Science

Online STEM credit courses have become attractive to school leaders as a way to support students who fail STEM courses in face-to-face school year settings. However, there is little research about the processes involved in how schools make decisions regarding student credit recovery. This study is engaged in data collection in high schools in a diverse county including credit recovery classroom observations, interviews, and administrative data to measure and evaluate policies around credit recovery.

This project will develop a professional development (PD) program to support teachers in implementing a physical computing anchored transdisciplinary curriculum. The program includes summer institutes and year-long activities where teachers will be first immersed in the same transdisciplinary learning experiences their students will undergo and then co-design/revise the curriculum for the local context. We will follow teachers over time to understand what trajectories teachers follow as they strive to shift toward more transdisciplinary teaching practices.

This project will develop a professional development (PD) program to support teachers in implementing a physical computing anchored transdisciplinary curriculum. The program includes summer institutes and year-long activities where teachers will be first immersed in the same transdisciplinary learning experiences their students will undergo and then co-design/revise the curriculum for the local context. We will follow teachers over time to understand what trajectories teachers follow as they strive to shift toward more transdisciplinary teaching practices.

This project will develop a professional development (PD) program to support teachers in implementing a physical computing anchored transdisciplinary curriculum. The program includes summer institutes and year-long activities where teachers will be first immersed in the same transdisciplinary learning experiences their students will undergo and then co-design/revise the curriculum for the local context. We will follow teachers over time to understand what trajectories teachers follow as they strive to shift toward more transdisciplinary teaching practices.

This three-year project aims to increase multilingual students’ engagement in scientific and engineering practices (SEPs) through a model of professional learning for high school teachers focused on embedding the Instructional Conversation (IC) pedagogy within standards-aligned SEPs. Under this model, science teachers will collaborate with English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers to co-develop linguistically-sustaining instructional materials that provide students with intentionally scaffolded opportunities to use scientific dialogue as they engage in the SEPs.

This project explores the influence of elementary teachers' curricular context knowledge, developed over multiple curricular enactments, to adapt curriculum materials in ways that are culturally respsonsive to their students. The project utilizes Explore the Salish Sea, a place-based curriculum that braids together Western and Indigenous science. Students learn about their local ecosystem and and partner with community members to engage in stewardship. Our research follows teachers through four different cycles of curriculum enactment to develop robust case studies.

Project CuRRENT addresses the need for incorporating multiple ways of knowing and learning into STEM pedagogy and curriculum through the design and delivery of a two-year professional development (PD) model that engaged elementary teachers in integrated, place-based, and regionally relevant learning focused on the theme of local watersheds. We explore how PD that embeds epistemological pluralism and is connected to local communities and ecology impacts teachers’ self-efficacy with designing and delivering place-based, NGSS-aligned STEM curriculum.

SIMIRS is a Level 2 Early Stage Design and Development project led by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and practitioners at NC State University, in partnership with 26 rural school systems across North Carolina.

Expectations and opportunities for student learning in science are expanding to involve students in making sense of and addressing real questions and problems in the world around them. At the same time, school districts are seeking innovative ways to support teachers in providing instruction that takes into account students’ perspectives and uses those perspectives to teach science.

This project provides rural middle school teachers and career counselors professional development, and the support needed to collaborate with each other and local community assets in designing, integrating, and implementing effective STEM content and career development activities. School teams co-develop project-based learning units that incorporate a place-based education perspective involving STEM assets, careers, and stakeholders from the local communities for middle school rural youth that intentionally infuse STEM careers in their area with STEM content.