This Q&A style session is intended to provide information to the community and foster informal discussion about the DRK–12 and STEM+C programs, as well as NSF funding opportunities and initiatives.
(Moderator: Evan Heit)
Discuss approaches for tackling deficit models for students with disabilities and difficulties, and as they share their perspectives on strengthening responsiveness to students’ diverse ways of knowing and learning.
This session focuses on broadening participation for students with disabilities and difficulties through a cross-project discussion around the essential questions of responsiveness and of tackling pervasive deficit models. The presenters find deficit models unacceptable. Learning is framed as a form of adaptation that respects the knowledge students bring to learning environments.
Examine an innovative, written assessment to infer a ZPD-correlated stage in students’ multiplicative reasoning as a proxy for labor- and time-intensive cognitive interviews.
The purpose of this session is to share the recent development, validation, and use of a written assessment geared toward replacing labor- and time-intensive (cognitive) interviews as a means to obtain evidence of students’ mathematical reasoning. Specifically, Ron Tzur first depicts the provisional stage (called participatory), which correlates with Vygotsky’s ZPD, and what it entails for assessment of students’ mathematics.
Discuss and provide feedback on brief syntheses of (a) DRK–12 research on broadening participation in STEM and (b) theories used to study broadening participation.
This panel session brings together several projects that explore affordances and challenges to synergistic delivery of STEM and CT concepts and practices in K–12 classrooms.
While there is broad consensus about the synergistic relations between STEM domains and CT concepts and practices, there remains much to be done in developing CT-supported STEM curricula and in providing K–12 teachers and practitioners with the tools and resources to implement such curricula. In this 90-minute topical session, leaders from four DRK–12 STEM+C projects that are developing technology-based solutions address challenges in developing appropriate curricula, resources, and assessments for elementary, middle, and high school STEM courses.
Plan how to broadly disseminate, maintain, and sustain the products of your DRK–12 and/or STEM+C project. Learn about common models, and share your own ideas and experiences.
This session, led by veteran PIs and co-PIs from Georgia Tech and Concord Consortium, provides a forum for participants to explore the pros and cons of different routes toward product sustainability. The session begins with a carousel activity in which participants respond to prompt questions about challenges and models for transitioning educational resources from research projects to sustained dissemination at scale.
Discuss and provide feedback on a brief synthesis of the DRK–12 portfolio as it relates to STEM education from preK through grade 3.
This session provides practical training in the concepts and application of moderation and mediation within the context of STEM education.
This session provides applied training in the principles and practice of designing and analyzing studies to address questions of moderation and mediation. Presenters outline the motivation and critical value of complementing “what works”-type questions with explanatory investigations that address for whom a program works, under what conditions it works, and how it works for different groups. A practical outline of the concepts of moderation and mediation is presented through several STEM case studies.
Join presenters as they use an equity framework to engage participants in discussing broadening the participation of Latinx middle school students in a mathematics and computer programming program.
This roundtable discussion begins by framing the affordances and challenges in the context of broadening the participation of Latinx middle school students in STEM+C using an equity lens (Gutiérrez, 2012). Four axes are included as part of this framework: access, achievement (in our case, understandings), identity, and power. Participants are asked to share their understandings of the issues in relation to this equity lens and share stories of opportunities and challenges, as well as ideas of how to address those challenges.
Learn about a model of language-rich STEM inquiry for broadening participation of English learners in formal and informal spaces, followed by an interactive discussion.
This roundtable session begins with the presentation of a model of language-rich STEM inquiry for broadening participation of English learners (ELs) in formal and informal spaces. This model, developed through the work of this DRK–12 project, brings together EL students, their families, and their STEM teachers in both formal and informal STEM learning spaces. The goal of the model is to support teachers in better utilizing their EL students’ conceptual and linguistic assets to support STEM learning goals with the larger aim of broadening participation in STEM to include more ELs.
