Resources

The Next Generation Science Standards integrate engineering practices as a core method for learning science and as a 21st century skill set that all students must develop. Engineering is transforming our world, serving as the core of the innovation economy and touching all aspects of our lives. But the gap between where we need to go and classroom reality is particularly salient in high school biology, where memorization is king and engineering practices and outcomes are largely absent, even though biotechnology is exploding. As biology is typically a first exposure to high school-level science, it is particularly unfortunate that students experience such an uninteresting, low-tech, memorization-driven approach.

Children are born engineers—they are fascinated with building, with taking things apart, and with how things work. However, K-12 educational settings have traditionally done little to develop children’s engineering and technological literacy. The Engineering is Elementary (EiE) project fosters engineering and technological literacy among elementary school students and educators. EiE has created a research-based, standards-driven, and classroom-tested curriculum that integrates engineering and technology concepts and skills with elementary science topics. EiE lessons not only promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning in grades 1-5, but also connect with literacy and social studies. To date, EiE has reached over 2.7 million students and 32,000 teachers and is presently used in all fifty states.

The Engineering is Elementary (EiE) project fosters engineering and technological literacy among elementary school students and educators. EiE has created a research-based, standards-driven, and classroom-tested curriculum that integrates engineering and technology concepts and skills with elementary science topics. EiE lessons not only promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning in grades 1–5, but also connect with literacy and social studies. To date, EiE has reached over 2.7 million students and 32,000 teachers and is presently used in all 50 states.

Biocomplexity has emerged as an umbrella science that helps us understand how humans are an integral part of nature. Thinking about humans as agents within and for ecosystems as opposed to external actors who produce an impact is a radically different way to think about people in the world, and brings a number of new perspectives to the practice of ecology. The Biocomplexity and the Habitable Planet project was funded by the National Science Foundation to bring this new perspective to high school environmental science and ecology instruction through a high school capstone course

The Institute for Women in Trades, Technology & Science (IWITTS) offers products and services that help technology and science educators increase the number of women and girls enrolled in their classes and encourage those students to stay enrolled. In 2006, IWITTS was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant from the Research on Gender in Science and Engineering program to fund the CalWomenTech (CWT) project. Between 2006 and 2011, seven California community colleges received training and technical assistance to help recruit and retain women into STEM programs through the CWT project.

Exploring Computer Science (ECS) is a computer science (CS) curriculum designed in response to research findings about the severe limitations of Advanced Placement CS in engaging more than a narrow band of students. ECS is a year-long college-preparatory course, consisting of six units, including problem-solving, Web design, introduction to programming, robotics and data analysis. Designed to introduce students to the foundational, creative, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and problem-solving nature of computer science, ECS is offered in 27 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is the second largest district in the country. It is also offered in San Jose, Chicago, and Puerto Rico. ECS addresses the injustices of historically denied computer science education to underrepresented populations while also providing students with an engaging yet rigorous experience. ECS teachers are at the core of this effort to increase access to computer science knowledge. They are supported with a professional learning community, in-classroom coaching, and on-going professional development. ECS and Into the Loop, a K–12/university partnership dedicated to increasing equity and access to quality computer science learning in public schools, has been a catalyst and foundation for Mobilize, an NSF CISE and Math Science Partnership-supported project. At the heart of Mobilize is “participatory sensing”—a method of data collection and analysis in which students will use mobile phones and Web services to systematically collect and interpret data about issues important to them and their communities.

According to the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), personal digital fabrication will offer revolutionary changes for manufacturers and the everyday consumer. In fact, personal fabrication was featured in SME’s 2009 Innovations That Could Change the Way You Manufacture list. Advanced manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printers, are transforming engineering education; within the past few years, desktop manufacturing systems have become affordable at the K–12 level. The FabLab Classroom was funded by the National Science Foundation to explore the use of digital fabrication to allow students to create digital designs that are realized as physical objects, such as model satellites (in collaboration with NASA), wind turbines, and speaker systems.

EDC’s project Foundation Science, which developed four introductory high school courses in biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics (now known as Concepts and Practices: Biology, Concepts and Practices: Chemistry, and EDC Earth Science), framed its approach on Wilson’s premise that story is a powerful tool for teaching and learning science. No learning can take place unless the learner is engaged in the topic and motivated by a need to know the information and how it relates to his or her own life.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are a set of science education standards being developed based on a vision for science education established by the Framework for K–12 Science Education published by the National Research Council in 2012. Publication of the framework was the first of a two-step process to produce a set of Next Generation Science Standards for voluntary adoption by the states. The NGSS are currently being developed by a team of writers including researchers, education policy specialists, scientists, and classroom teachers. The development is being coordinated by Achieve and 26 lead states.

FLEXE is a science education project that helps students gain an understanding of local and extreme environments, the interconnected Earth system and the process of science. As part of the project, students collect data in their local environment and compare them with equivalent data from partner schools and from an extreme environment, namely the deep sea. Hydrothermal vents and cold seeps are among the extreme environments being compared. Students participate in three main activities: (1) protocol-driven fieldwork and analysis, and analysis of data from an extreme environment; (2) Web-based interactions with scientists and students from partner schools; and (3) culminating activities that include reporting and peer review. FLEXE provides an online system for exploring learning activities developed for the project and for facilitating interactions between students and between students and scientists. Through the FLEXE Forum, collaborating scientists present intriguing deep sea datasets to students along with scientific questions for them to answer, and provide feedback on their responses in a timely manner. Evaluation is central to the project. FLEXE combines program evaluation with hypothesis-based research to explicitly test effects of various program components on student learning and attitudes towards science. FLEXE was developed at Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Science and the Schools in collaboration with the Globe Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment program and the NSF deep sea research program Ridge2000.