Resources from STEM Smart Workshops

Engaging Youth through Engineering (EYE) is a partnership-driven K–12 economic development initiative underway in Mobile, Ala., that is spearheaded by a local nonprofit education entity in collaboration with a large urban school system, higher education, and area business and industry. Its purpose is to produce high school graduates eager and able to meet the growing demand for tech-savvy workers who are also innovative problem solvers. EYE uses engineering design challenges to bring practical relevance and rigor to K–12 math and science curricula. At the middle-grades level, local and National Science Foundation funding are enabling EYE to develop a set of integrated STEM instructional units, the EYE modules, to inspire and motivate all middle-grades students, especially those typically underrepresented in STEM, to take the high school courses needed in preparation for 21st century workforce needs. Each EYE Module is designed such that students use engineering practices and apply required mathematics and science content to develop solutions to relevant problems facing humans today, fostering the development of engineering “habits of mind.”

Engineering design is not simply a useful tool for teaching science and mathematics content, but it is also a unique discipline in which science and mathematics are employed as tools for solving design challenges. With generous support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and in partnership with national organizations including NASA, the UTeachEngineering program at the University of Texas, Austin, has undertaken to demonstrate how rigorous engineering content can be deployed in secondary classrooms. Together, we have developed, piloted, refined, and deployed a year-long high school engineering course built on a foundation of solid research in the learning sciences, couched in the context of a rigorous engineering design process, and scaffolded to build engineering skills and habits of mind. We have also tested a variety of teacher preparation and support models that continue to evolve in response to the needs of our diverse teacher population.

By the end of 2012, states will be considering a final draft of Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in an effort to develop common core educational standards to complement those in English language arts and mathematics that have already been adopted by 46 states. Although the public release of the NGSS is not due for a few months, a preview can be seen in A Framework for K–12 Science Education: Practices, Core Ideas, and Crosscutting Concepts, published by the National Research Council in July 2011. The Framework is intended to serve as the blueprint for the Next Generation Science Standards. I have had the good fortune to serve as a consultant on Framework with the charge of assisting the study committee in deciding how best to include engineering and technology as an integral part of science. The results of that effort appear in Chapter 3 and Chapter 8.I am also a member of the writing committee working on the Next Generation Science Standards, and although I can’t discuss details yet, I can say that we are following the Framework very closely.

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.

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.