Middle

This brief describes how to support equity for students, teachers, and communities through place-based science education strategies.

Coleman, S., Chinn, P., Morrison, D., & Kaupp, L. (2019). How place-based science education strategies can support equity for students, teachers, and communities. STEM Teaching Tools.

The CRIS “7e” lesson plan template, adapted from the Next Generation Science “5e”, centers the importance of including Elders and Environment in Indigenous STEM teaching and learning. The template is a way for teachers to weave Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Western Science into lessons, and has been formative in helping team members integrate community knowledge and land-based education into science learning experiences. 

We report on one teachers’ efforts to re-design an entire instructional unit as a coherent storyline about forces and motion as a part of a multiyear professional development (PD) project around the NGSS. Designing coherent storylines demands that teachers create opportunities for students to meaningfully engage in science practices in order to develop their knowledge over time.

The role of probability in curricula for children has fluctuated greatly over the past several decades. Recently, some countries have removed probability from their preschool and primary curricula, and others have retained it. One reason for such lack of agreement is that theory about early probability learning is still relatively new and under development. The purpose of this report is to sketch a tentative theoretical structure with the potential to anchor curricular decisions and inform further research on early probability learning.

Frausto, A., Morales-Doyle, D., Fitch, A., Hatch, S., & Nagy, K. (2019, April). Toward Youth Participatory Science: In Search of Science (Education) for the People. Presentation at the annual international conference of NARST, Baltimore, MD.

Morales-Doyle, D., Frausto, A., Childress Price, T., Chappell, M., & Hatch, S. (2019, April). Science curriculum from the grassroots. Presentation at the annual conference of the National Science Teachers Association, St. Louis, Missouri.

Morales-Doyle, D., Frausto, A., Chappell, M.J., Childress-Price, T.L., Collins, D.A., Levingston, A., Aguilera, A., Canales, K., & Herrera, E. (2019, April). Beyond PCK: Science Teachers Building Critical Historical Knowledge for Environmental Justice. Presentation at the annual international conference of NARST, Baltimore, MD.

Inquiry instruction often neglects graphing. It gives students few opportunities to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to take advantage of graphs, and which are called for by current science education standards. Yet, it is not well known how to support graphing skills, particularly within middle school science inquiry contexts. Using qualitative graphs is a promising, but underexplored approach.

Graphs illustrating complex scientific relationships require students to integrate multiple concepts and visual features into a coherent understanding. We investigate ways to support students in integrating their understanding of density concepts through a graph that is linked to a simulation depicting the relationship between mass, volume, and density. We randomly assigned 325 8^th-grade students to 1 of 2 graphing activities.

Graphs illustrating complex scientific relationships require students to integrate multiple concepts and visual features into a coherent understanding. We investigate ways to support students in integrating their understanding of density concepts through a graph that is linked to a simulation depicting the relationship between mass, volume, and density. We randomly assigned 325 8^th-grade students to 1 of 2 graphing activities.