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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.

Though many national and international science organizations stress the importance of integrating scientific inquiry into classroom instruction, this is often difficult for teachers. Moreover, assessing and scaffolding inquiry skills for students can be even more of a challenge. This paper investigated the student performances in an inquiry-based, situated virtual environment assessment and their descriptions of the experience in a strategically scaffolded conversation that followed it.

Current science assessments typically present a series of isolated fact-based questions, poorly representing the complexity of how real-world science is constructed. The National Research Council asserts that this needs to change to reflect a more authentic model of science practice. We strongly concur and suggest that good science assessments need to consist of several key factors: integration of science content with scientific inquiry, contextualization of questions, efficiency of grading and statistical validity and reliability.

Create an immersive virtual environment to engage students in problem solving.

This article describes how the NSF funded High-Adventure Science: Earth’s Systems and Sustainability (HAS:ESS) project is developing online curriculum modules for middle school and high school classroom use. The curricula engage students with interactive computational models and analysis of real-world data as they build scientific reasoning and argumentation skills, focused around core ideas in Earth Science with particular emphasis on how humans affect Earth’s systems. Currently available modules focus on climate change and on fresh water availability.

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.