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Recent implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) has intensified the focus on teaching and learning of the Earth’s climate and GCC in formal learning environments. Concurrently, the empirical research associated with climate education has also increased. We used an exhaustive, stepwise process to search for and identify relevant literature, systematically analyzing 178 empirical, peer-reviewed studies focused on climate literacy and education in formal K-16 settings.

In this mixed method study, we analyse the effectiveness of two pedagogical approaches – one model-based and another non-model-based – for developing secondary students’ understanding of the phenomenon of increase in Earth’s average surface temperatures, a core dimension of global climate change (GCC).

This study illustrates how two secondary mathematics teachers used students’ incorrect answers as they supported students’ engagement in collective argumentation.

This review synthesized insights from 27 NSF-funded projects, totaling $62 million, that studied pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in STEM education from prekindergarten (PreK) to Grade 12, split roughly equally across mathematics and science education. The projects primarily applied correlational/observational and longitudinal methods, often targeted teaching in the middle school grades, and used a wide variety of approaches to measure teachers’ PCK. The projects advanced substantive knowledge about PCK across four major lines of research, especially regarding the measurement and development of PCK.

This review synthesizes findings from 18 NSF-funded projects, totaling nearly $22 million, that studied scientific modeling in science education from prekindergarten to Grade 12. The projects typically used descriptive designs to understand digital and nondigital modeling resources that help students explore scientific phenomena. Further, the projects provide initial evidence that resources supporting student modeling, such as modeling platforms and computer simulations, can promote science learning.

This review synthesizes insights from 23 NSF-funded projects, totaling $40 million, that studied mathematical and scientific argumentation in STEM education from prekindergarten (PreK) to Grade 12. The projects reported on both studies of argumentation interventions and naturalistic observations in “business-as-usual” settings. The projects advanced substantive knowledge about how to support student argumentation. In particular, the projects highlighted the importance of making an argument’s structure explicit and facilitating student-to-student discourse, especially with technological tools.

This conceptual paper introduces the honeycomb of engineering framework, which offers an epistemologically justified theoretical position and a pedagogical lens that can be used to examine ways engineering concepts and practices are taught in precollege education.

Socially relevant and controversial topics, such as the climate crisis, are subject to differences in the explanations that scientists and the public find plausible. Scaffolds can help students be evaluative of the validity of explanations based on evidence when addressing such topics and support knowledge gains. This study compared two scaffolds in which students weighed connections between lines of evidence and explanations for the topics of climate change and extreme weather events.

This study investigated how newcomer emergent bilinguals made meaning in two 9th-grade biology classrooms. Methods relevant to naturalistic inquiry were used to collect and analyze data. Findings indicate that newcomers bridged aspects of personal experiences with social competencies valued in classrooms through using heritage languages, engaging as brokers and collaborators, and attempting to realize goals of learning English and content simultaneously. Findings also show that misalignments between social competence and personal experience constrained meaning-making. This study illustrates a need for activities that reflect and expand newcomer resources and experiences, and for activities that can take shape through student participation.

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.