This qualitative study compares four public school districts in a state to investigate how Next Generation Science Standards-aligned, three-dimensional science classroom teaching and learning in biology classrooms could become normal, instead of exceptional. Interview data were collected through two rounds of interviews – one year apart – with teachers, district science coordinators, and teachers’ union staff and leaders in districts using Carbon TIME instructional resources in high school biology. Results are shared through district-level identifying stories of current realities (actual identities) and future plans and goals (designated identities).Each of the four school districts described similar interacting communities of practice – teachers’ classrooms; teachers’ course-based (biology) professional communities; and district administrators and local union leaders. The study’s analytical framework addresses roles, responsibilities, and professional actions of teachers, union leaders, and administrators and district science coordinators relevant to teachers’ course-based professional communities. Attention was given to professional actions that could “cross the classroom door,” connecting what teachers do together in their course-based (biology) professional communities with their own classroom communities. Two orientations of the identifying stories varied across school districts in ways that influence three-dimensional science classroom teaching and learning: collective (versus individual) orientations and three-dimensional science (versus one-dimensional science) orientations. Identifying stories in districts with collective and three-dimensional science orientations described teachers’ professional community work as necessary to realizing classroom goals for students’ three-dimensional science experiences and performances. District and union leaders endorsed teachers’ professional community work as integral to classroom instruction and supported such work through mitigating transaction and conflict costs. Teachers’ professional actions within their course-based (biology) professional communities included selecting, developing, and revising common three-dimensional instructional resources and making sense of their classroom science instruction using evidence of student learning. Differently, in districts with identifying stories as individually and non-three-dimensional-science oriented professional communities, participants described teachers with individual classroom goals and teachers’ professional communities with traditional norms of non-interference and egalitarian beliefs. District and union leaders endorsed teachers’ independent expertise and classroom autonomy. Teachers’ work with their course-based (biology) professional community was described connecting in optional ways or as not connected to teachers’ individual classroom communities. This study suggests that collectively oriented professional communities can help all classroom communities engage in three-dimensional science teaching and learning. Districts and local teachers’ unions can play important roles in reducing transaction and conflict costs and endorsing identifying stories that support collective orientations.
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