Christa Haverly

This comparative case study explores how 18 state education agencies (SEAs) support school districts in advancing standards-based elementary science reform. We identify how SEAs understand their work in advancing elementary science reform and describe how SEAs sought to engage districts in bridging from standards to classroom practice. Based on our analysis, we argue that the school subject is a critical explanatory variable in understanding SEA efforts to support standards implementation and SEAs lean on a resource-based approach for instructional policy implementation. This study contributes to the growing research base on the role of state policy in supporting standards implementation.

Mentoring relationships in academia have traditionally been described as a dyad between a mentor and a mentee. The mentor provides the mentee with both technical and psychosocial support to move toward obtaining their Ph.D. or gaining tenure and promotion. While there is an embedded assumption that mentoring is best suited when people of common background support each other, scholars must consider the impact of mentoring across differences. Given the lack of diversity among senior faculty members in science education, and given the increasing diversity represented among graduate students and early career scholars in science education, inevitably mentoring relationships will be formed across differences in identities (race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability). In our essay, we focus on two focal points: we explore those aspects of mentoring relationships that research suggests are critical to the success of relationships built across differences, foregrounding lessons science education researchers can take from this literature and arguing that it is too much to expect one individual mentor to provide to any given mentee. Next, we propose a brokering framework, leveraging technological advances, to work toward more transformative mentoring outcomes at scale, particularly when mentoring across differences.