Dr. Scott Cohen was selected to receive the NARST 2026 Outstanding Doctoral Research Award (ODRA) for his dissertation titled “Teaching Science with Deaf Students: A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Teacher’s Pedagogical Content Knowledge.”

This honor recognizes that Dr. Cohen’s dissertation was judged by his NARST colleagues on the ODRA committee to have the greatest merit and significance in the field of Science Education from among all dissertations nominated for the award this year. Dr. Cohen completed his dissertation at Georgia State University on April 14, 2025, under the direction of Dr. Patrick J. Enderle.

Teaching science with deaf students presents distinctive pedagogical and linguistic challenges, yet science education research has rarely examined how teachers develop the specialized knowledge needed for this work. Grounded in the Refined Consensus Model of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), this explanatory sequential mixed-methods study investigated the collective, personal, and enacted PCK of middle and high school science teachers who teach deaf students using American Sign Language in bilingual classrooms. Survey findings characterized patterns in teachers’ preparation, instructional practices, and professional trajectories to construct the Grand PCK Rubric. The rubric used in the case studies of two teachers provided in-depth analyses of how they adapt curriculum materials, integrate multimodal representations, and align instruction with students’ linguistic and conceptual needs.

The dissertation advances the field by offering the first systematic examination of science teachers’ PCK within deaf education and by developing a rubric to describe the quality and dimensions of that knowledge. The findings underscore the importance of targeted professional development on reform-oriented science teaching practices in deaf education and development of accessible curriculum resources to promote equitable and meaningful science learning opportunities for deaf students.