Elementary

School science continues to alienate students identifying with nondominant, non-western cultures, and learners of color, and considers science as an enterprise where success necessitates divorcing the self and corporeal body from ideas and the mind. Resisting the colonizing pedagogy of the mind–body divide, we aimed at creating pedagogical spaces and places in science classes that sustain equitable opportunities for engagement and meaning making where body and mind are enmeshed. In the context of a partnership between school- and university-based educators and researchers, we explored how multimodal literacies cultivated through the performing arts, provide students from minoritized communities opportunities to both create knowledge and to position themselves as science experts and brilliant and creative meaning makers.

Science involves changing the scale of objects—particularly scales of size, time, and intensity—from what is experienced in the world. Similar to investigations conducted in science laboratories, classroom investigations involve re-representing and re-scaling entities, manipulating them, and observing effects in new locations and timescales. However, this aspect of investigation is under-studied and under-utilized as a resource for learning. We argue that, from elementary school, children can experience quantification, or identifying, developing, and working with variables, as consequential and can take up differences in representation and scale in empirical investigations as opportunities for sense-making and conceptual progress.

This paper introduces an approach for designing NGSS-aligned assessments that measure young learners’ science progress while also attending to the scientific language and literacy practices that are integral parts of the NGSS Performance Expectations.

This paper introduces an approach for designing NGSS-aligned assessments that measure young learners’ science progress while also attending to the scientific language and literacy practices that are integral parts of the NGSS Performance Expectations.

This paper introduces an approach for designing NGSS-aligned assessments that measure young learners’ science progress while also attending to the scientific language and literacy practices that are integral parts of the NGSS Performance Expectations.

This poster describes the work of the Bridging Science Teaching and Learning in Title 1 Schools project. Historically, the public education community has struggled with providing all children with
equitable access to quality science education; particularly in urban communities. Teachers play a vital role in addressing this challenge. By equipping them with the pedagogical knowledge
needed to employ culturally relevant/responsive practices, teachers will be better prepared to address the challenges related to broadening participation in science. SCI-Bridge is a teacher
development project that seeks to address inequities in access to quality science instruction in urban elementary schools. The project will test a professional learning model that (1) integrates
the theoretical principles of culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy with best practices in science education and (2) prepares teachers to use three evidence-based practices: culturally
responsive classroom management (CRCM), facilitated discourse, and anchoring.

Urban Title I schools need teachers who recognize and can help address challenges with broadening participation in science and inequities in access to quality science instruction found in elementary schools. The paper presents scholarly work supported by a National Science Foundation Discovery Research K-12 grant. A new science instructional model that intersects effective practices in science education with the theoretical principles of culturally relevant pedagogy is provided. Grounded in evidence-based practice, the new model, SCI-Bridge, features how culturally responsive classroom management, facilitated discourse, and contextual anchoring can be implemented as part of science instruction in elementary classrooms.

Many of us have multiple stories that would be appropriate to tell given the theme of this Special Issue. I am compelled to tell a story about my work with teachers, teacher leaders, and other allies on the Navajo Nation. The Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators (DINÉ) was started by teacher leaders who envisioned a collaborative professional development institute specifically for K12 teachers on the Navajo Nation. In their rural, Indigenous-serving schools, teachers are often asked to deliver scripted curriculum that is decontextualized, dehistoricized, and therefore, dehumanizing for their students, themselves, and their communities. Their vision for the DINÉ was developed and honed over many years in response to this context. In this essay, I will briefly describe the DINÉ, how and why it began, and its current status. I will focus on three critical spaces that have opened up in and through the DINÉ: teacher leadership, connection/relationality, and activism/self-determination. In reflecting on these three spaces, I suggest that our work in the DINÉ is fundamentally about Native Nation building.

This article presents a tool and discusses the rationale for the authors’ development of a tool designed to assess the alignment of culturally responsive schooling principles within schools serving predominantly U.S. Indigenous students. Schools that serve a majority of Indigenous students are generally located on or bordering Native Nations that are federally recognized as being sovereign Nations with a government-to-government relationship to the federal government, so the more generic diversity, equity, and inclusion tools that currently exist are insufficient for the unique contexts of schools in Indian Country. Thus, we offer a tool that can be used to identify and strengthen the integration of culturally responsive principles specifically for, with, and in Indigenous-serving schools.

The CS-STEM Network offers research-based curricula created by Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy that focus on teaching big ideas with robotics. Over 20 curriculum options provide support for LEGO, VEX, Arduino, and Virtual robot platforms in this Learning Management System.