My teaching and research interests include: Classroom-based teaching and learning of science in urban settings; collaborative teacher action research; discourse in science classrooms; integration of science and literacy; science education reform in elementary school and college science classrooms. Focusing on the teaching and learning of science in elementary school and college classrooms, I engage in theoretical and empirical explorations of what it means to teach and understand science using primarily qualitative, interpretive approaches. I study various interplays that are enacted in science classrooms, namely the interplay between developing theories and collecting and analyzing data, between the individual student and the larger classroom community, between the teacher and the learner, between affective, cognitive, and social dimensions of experience, between reading, writing, drawing, talking, and doing science, between an individuals construction of meaning and the existing socio-cultural practice of science, between intellectual-thematic and social-organizational aspects of a classroom community. The collaborative teacher action research that I have been conducting has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the State of Illinois, professional organizations, and the university, as I work with elementary school and college teachers to reform science education and explore the possibilities and challenges that emerge.