Resources from STEM Smart Workshops

Carey’s career has been dedicated to understanding the human capacity for conceptual representations. We are the only animal that can ponder the causes and cures of global warming or pancreatic cancer, yet we share many cognitive resources with other animals. What makes possible the human conceptual repertoire? As a matter of logic, answering this question requires specifying the innate representations infants use to make sense of their world, describing them in detail, characterizing the adult state, characterizing the differences between the initial state and the final state, and then characterizing the learning mechanisms that allow the child to navigate the differences.

By engaging in deeper learning, students go beyond rote learning of facts and procedures to understand underlying principles. They know when and how to transfer their knowledge and skills to solve new problems and navigate new situations. This type of learning will be needed to meet the goals set by the new state standards for English language arts, mathematics, and science. And as technology reduces workplace needs for routine skills, success in coming years will demand people who can apply their knowledge and skills effectively to changing situations rather than rely solely on well-worn procedures. But, creating school environments that support deeper learning and the transferable knowledge and skills that result—known as “21st century competencies”—will require changes in teaching methods, curricula, and assessments.

The SciMath-DLL project aims to provide inservice teachers with the classroom-based supports they need to improve practice. It involves the design, development, and preliminary testing of an inservice professional development approach that integrates high-quality math and science instructional offerings with supports for DLLs. Our project aims to enhance teacher knowledge and classroom interactions around mathematics and science, improve classroom supports for DLLs, and illustrate that rich math and science learning experiences contribute to improved classroom quality.

Next Generation Preschool Math (NGPM) is an NSF-funded collaboration between researchers, media developers, and teachers that aims to develop preschool classroom activities and innovative tablet-based games to help preschool children learn sophisticated mathematics concepts crucial to early school success. As part of this effort, the NGPM team is addressing one of the most salient controversies facing preschool educators today: What, if any, are the most appropriate roles for technology in the preschool classroom and how can technology, if used appropriately, provide unique affordances for teaching and early learning?

Building on years of successful research and development, WISE (The Web-based Inquiry Science Environment) is a powerful, open-source online learning environment that supports guided inquiry, embedded assessments, peer collaboration, interactive computer models, and teacher customization (Lee, Linn, Varma& Liu, 2010; Gerard, Spitulnik, & Linn, 2010). WISE 4.0 has been developed since 2008 and publicly available in 2010. It allows curriculum designers, researchers, and teachers worldwide to design, customize, share, and enact their digital curricula using the WISE platform. Students observe, analyze, experiment, and reflect as they navigate WISE projects. Teachers guide and evaluate the process using a suite of classroom-based and online tools.

With funding from the NSF, the Building Blocks project achieved its goal of helping children find the mathematics in, and develop the mathematics from, their everyday activities—from art and stories, to puzzles and games. Comprised of print materials, software, and more, Building Blocks is designed to help children learn number concepts, such as counting, basic arithmetic, and spatial and geometric concepts and processes. Building Blocks helps all children learn to mathematize their informal experiences by understanding and talking about them. If they do not learn to mathematize, lower-income children lose the connection between their informal knowledge and later school mathematics, and the gap between them and their more advantaged peers widens, year after year. Mathematization emphasizes representing and elaborating mathematically—creating models of everyday situations with mathematical objects, such as numbers and shapes; mathematical actions, such as counting or transforming shapes; and their structural relationships—and using those models to solve problems so derived. Mathematizing often involves representing relationships in the situation so these relationships can be quantified. Mathematics in puzzles, blocks, and songs is great. However, if it's “just play with blocks,” too often little mathematics is learned.

The Development of Model-Based Reasoning project team conducted research on the origins and development of modeling in students from kindergarten through middle school. The research goal of the project, which is now completed, was to track the growth of students’ capability and propensity to take a modeling stance toward the world as they conducted long-term studies of local ecosystems (a pond, a restored prairie, a school forest) near their school. There was also an associated professional development agenda, namely, to work with approximately 40 participating teachers to craft and sustain forms of instruction that support students’ acquisition of both particular scientific models and a modeling epistemology. The purpose of the work was to develop a learning progression extended over the elementary and early middle school years and organized around fundamental concepts in the life sciences that culminate in a strong conceptual understanding of microevolution. Within the project, the team identified four core conceptual themes (variation, growth of organisms, growth of populations, and ecosystems) that collectively formed the basis of the progression and guided the curriculum and research design. Results of teaching studies with classrooms at each grade band were used to refine and revise the accounts of development. Yearly waves of data collection documented change over time in students’ understanding within the four conceptual themes, as well as changes in teachers’ instructional practices.

The FabLab Classroom is exploring 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.

In October 2011, WestEd and University of California Berkeley’s Career Academy Support Network (CASN) received a three-year collaborative ITEST Strategies grant to improve learning and workforce development in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and in information and communication technology (ICT)—especially for underserved students. The proposed strategy integrates the hands-on science pedagogy of the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program into the multi-year curriculum of the California green high school academies . The GLOBE California Academy Program (CAP) engages students in research related to climate change, provides career development activities, and supports teachers in career academies through professional development and other forms of support that focus on the growing renewable energy and clean technology workforce sector.

The GLOBE California Academy Program (CAP) engages students in research related to climate change together with career development activities. Teachers are supported by professional development and other forms of support in career academies that focus on the growing renewable energy and clean technology workforce sector.