Scholarly calls to reform science education for all students emphasize scientific sense-making. Despite the importance of sense-making, few strategies exist to help novice teachers learn to notice and respond equitably to students’ scientific sense-making in elementary science. In this article, we report on a qualitative case study in which we investigated sense-making moments that occurred when novice teachers facilitated classroom discussions. Findings suggest that when novice teachers made space in class discussions for sense-making—for example, by trying different responses to clarify student ideas or waiting before responding to figure out next steps—this expanded opportunities for shared epistemic authority; however, novices did not often recognize these moments as productive for sense-making. Findings also suggest that novice teachers may benefit from support to help them develop their abilities to notice, interpret, and respond equitably to students’ scientific sense-making in class discussions.

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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.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a reform effort "for states, by states," advances ambitious ideals for elementary science teaching, but the fate of these ideals will depend in part on the engagement of

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