ABSTRACT Engineering has emerged as a promising context for STEM integration in K‐12 schools. In the previous decade, the field has seen an increase in curricular resources and pedagogical approaches that invite students to utilize mathematics and science as they engage in engineering practices. This Innovation to Practice paper highlights one effort to meaningfully integrate mathematics and science through engineering in middle school classrooms. The STEM‐ID engineering course sequence consists of three 18‐week middle school engineering courses. Each of the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade courses integrate science and math with engineering design, enabling students to explore and practice foundational math and science skills in a low‐risk, non‐high‐stakes‐tested environment. This Innovation to Practice paper provides illustrative examples of STEM‐integration through the STEM‐ID curricula, focusing on four key areas: data analysis, measurement, experimental design, and force and motion concepts. Drawing on our project's implementation data, we highlight illustrative examples of STEM integration, in practice, and lessons learned by educators and researchers involved in the project.
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Promising Long Term Effects of ASSISTments Online Math Homework Support
Math performance continues to be an important focus for improve- ment. Many districts adopted educational technology programs to support student learning and teacher instruction. The ASSISTments program provides feedback to students as they solve homework problems and automatically prepares reports for teachers about student performance on daily assignments. During the 2018- 19 and 2019-20 school years, WestEd led a large-scale randomized controlled trial to replicate the effects of ASSISTments in 63 schools in North Carolina in the US. 32 treatment schools implemented ASSISTments in 7th-grade math class- rooms. Recently, we conducted a follow-up analysis to measure the long-term effects of ASSISTments on student performance one year after the intervention, when the students were in 8th grade. The initial results suggested that implement- ing ASSISTments in 7th grade improved students’ performance in 8th grade and minority students benefited more from the intervention.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1917808
- PAR ID:
- 10438280
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- AIED 2023
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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