About

William (Bill) Sandoval is a Professor and Head of the Department of STEM Education at NC State University. His research focuses on how science education can be most useful to people in their everyday lives, particularly in helping individuals make sound judgments about private concerns and public policy. He conducts his research in collaboration with teachers and their students, emphasizing the organization of productive classroom environments for scientific explanation and argumentation. Dr. Sandoval is widely recognized for his work on the process of conjecture mapping, which he uses to organize educational design research. He has published extensively in the fields of science education, the learning sciences, and educational psychology. His professional honors include being a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow and past president of the International Society of the Learning Sciences, and a Fellow of the International Society for Design and Development in Education.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Pedagogy
• Mathematics education
• Social Science
• Social psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Geography
• Ecology
• Engineering
• Developmental psychology

Selected publications

• Practices for Linking Scientific and Sociopolitical Aspects of Climate Change in Science Teaching

  Journal of Science Teacher Education · 2025-11-14

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• What Makes a Competent Outsider?

  Proceedings. · 2025-06-10 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Fifteen years ago, Noah Feinstein introduced the idea of the competent outsider to argue for a comprehensive re-thinking of the purposes of science education.The idea orients competence away from science disciplines, per se, and toward the goals that everyday people might frame for themselves for which science may be useful.Despite its increasing use as a goal, however, answers to the question of what sorts of knowledge and skill renders anyone a competent outsider remain elusive.As the concept of the competent outsider has been taken up in recent arguments for how to organize science education in a post-truth era, it is a good time to reconsider the idea and to interrogate both of its components: what renders one competent with respect to science and what is a competent outsider actually outside of?

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exploring science teachers' efforts to frame phenomena in the community

  Journal of Research in Science Teaching · 2024 · 5 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Pedagogy

  Abstract This article examines two teachers' efforts to re‐organize their science teaching around issues of environmental and food justice in the urban community where they teach through the pedagogical approach of community‐oriented framing. We introduce this approach to teachers' framing of phenomena in community as supporting students' framing of phenomena as personally and locally relevant. Drawing on classroom observations of remote learning during the COVID‐19 pandemic, we took an analytic approach that characterized features of classroom discourse to rate community‐oriented framing at the lesson level. Results show that teachers framed phenomena as both social and scientific, and as rooted in students' lived experiences, with classroom activities designed to gather localized and personalized evidence needed to explain or model phenomena. We also share examples of how Black and Latinx students took up this framing of phenomena in their classroom work. By providing a detailed description of the launch and implementation of activities, findings illustrate how community‐oriented framing supported teachers in posing local questions of equity and justice as simultaneously social and scientific, and helping students perceive science learning as meaningful to their everyday lives. Community‐oriented framing offers a practical means of designing locally and socially relevant instruction. We contribute to justice‐centered science pedagogies by conceptualizing transformative science learning environments as those in which students understand their goal in science class as understanding, and later addressing, inequities in how socioscientific issues manifest in their community.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Using Argument to Reason AboutScience Practice

  Science and Children · 2023-09-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsWilliam SandovalWilliam Sandoval (sandoval@seis.ucla.edu) is a professor of education, and Jon Kovach (kovach@seis.ucla.edu) is the director of the Science Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. Leticia Perez (lperez2@wested.org) is a professional learning specialist at WestEd in San Francisco. Lynn Kim-John (lkim@seis.ucla.edu) is the director of the Educational Leadership Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jarod Kawasaki (jakawasaki@csudh.edu) is an assistant professor of education at California State University in Dominguez Hills.Jon KovachWilliam Sandoval (sandoval@seis.ucla.edu) is a professor of education, and Jon Kovach (kovach@seis.ucla.edu) is the director of the Science Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. Leticia Perez (lperez2@wested.org) is a professional learning specialist at WestEd in San Francisco. Lynn Kim-John (lkim@seis.ucla.edu) is the director of the Educational Leadership Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jarod Kawasaki (jakawasaki@csudh.edu) is an assistant professor of education at California State University in Dominguez Hills.Leticia PerezWilliam Sandoval (sandoval@seis.ucla.edu) is a professor of education, and Jon Kovach (kovach@seis.ucla.edu) is the director of the Science Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. Leticia Perez (lperez2@wested.org) is a professional learning specialist at WestEd in San Francisco. Lynn Kim-John (lkim@seis.ucla.edu) is the director of the Educational Leadership Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jarod Kawasaki (jakawasaki@csudh.edu) is an assistant professor of education at California State University in Dominguez Hills.Lynn Kim-JohnWilliam Sandoval (sandoval@seis.ucla.edu) is a professor of education, and Jon Kovach (kovach@seis.ucla.edu) is the director of the Science Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. Leticia Perez (lperez2@wested.org) is a professional learning specialist at WestEd in San Francisco. Lynn Kim-John (lkim@seis.ucla.edu) is the director of the Educational Leadership Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jarod Kawasaki (jakawasaki@csudh.edu) is an assistant professor of education at California State University in Dominguez Hills.Jarod KawasakiWilliam Sandoval (sandoval@seis.ucla.edu) is a professor of education, and Jon Kovach (kovach@seis.ucla.edu) is the director of the Science Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. Leticia Perez (lperez2@wested.org) is a professional learning specialist at WestEd in San Francisco. Lynn Kim-John (lkim@seis.ucla.edu) is the director of the Educational Leadership Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jarod Kawasaki (jakawasaki@csudh.edu) is an assistant professor of education at California State University in Dominguez Hills.

  PublisherDOI

• Epistemic cognition

  Elsevier eBooks · 2022-11-18

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Do adolescents want more autonomy? Testing gender differences in autonomy across STEM

  Journal of Adolescence · 2021-10-01 · 26 citations

  articleSenior author

  INTRODUCTION: A growing body of research has identified gender disparities in STEM education, but data are limited from studies directly comparing autonomy given to autonomy wanted by adolescents, as experienced in classrooms by gender and across course subjects. METHODS: With a sample of US adolescents (n = 540), aged 11-19 and 55% female, we assessed students' perceived levels of autonomy given, and levels of autonomy wanted, by adapting an autonomy assessment specific to course subjects of math, science, and English. We then employed contrast models testing gender differences of autonomy levels across course subjects of math, science, and English, and controlled for age. RESULTS: Overall, all adolescents reported getting less autonomy than they want. Within gender, girls reported wanting the most autonomy from science. Between genders, girls reported wanting more autonomy from both math and science, compared to boys. In contrast, girls reported getting more autonomy in English, compared to boys. While we found no developmental differences for reported levels of autonomy given, we did find developmental differences with levels of autonomy wanted, showing significant variability of adolescents wanting more autonomy with age. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest a general desire for more autonomy across adolescence, with a desire for more autonomy in STEM more common amongst girls. If adolescents' perceived levels of autonomy vary across STEM and by gender, these effects may extend more broadly to their pursuits of STEM careers. Students' beliefs of autonomy and self-concept shape their career interests and academic engagement, a trajectory that warrants concern and further investigation.

  PublisherDOI

• Characterizing Science Classroom Discourse Across Scales

  Research in Science Education · 2020-08-12 · 21 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Fundamental Challenges to Learning to Teach Science as Practice

  ICLS · 2020-06-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Teaching and Learning by Questioning

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2020-01-10 · 13 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  How can we encourage adolescents to ask the most effective questions? Several different lines of research design children's and adolescents' learning environments in ways that capitalize on self-initiated, largely self-directed question-asking and answer-seeking. We describe a number of studies indicating that such contexts yield effective outcomes for several different kinds of learning and across different populations. We discuss inquiry, and its importance for students developing a sense of agency and value in conducting their own inquiry and their learning more broadly. The role of argument, a context in which claims are expected to be justified by appeal to evidence, is highlighted as it can lead one to question a claim being made, and thus be seen as a driving factor to engaging in discourse about a claim. Finally, we stress that teachers must learn to cede control to an extent that allows students autonomy in choosing questions they find authentic and worthy of pursuit, and in letting students engage and address one another directly, allowing them to develop the norms of discourse that reinforce accountability to one another.

  PublisherDOI

• Can autonomy play a role in causal reasoning?

  Cognitive Development · 2020 · 18 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Social psychology
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• CENSNet: An Architecture for Authentic Web-based Science Inquiry in Middle and High School

  NSF · $1.7M · 2004–2009

• Making Sciences: Data Modeling and Argumentation in Elementary Science

  NSF · $300k · 2007–2011

• Developing Teachers' Capacity to Promote Argumentation in Secondary Science

  NSF · $2.8M · 2015–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Jennifer Wiley

  University of Illinois Chicago

  16 shared

• Sarah K. Brem

  16 shared

• Eva E. Toth

  University of California, Los Angeles

  16 shared

• Jarod Kawasaki

  California State University, Dominguez Hills

  11 shared

• Christine L. Borgman

  10 shared

• Kelli A. Millwood

  9 shared

• Kathy Griffis

  9 shared

• Joe Wise

  7 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Learning Sciences

  Northwestern University

  1998

• B.S., Computer Science

  University of New Mexico

  1986

Awards & honors

• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Fellow, International Society of the Learning Sciences
• Fellow, International Society for Design and Development in…