Drawn to Science Education: Studying Science Teaching and Learning through Drawings

Scoring Rubric

Our rubric and supporting instructions, along with the coding examples below, are available online in order to make our research instruments accessible to other researchers. For each strand, participants in our study made two drawings: themselves teaching science and their students learning science. Exemplars are provided for both types of drawings. Please see the Methodology section for an explanation on how we developed the rubric. Pseudonyms are used in all cases to protect the privacy of our participants.

Strand 1: Experience excitement, interest and motivation to learn about phenomena in the natural and physical world.

Draw yourself teaching science. Score 4 Score 3 Score 2 Score 1 Score 0
Draw your students learning science. Score 4 Score 3 Score 2 Score 1 Score 0

Strand 2: Come to generate, understand, remember and use concepts, explanations, arguments, models and facts related to science.

Draw yourself teaching science. Score 4 Score 3 Score 2 Score 1 Score 0
Draw your students learning science. Score 4 Score 3 Score 2 Score 1 Score 0

Strand 3: Manipulate, test, explore, predict, question, observe and make sense of the natural and physical world.

Draw yourself teaching science. Score 4 Score 3 Score 2 Score 1 Score 0
Draw your students learning science. Score 4 Score 3 Score 2 Score 1 Score 0

Strand 5: Participate in scientific activities and learning practices with others, using scientific language and tools

Draw yourself teaching science. Score 4 Score 3 Score 2 Score 1 Score 0
Draw your students learning science. Score 4 Score 3 Score 2 Score 1 Score 0


Six strands were generated from Taking Science to School (NRC, 2007) and Learning Science in Informal Environments (NRC, 2009). Strands 4 and 6 were analyzed using written and verbal data rather than data from drawings, and thus are not included in the drawing scoring rubric.

The scoring rubric and supplemental instructions are available online.

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