Two distinct ways of attending to the substance of students' ideas

Research-based calls for science education reform emphasize that, for inquiry and deep learning to occur, teachers must attend to the substance of students’ ideas, which must play a prominent role in class. Using classroom video and teacher interviews, we illustrate two different ways of attending to students’ ideas, both of which sustain students’ sensemaking. These two different kinds of attention reflect different, perhaps tacit, answers to the question, “What kind of activity is this?”