Helping students develop informed views about scientific inquiry (SI) has been and continues to be a goal of K‐12 science education, as evidenced in various reform documents. Nevertheless, research focusing on understandings of SI has taken a perceptible backseat to that which focuses on the “doing” of inquiry. We contend that this is partially a function of the typical conflation of scientific inquiry with nature of science (NOS), and is also attributable to the lack of a readily accessible instrument to provide a meaningful assessment of learners' views of SI. This article (a) outlines the framework of scientific inquiry that undergirds the Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI) questionnaire; (b) describes the development of the VASI, in part derived from the Views of Scientific Inquiry (VOSI) questionnaire; (c) presents evidence for the validity and reliability of the VASI; (d) discusses the use of the VASI and associated interviews to elucidate views of the specific aspects of SI that it attempts to assess; and (e) discusses the utility of the resulting rich‐descriptive views of SI that the VASI provides for informing both further research efforts and classroom practice. The trend in recent reform documents, unfortunately, ignores much of the research on NOS and SI and implicitly presumes that the “doing” of inquiry is sufficient for developing understandings of SI. The VASI serves as a tool in further discrediting this contention and provides both the classroom teacher and the researcher a more powerful means for assessing learners' conceptions about essential aspects of SI, consonant with the vision set forth in the recently released Next Generation Science Standards (Achieve, Inc., 2013). © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 51: 65–83, 2014

Background We used a dot-probe paradigm to examine attention bias toward threat (i.e., angry) and happy face stimuli in Severe Mood Dysregulation (SMD) vs. healthy comparison (HC) youth. The tendency to allocate attention to threat is well established in anxiety and other disorders of negative affect. SMD is characterized by the negative affect of irritability, and longitudinal studies suggest childhood irritability predicts adult anxiety and depression. Therefore, it is important to study pathophysiologic connections between irritability and anxiety disorders. Methods SMD patients (N=74) and HC youth (N=42) completed a visual probe paradigm to assess attention bias to emotional faces. Diagnostic interviews were conducted and measures of irritability and anxiety were obtained in patients. Results SMD youth differed from HC youth in having a bias toward threatening faces (p<0.01). Threat bias was positively correlated with the severity of the SMD syndrome and depressive symptoms; degree of threat bias did not differ between SMD youth with and without co-occurring anxiety disorders or depression. SMD and HC youth did not differ in bias toward or away from happy faces. Conclusions SMD youth demonstrate an attention bias toward threat, with greater threat bias associated with higher levels of SMD symptom severity. Our findings suggest that irritability may share a pathophysiological link with anxiety and depressive disorders. This finding suggests the value of exploring further whether attention bias modification treatments that are effective for anxiety are also helpful in the treatment of irritability.

Concerns with the ability of U.S. classrooms to develop learners who will become the next generation of innovators, particularly given the present climate of standardized testing, warrants a closer look at creativity in science classrooms. The present study explored these concerns associated with teachers' classroom practice by addressing the following research question: What pedagogical factors, and related teacher conceptions, are potentially related to the demonstration of creativity among science students? Seventeen middle-level, high school, and introductory-level college science teachers from a variety of school contexts participated in the study. A questionnaire developed for this study, interviews, and classroom observations were used in order to explore potential areas of relatedness between pedagogical factors and manifestations of student creativity in science. Five categories ultimately emerged and described potential areas in which teachers would have to explicitly plan for creativity. These areas could inform the pedagogical considerations that teachers would have to make within their lesson plans and activities in order to support its manifestation among students. These provide a starting point for science teachers and science teacher educators to consider how to develop supportive environments for student creative thinking. 400 Volume 113 (8)

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