Elementary

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.

This list contains STEM education-related publications that may be of interest to DRK-12 grantees for the purposes of (1) disseminating knowledge and products and (2) developing partnerships with stakeholders and end-users. These publications were chosen because they provide researchers and developers with an opportunity to present their work to individuals that could use, promote, or improve the work.

This file contains a listing of STEM education-related conferences that may be of interest to DRK-12 grantees, such as for the purposes of (1) disseminating knowledge and products and (2) developing partnerships with stakeholders and end-users. These conferences were chosen because they provide researchers and developers with an opportunity to present their work to individuals that could use, promote, or improve the work. We include conferences that target practitioners and policymakers, as well as research and academic communities.

Inquiry-based learning is a part of modern science education at all levels. The new science education standards framework has both emphasized the central role of inquiry and further defined the core competencies, such as making a claim and supporting it with evidence (NRC, 2011). This emphasis on argumentation arises not only out of its importance in science practice but also because students tend tostruggle with mastering it (McNeill, 2011), especially at the elementary level.

This case study illustrates how a 2nd-grade child, Violet, used an ordinal view of number to reason about positicve and negative integers and arithmetic involving integers. Violet's ordinal view of number facilitated her ability to reason about and correctly solve some integer-related problems and constrained her solutions to others. We demonstrate how Violet's thinking evolved over time while she extended the properties of whole numbers and addition and subtraction to the integers.

In this conceptual paper, we propose an heuristic to balance context-specific and generic scaffolding, as well as computer-based and teacher scaffolding, during instruction centered on authentic, scientific problems. This paper is novel in that many researchers ask a dichotomous question of whether generic or context-specific scaffolding is best, and fail to focus on what processes and cognitions each type of scaffolding excels at supporting.

Instructional scaffolding can be de fi ned as support provided by a teacher/parent, peer, or a computer- or a paper-based tool that allows students to meaningfully participate in and gain skill at a task that they would be unable to complete unaided. The metaphor of scaffolding has been applied to instruction in contexts ranging from literacy education to science education, and among individuals ranging from infants to graduate students. In this chapter, scaffolding is defined and its theoretical backing is explored. Then scaffolding strategies and examples are explored.

A problematic, yet common, assumption among educational researchers is that when teachers provide authentic, problem-based experiences, students will automatically be engaged. Evidence indicates that this is often not the case.

One way to help students engage in higher-order thinking is through scaffolding, which can be defined as support that allows students to participate meaningfully in and gain skill at a task that is beyond their unassisted abilities. Most research on computer-based scaffolds assesses the average impact of the tools on learning outcomes. This is problematic in that it assumes that computer-based scaffolds impact different students in the same way.

What does the United States need to do to build future generations’ knowledge and skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and what kinds of research and innovation can enable the needed changes in teaching and learning? This brief describes examples of research and development (R&D) sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that are designed to advance knowledge and practice in STEM education. It highlights just a few of the many R&D projects that have the potential to equip educators in pursuing national priorities for STEM education.