Science teachers’ communities of practice and policy implementation

Science education is impacted by messages from multiple sources including national, state, and local policies as well as teachers’ communities of practice. National level policies like the Next Generation Science Standards and local instructional polices such as the use of Project-Based Learning require sensemaking by teachers, an inherently social process. As teachers engage with learning events and new tools they will use their network of communities of practice to make sense of these policies, creating assemblages as they play with the policy. In this data from an ethnographic study of school policy, four science teachers engage with tensions created as they make sense of school-based policies and optional national standards. Teachers with larger communities of practice engaged in more productive play with policies. We call for expanding teachers’ networks of communities of practice and bringing policy makers and administrators into the design of learning events and tools for better implementation.