How can we help all students navigate our data-rich world? By Leticia Perez and Karen Lionberger | May 3, 2023 It’s a strong possibility that by the time this blog comes across your screen today, you will have received multiple alerts based on a collection of personal data about you. Maybe it was your watch or phone telling you how much screen time you had this week, or how many steps you have taken towards your daily goal, or maybe a targeted advertisement that popped up on your social media. Sound familiar? We live in a world that is fundamentally [...]

Five Design Principles for Supporting Student Motivation and Engagement in Science Classrooms By Christopher Harris and David McKinney | April 4, 2023 This is an exciting time for science education. Spurred in part by the release of A Framework for K–12 Science Education and Next Generation Science Standards, science educators are changing their classrooms to enact instructional experiences that will help all their students to participate in the real-world practices of science. While this vision for learning has generated enthusiasm for many of us in the science education community, we must also recognize that it places higher demands on students [...]

What does it take to build affirming science learning environments? What can be gained? By Rasha ElSayed and Kirsten Daehler | January 30, 2023 Can you think of a time when you felt like an outsider or an “other” in the room? We have. As one of only a few girls in an AP Physics class, one of us remembers being told that girls don’t really understand physics, they just know how to get good grades. The other remembers, even as an educator, not having the language to participate in professional learning about “makers” and feeling that work is best [...]

How do we equitably accelerate learning in science? By Jennifer Childress Self | December 6, 2022 After a long and distressing absence, students have been back in classrooms this fall across the country. We’re not back to business as usual, though. Schools and districts have been trying to figure out how to address students’ “unfinished learning” — the learning targets for a grade or course that students did not meet or address due in this case to pandemic disruptions (sometimes called “learning loss”). They mainly try to address this by “accelerating learning.” In some places, this has meant hiring extra [...]

Influences of a Large-Scale, Intensive Initiative on Teachers' NGSS Implementation By Katy Nilsen and Ashley Iveland | November 8, 2022 Nearly a decade since the release of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), teachers are still struggling to implement key NGSS instructional shifts: focusing on phenomena and problems, integrating engineering practices and content, and incorporating the science and engineering practices (SEPs) and crosscutting concepts (CCCs). However, research suggests that there are effective ways to move the needle: access to sustained professional learning and having a leadership role in implementation helps teachers in their understanding, leadership, and teaching of the NGSS. [...]

How Can Engineering Design Make Math More Accessible to All Students? By Meghan Macias | October 6, 2022 The research literature is clear: Integrating mathematics and science can lead to students’ increased enthusiasm, increased achievement in both disciplines, and an increase in relevant and authentic experiences. As part of a recent project to better understand the impact of disciplinary integration and how to support it, I had the opportunity to talk with secondary mathematics and science teachers about the links between the different disciplines they teach. I assisted with coordinating and leading focus groups and interviews with in-service secondary mathematics [...]

Do we have to assess CCCs? By Jennifer Childress Self | September 14, 2022 Since the release of A Framework for K–12 Science Education a decade ago, Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs) have become part of the national conversation about science education. Almost all states now include CCCs in their state science standards, and more instructional materials include CCCs every day. There is a difference, though, between including the CCC words (e.g., patterns, cause and effect) somewhere in a document and fully supporting students to learn CCCs. Ten years down the road, it still doesn’t seem like we as a field are [...]

How can teachers attune to students' cultures? By Jon Boxerman | July 13, 2022 I recently returned from a long-awaited trip to Guam. As a member of the NSF INCLUDES SEAS Islands Alliance research team, I was there to study how Indigenous/diasporic islanders, who have historically been underrepresented in the geosciences, maintain identity and a sense of belonging to their heritage culture, while developing STEM identities and a sense of belonging to the STEM community. In Indigenous/diasporic settings, in-person research is particularly effective. Personal relationships, which can take many years to cultivate, are vitally important to garner trust and foster [...]

By Christopher Harris | June 8, 2022 It is hard to believe that we are nearly a decade out from the release of A Framework for K–12 Science Education (Framework) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Also noteworthy is that we are now at a point where the vision for science education put forth by the Framework has become part of education policy in many corners of the U.S. This vision recasts science proficiency as not only what students know, but also how they can use and apply what they know. In today’s science classrooms, students are expected to [...]

By Brooke Bourdélat Gorman | May 2, 2022 Many years ago, I was the kind of student who would sit in class furiously writing down every word my teacher said. It was a source of stress if a friend distracted me or the teacher talked too fast because I might miss a word, or worse, a whole sentence. At the end of class, I would shut my notebook, put it in my backpack, and take my transcription home to “learn” the information, mostly by memorizing. There were exceptions; some teachers did more labs or more problem solving or more collaboration, [...]