Science

"The majority of U.S. students, particularly low-income and minority youth, lacks foundational skills and knowledge in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics." Read the brief to learn more about preparing students for college and careers in STEM.

Current data on school readiness and early math and science achievement indicate we are not giving young children the support they need to be “STEM Smart”. Read this brief on nurturing STEM skills in young learners.

This paper summarizes how Collaborative Online Projects (COPs) are used to facilitate science content-area learning for English Learners of Hispanic origin. This is a Mexico-USA partnership project funded by the National Science Foundation. A COP is a 10-week thematic science unit, completely online, and bilingual (Spanish and English) designed to provide collaborative learning experiences with culturally and linguistically relevant science instruction in an interactive and multimodal learning environment. Units are integrated with explicit instructional lessons that include: a) hands-on and laboratory activities, b) interactive materials and interactive games with immediate feedback, c) animated video tutorials, d) discussion forums where students exchange scientific learning across classrooms in the USA and in Mexico, and e) summative and formative assessments. Thematic units have been aligned to U.S. National Science Education Standards and are under current revisions for alignment to the Common Core State Standards. Training materials for the teachers have been integrated into the project website to facilitate self-paced and independent learning. Preliminary findings of our pre-experimental study with a sample of 53 students (81% ELs), distributed across three different groups, resulted in a 21% statistically significant points increase from pretest to posttest assessments of science content learning, t(52) = 11.07, p = .000.

The NSF’s Discovery Research K-12 (DR K-12) program is one potential source of funding for the needed research on the educational effectiveness of gaming and simulations. The DR K-12 program seeks to enhance the teaching and learning of STEM in K-12 education by funding the “development, testing, deployment, effectiveness, and/or scale-up of innovative resources, models, and tools”4 in STEM areas. This work takes on many forms within the funding portfolio, including computer games and simulations. With the growing attention to these types of educational technologies, the Community for Advancing Discovery Research in Education (CADRE) conducted a brief targeted study to better understand the gaming and simulation research and development work being funded within the NSF’s DR K-12 program and to highlight work that may help fill the gaps identified by the NRC.