TITLE: Middle School Science Teachers ' Personal Growth and Professional Development: What Do They Mean?

A teacher may say, I have twenty years of experience," but just what does it mean? This study suggests explanations for the meaning of uExperience,1v not by looking at the number of years in a classroom, but at what teachers did in those years that could make the teaching experience equivalent to years of personal growth and development. Three Middle Level Science teachers ' experiences were observed over two separate units of instruction. Teachers were engaged in conversations before, during and after every observation, such that their talk gave meaning to teaching. The teachers, early in their units, experienced tensions (stresses and anxieties) that affected their planning and implementation of teaching. The study determined that the Redacted for privacy teachers ' learning experiences and personal growth wer