Learning to teach science in urban schools by becoming a researcher of one’s own beginning practice Melina Furman • Angela Calabrese Barton • Ben Muir Received: 5 January 2011 / Accepted: 21 June 2011 / Published online: 3 August 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract An urgent goal for science teacher educators is to prepare teachers to teach science in meaningful ways to youth from nondominant backgrounds. This preparation is challenging, for it asks teachers to critically examine how their pedagogical practices might adaptively respond to students and to science. It asks, essentially, for new teachers to become researchers of their own beginning practice. This study explores the story of Ben as he coauthored a transformative action research project in an urban middle school as part of a teacher education program and, later, over his first year of teaching at that same school. We describe how Ben and his partner teacher created innovative spaces for science learning. This offered Ben an opportunity to make some of his deeply engrained peda- gogical beliefs come alive within a context of distributed expertise, which provided for him a space of moderate risk where he could afford the chances of failure without undermining how he felt about his own capacity as a teacher. Our study highlights the importance of creating reform opportunities within the context of teacher education programs that may help beginner teachers construct positive images of teaching that they can hold on to in their future practice. Keywords Urban science Á Transformative action research Á Preservice teachers Á Teacher education Executive Summary (Spanish) Una demanda urgente para los formadores de maestros y profesores de ciencias es la de preparar docentes que puedan ensen ˜ar ciencia de modos significativos para los jo ´venes de contextos no-dominantes, especialmente de escuelas M. Furman (&) School of Education, University of San Andres, Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: melifurman@gmail.com A. Calabrese Barton Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA B. Muir Hamlin Middle School, Springfield, OR, USA 123 Cult Stud of Sci Educ (2012) 7:153–174 DOI 10.1007/s11422-011-9347-1