Abstract We introduce three views of science that ground different perspectives on the long‐term development of scientific thinking: science‐as‐reasoning, science‐as‐conceptual change, and science‐as‐practice. An emphasis on science as an integrated set of epistemic practices is receiving increasing attention. For example, new science education standards in the United States highlight the importance of students' participation in scientific practices, which are communally recognized and supported ways of generating, revising, and critiquing scientific knowledge. Based on reviews of the history, philosophy, and psychology of science, we argue that the defining practice of science is modeling, and that it is useful to conceive of other scientific practices in relation to this foundational one. Accordingly, we trace the ontogeny of representational and material practices of modeling and situate seven related scientific practices, such as constructing and interpreting data, or developing explanations and arguments, as motivated by modeling. This perspective identifies fruitful areas for additional research that can inform the field's understanding of how to describe and support the development of scientific thinking.
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