study, and maintain family relationships, and (3) weighing their personal (family) priorities against the longer time it would take them to reach their science-related career goals. These tensions depict a traditional undergraduate science learning environment focused on individuals and abstract knowledge that positions female lower-income students as “academic non-competitors” because of the importance of kinship ties and physical skills in their cultural background (Lareau [2002] American Sociological Review 67(5), 747–776; Lareau [2003] Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley: University of California Press). The participants' experiences support that the gendered and classed expectations needed to succeed in a science environment could be somewhat alleviated through reforms to traditional lecture and laboratory undergraduate science courses that promote cooperative student learning groups and integration of lecture with hands-on activities. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach

As knowledge of and familiarity with science becomes an increasingly important aspect of contemporary life and citizenship, efforts have been made to make the science curriculum a “lived” curriculum (Hurd, 2000), one that reaches out to the lives, communities, and experiences of students. In this research around a high school urban ecology curriculum, we advance the idea that a focus on meaning, as the keystone for identity development, can help reach the goal of a lived science curriculum. Drawing upon social practice theory (Holland & Lave, 2001, 2009) and figured worlds (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998; Urietta, 2007), we present a way to conceptualize the meanings which emerge. We find through interviews with the adult participants (two curriculum developers and a classroom teacher) and students that meaning is described using three layers: meaning in person, meaning in intent, and meaning in practice. There are points of continuity and discontinuity of these meanings attributed to the curriculum by the adult participants. We further present data through the analysis of classroom video and artifacts created by students during an activity designed to elicit the meanings that students attribute to the curriculum. We discuss these findings and the possibilities for curriculum to provide opportunities for intersecting figured worlds which provide a focus on meaning and opportunities for agency in and with science. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50: 501–529, 2013.

The article argues that science assessment should change from an item-driven to a construct-driven practice and pay more attention to disciplinary scientific reasoning. It investigates assessment scales developed from a novel theoretical rationale, describing scientific reasoning as three fundamental practices (hypothesizing, experimenting, and evidence evaluation) and building on three types of knowledge (science content knowledge, procedural knowledge, and epistemic knowledge). The scale development follows a construct-driven approach by, first, detailing the knowledge involved and explaining progression; and second, operationalizing the theoretical construct into items and score criteria. The scales are trialled in a small-scale study. The outcome is a coherent and supportive validity argument for two sub-scales, but with a suggestion that merging these into one scale has higher validity. The main implication is rewriting rationales for many science assessments, including TIMSS, which emphasises domain-general reasoning, and NAEP and PISA, which pay attention to domain-specific reasoning but are unclear about the knowledge involved. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50: 530–560, 2013

This study examines whether students enrolled in a general chemistry I laboratory course developed the ability to participate in scientific argumentation over the course of a semester. The laboratory activities that the students participated in during the course were designed using the Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI) an instructional model. This model gives a more central place to argumentation and the role of argument in the social construction of scientific knowledge. The development of the students' ability to construct a scientific argument and to participate in scientific argumentation was tracked over time using three different data sources. These data sources included a performance task, which was administered at the beginning, middle, and end of the course, video recording of the students participating in episodes of argumentation, and the lab reports the students wrote as part of each lab activity. As time was the independent variable in this study, a repeated measure ANOVA was used to evaluate changes in the ways students performed on each task over the course of the semester. The results of the analysis indicate that there was significant growth in the quality of the students' written arguments and nature of their oral argumentation. There also was a significant correlation between written and oral arguments. These results suggest that the use of an integrated instructional model that places emphasis on argument and argumentation can have a positive impact on the quality of the arguments students include in their investigation reports, the argumentation they engage in during lab activities, and their overall performance on tasks that require them to develop and support a valid conclusion with genuine evidence. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50: 561–596, 2013

This article evaluates a validity argument for the degree to which assessment tasks are able to provide evidence about knowledge that fuses information from a progression of core disciplinary ideas in ecology and a progression for the scientific practice of developing evidence-based explanations. The article describes the interpretive framework for the argument, including evidence for how well the assessment tasks are matched to the learning progressions and the methods for interpreting students' responses to the tasks. Findings from a dual-pronged validity study that includes a think-aloud analysis and an item difficulty analysis are presented as evidence. The findings suggest that the tasks provide opportunities for students at multiple ability levels to show evidence of both successes and struggles with the development of knowledge that fuses core disciplinary ideas with the scientific practice of developing evidence-based explanations. In addition, these tasks are generally able to distinguish between different ability-level students. However, some of the assumptions in the interpretive argument are not supported, such as the inability of the data to provide evidence that might neatly place students at a given level on our progressions. Implications for the assessment system, specifically, how responses are elicited from students, are discussed. In addition, we discuss the implications of our findings for defining and redesigning learning progressions. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50: 597–626, 2013.