An official website of the United States government
Making sense of what to do about the many daunting socio-environmental issues that we face will require intercultural understanding, openness to learning, and a capacity to draw on the strengths of multiple perspectives and to recognize limitations of dominant perspectives such as Eurocentric science. Navigating multiple perspectives in the school science classroom can be particularly treacherous for Indigenous students, whose cultural worldviews have often been excluded or denigrated in Eurocentric educational contexts. We present findings from a partnership project that is designing, implementing, studying, and refining instructional experiences for middle school students from significantly/predominantly Indigenous communities in Alaska and Hawai’i. This paper describes our efforts to understand project partners’ standpoints, acknowledging that in designing and implementing multi-perspective middle school science instruction, it will be critical to understand the multiple perspectives that we ourselves bring to the work. We present and discuss the views that project partners (including teachers) have shared concerning science, science education, multiple perspectives, and Indigenous cultural integrity and potential consequentiality for the project’s collaborative work. Five prominent themes relate to (1) the challenge of defining Indigenous and Eurocentric science for application in an instructional design context, (2) relationships with place, (3) centrality of language, (4) scaffolding and understanding learning through a multi-perspective lens, and (5) constraints associated with Eurocentric classroom and science contexts.
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on February 17, 2026
Using Data for Puffin Colony Restoration: Students and Scientists as Seabird Heroes
Data science is not a spectator sport: It involves adventure, observation, perseverance, and service, as demonstrated by the 50-year-long endeavor to re-establish puffin colonies in Maine. Our project, based on lead scientist Stephen Kress’s children’s books about the puffins’ comeback, engages middle school science students in the data-driven work of ornithologists. Monitoring seabird restoration demands different types of data, ranging from physiological characteristics of birds to environmental factors, such as fish availability and changing sea surface temperature. Scientists doing restoration work must be persistent and inquisitive users of data. Our project’s aim is to demonstrate to middle school students the centrality of data in saving seabird species that are threatened or endangered. Research on the project’s impact focuses on data competencies, data values, and data fascination. A major audience is multilingual learners who are recent Maine immigrants, along with other sixth-grade students who, like puffins, consider Maine their home.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2241777
- PAR ID:
- 10628993
- Publisher / Repository:
- Data Science Education K–12 Conference, San Antonio, TX, February 2025
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- data science education AI education artificial intelligence data science ecology machine learning middle school STEM eduction science education
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract The CCERS partnership includes collaborators from universities, foundations, education departments, community organizations, and cultural institutions to build a new curriculum. As reported in a study conducted by the Rand Corporation (2011), partnerships among districts, community-based organizations, government agencies, local funders, and others can strengthen learning programs. The curriculum merged project-based learning and Bybee’s 5E model (Note 1) to teach core STEM-C concepts to urban middle school students through restoration science. CCERS has five interrelated and complementary programmatic pillars (see details in the next section). The CCERS curriculum encourages urban middle school students to explore and participate in project-based learning activities restoring the oyster population in and around New York Harbor. In Melaville, Berg and Blank’s Community Based Learning (2001) there is a statement that says, “Education must connect subject matter with the places where students live and the issues that affect us all”. Lessons engage students and teachers in long-term restoration ecology and environmental monitoring projects with STEM professionals and citizen scientists. In brief, partners have created curriculums for both in-school and out-of-school learning programs, an online platform for educators and students to collaborate, and exhibits with community partners to reinforce and extend both the educators’ and their students’ learning. Currently CCERS implementation involves: • 78 middle schools • 127 teachers • 110 scientist volunteers • Over 5000 K-12 students In this report, we present summative findings from data collected via surveys among three cohorts of students whose teachers were trained by the project’s curriculum and findings from interviews among project leaders to answer the following research questions: 1. Do the five programmatic pillars function independently and collectively as a system of interrelated STEM-C content delivery vehicles that also effectively change students’ and educators’ disposition towards STEM-C learning and environmental restoration and stewardship? 2. What comprises the "curriculum plus community enterprise" local model? 3. What are the mechanisms for creating sustainability and scalability of the model locally during and beyond its five-year implementation? 4. What core aspects of the model are replicable? Findings suggest the program improved students’ knowledge in life sciences but did not have a significant effect on students’ intent to become a scientist or affinity for science. Published by Sciedu Press 1 ISSN 2380-9183 E-ISSN 2380-9205 http://irhe.sciedupress.com International Research in Higher Education Vol. 3, No. 4; 2018 Interviews with project staff indicated that the key factors in the model were its conservation mission, partnerships, and the local nature of the issues involved. The primary mechanisms for sustainability and scalability beyond the five-year implementation were the digital platform, the curriculum itself, and the dissemination (with over 450 articles related to the project published in the media and academic journals). The core replicable aspects identified were the digital platform and adoption in other Keystone species contexts.more » « less
-
This article provides an overview of the work pioneered by the consortium of collaborators in the Billion Oyster Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science Project (BOP-CCERS). The BOP-CCERS are working to support computational thinking in the New York City public school classrooms by creating curriculum which combines:1. The Field Station Research (Oyster Restoration Stations) and data collection2. The Billion Oyster Project Digital Platform and data input and storage 3. The New York State Science Intermediate Level Learning Standards. 4. The Computer Science Teachers Association K-12 Computer Science StandardsThe integration of computational thinking in the STEM middle school classroom is showcased through the intertwining of these dimensions into a trans-disciplinary learning experience that is rich in both content and practice. Students will be able to explain real-world phenomena found in their own community and design possible solutions through the key components of computational thinking.The Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science Project digital platform and curriculum will be the resources that provide the underpinnings of the integration of computational thinking in the STEM middle school classroom. The primary functions of the platform include the collection and housing of the data pertaining to the harbor and its component parts, both abiotic and biotic and the storage of the curriculum for both the classroom and the field stations.more » « less
-
Citizen scientist efforts, wherein members of the public who are not professional scientists participate in active research, have been shown to effectively engage the public in STEM fields and result in valuable data, essential to answering pressing research questions. However, most citizen scientist efforts have been centered in colleges of science, and a limited number have crossed into research areas important to chemical engineering fields. In this work we report on the results of a project to recruit high school and middle school students across Utah’s Salt Lake Valley as citizen scientists and potential engineering students who work in partnership with chemical engineering researchers in an effort to create a distributed online network of air quality sensors. Middle and high school students were trained by undergraduate mentors to monitor and maintain their own outdoor air quality sensor with the help of teaching materials that were co-developed with Breathe Utah, a local community group concerned with air quality. With the help of these tailored teaching modules, students learned about the science behind air quality research and the difficulties common to physical measurements to better prepare them to analyze their data. Once trained, students are expected to become semi-independent researchers in charge of monitoring and maintaining their piece of a larger air quality map. We describe in this work the hurdles inherent in citizen science engagement within a chemical engineering research program and the means to address them. We describe successful means of engaging classrooms, training citizen scientists, obtaining faculty buy-in within the confines of state curricular demands, and addressing school administration concerns. With this model, we have directly engaged over 1,000 high school and over 3,000 middle school students. The project has resulted in a growing network of citizen-maintained sensors that contributes to a real-time air quality map. Student scientists may also use the sensors to participate in active research or conduct science fair projects. Student response to this citizen scientist project, where it may be measured, has been enthusiastic and almost wholly positive.more » « less
-
This paper reports findings from the efforts of a university-based research team as they worked with middle school educators within formal school structures to infuse computer science principles and computational thinking practices. Despite the need to integrate these skills within regular classroom practices to allow all students the opportunity to learn these essential 21st Century skills, prior practice has been to offer these learning experiences outside of mainstream curricula where only a subset of students has access. We have sought to leverage elements of the research-practice partnership framework to achieve our project objectives of integrating computer science and computational thinking within middle science classrooms. Utilizing a qualitative approach to inquiry, we present narratives from three case schools, report on themes across work sites, and share recommendations to guide other practitioners and researchers who are looking to engage in technology-related initiatives to impact the lives of middle grades students.more » « less
