An official website of the United States government
The purpose of science competitions or science fairs in STEM education is to provide students with opportunities to experience and practice science as it is practiced and experienced in the real world. The Innovate to Mitigate project hosts an annual open innovation challenge for students aged 13-18 to develop methods for mitigating global warming. Over several weeks, students innovate, develop prototype solutions, and engage with peers and with scientists online about their developing ideas. Finally, they submit videos and papers for discussion and judging by a panel of scientists. Submissions over the past few years have included projects over a wide range of domains, for example, energy conservation, renewable energy, agricultural innovations, or social/behavioral change. Framing learning goals for science fairs and science competitions around phenomena that are meaningful to young people offers the opportunity to make direct connections to relevant science and to understand how science is useful in society. We offer suggestions based on what we have learned that provide multiple ways for teachers to begin to support students in learning and effectively using the science practices. Carefully designed competition environments can reveal students as effective problem-solvers, unleash their imaginations, and help them to innovate.
more »
« less
Exploring Climate Change Through Students’ Place Connections and Public Data Sets
Climate change is a pressing societal challenge. It is also a pedagogical challenge and a worldwide phenomenon, whose local impacts vary across different locations. Climate change reflects global inequity; communities that contribute most to emissions have greater economic resources to shelter from its consequences, while the lowest emitters are most vulnerable. It is scientifically complex, and simultaneously evokes deep emotions. These overlapping issues call for new ways of science teaching that center personal, social, emotional, and historical dimensions of the crisis. In this article, we describe a middle school science curriculum approach that invites students to explore large-scale data sets and author their own data stories about climate change impacts and inequities by blending data and narrative texts. Students learn about climate change in ways that engage their personal and cultural connections to place; engage with complex causal relationships across multiple variables, time, and space; and voice their concerns and hopes for our climate futures. Connections to relevant science, data science, and literacy standards are outlined, along with relevant data sets and assessments.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1900606
- PAR ID:
- 10539698
- Publisher / Repository:
- NSTA Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Science Scope
- Volume:
- 47
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0887-2376
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 18-25
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Rajala, Atti; Cortez, Arturo; Hofmann, Riikka; Jornet, Alfredo; Lotz-Sisitka, Heila; Markauskaite, Lina (Ed.)Understanding bias and ethics in research is critical for both researchers and consumers of research. It facilitates sound decision-making, builds public trust in research, and ensures that research contributes positively to society. Authentic research opportunities can be critical for developing these skills, but are lacking in high school contexts. We designed and implemented MindHive, a curriculum and online platform for students to design and conduct online human behavior studies. Qualitative analysis of 98 student-generated research proposals and 21 individual interviews with students from across 6 high schools, identified various ways that students engaged with bias and ethical issues within their projects. Engaging in research about personally relevant questions and contexts may support students in shuttling between personal experiences and data, and taking on perspectives that help to reveal and address assumptions. Findings contribute to an understanding of how curriculum can meaningfully engage students in reasoning about research bias and ethics.more » « less
-
Research Problem: Climate change is one of the most important environmental, social, and economic issues of our time. The documented impacts of climate change are extensive. Climate change education can help students link this global issue to students’ everyday lives, foster a climate-literate public, and serve as motivation for action. Yet prior to instructional interventions, the first step in promoting conceptual change is to describe expert and novice conceptions or mental models of the topic (Treagust and Duit 2009). Published studies about students’ climate change knowledge primarily stem from the earth and atmospheric sciences, and focus on students’ knowledge of the mechanisms causing global warming and of the abiotic systems important to climate change. Limited research has documented undergraduate students’ knowledge about the biotic impacts of climate change. Our goal was to describe student/novice and instructor/expert conceptual knowledge of the biotic impacts of climate change. Research Design: We conducted interviews with 30 undergraduates and 10 instructors who are students or teaching in Introductory Biology or Ecology classes. Our semi-structured interview protocol probed participants’ conceptions of the mechanisms, outcomes and levels of impact that climate change has on the biological world. Participants were taken from varying institutions across the US (Baccalaureate, Master’s, and Doctoral). Analyses: Following transcription of all interviews, we used thematic coding analysis to describe novice and expert conceptions of the biotic impacts to climate change. We also compared across interview populations to describe how novice and expert conceptions compare. Contribution: Our findings contribute understanding of biology student and expert knowledge of the biotic impacts of climate change and contribute more broadly to the field of climate science where research on understanding of the biotic impacts of climate change is minimal. Our work will represent a novel perspective because most climate education research at the university-level has focused on earth and atmospheric science students. Further, this work is the first step in a larger project that aims to develop valid and reliable concept inventory related to biotic impacts of climate change – an instrument sorely needed to properly address improvements to climate change education.more » « less
-
Abstract Preservice secondary science teachers often experience science learning in narrow and marginalizing ways in their science preparation. These experiences cause harm, particularly for preservice teachers of color. They also limit the disciplinary resources they can develop for later teaching science in ways that value and sustain their students' ways of knowing and being in the world. Our research explores possibilities for cultivating new spaces for preservice secondary science teachers to engage in science. In a content‐focused education course, we designed for and studied preservice teachers' engagement in expansive and connective sensemaking, incorporating heterogeneity, power, and historicity in pursuits of explanatory accounts of the natural world. In this article, we examined how this course design can support preservice teachers to attune to heterogeneity in ways of knowing in science and to connect to identity and historicity in scientific sensemaking. Our analysis suggests that students' final projects reflected attunements to diverse knowing, communicating, and relating in science and deep connections with their identities and future‐making, yet had fewer connections to sociohistorical narratives and structures. We developed illustrative case studies of four student projects, highlighting the personal, social, and political possibilities of creating space for future educators to imagine more expansive and connective forms of science. This study contributes a novel model for preservice science teacher education to support teacher learning to value and sustain their students' ways of knowing and being in the world.more » « less
-
Abstract The data sets used in statistics education have changed over time, from mathematically “well‐behaved” ones that facilitated computation, to more context‐rich sources and now, with the increasing influence of data science practices, to “found” data, often from open data sites. As data sources change, it is important for educators to take a fresh look at the ways we engage students in thinking about the processes that generated the data they encounter. The use of already collected data requires particular attention because many of the decisions that went into the processes of obtaining the data are hidden. Students need to learn to ask “Who, When, How, Where, and Why?” data were collected and to wonder if the data really measure what needs to be measured. Our advocacy in this paper is to deepen the educational treatment of data production to better reflect the current and future practice of statistics and data science.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/08872376.2024.2340444
