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Grand Challenges (GCs) are complex, global, and multifaceted science and societal problems such as climate change, viral pandemics, loss of biodiversity, and quests for new energy sources. In this article, we advance a position, based on current research and theory, that GCs should be a prominent feature of the science curriculum. This move towards a GC-based curriculum challenges the positioning of canonical scientific concepts as the central organising feature of the curriculum, which is typically the default position of most science education programmes. A GC-based curriculum can create natural avenues for students to learn science, develop an interest in science, and build media and information literacy skills to become informed agents of change. Design principles, which help to define what a GC curriculum can look like and guide creation of GC materials, are introduced. These design principles call for the GC curriculum to be contextualised in global issues with local connections, culturally responsive, practice oriented, attentive to student voice, and coherent within and across units. Examples are provided to demonstrate how these design principles are implemented in a sample curriculum.
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This content will become publicly available on October 18, 2026
Participatory Design as a Mechanism for Informing an Interest-Driven Data Science Curriculum
Objectives:Interest plays a central role in learning by shaping what, how, when, where, and why learning occurs. In data science education, where complex concepts, lived experiences, and practical skills intersect, capturing and cultivating student interest can be especially generative. This work explores approaches for designing and evaluating interest-driven data science instructional materials.Methods:This paper presents a participatory design study that informs the development of a data science curriculum for high school students. To assess how well learner interests and values are reflected in the resulting curriculum, we used the Integrated Interest Development for Computing Education Framework [56], which provides a concrete operationalization of interest that captures its multifaceted nature.Findings:The paper demonstrates and discusses how participatory design can be used to identify students’ interests and how those interests can be used to inform the creation of an interest-driven curriculum. Further, it highlights how different types of participatory design activities yield insight into different facets of students’ interests and identities, which can then be used to design learning experiences. This work shows how the resulting PD reflects and harnesses the multifaceted nature of student interest and how it can be leveraged to design learning experiences that connect with learners’ lived digital experiences.Conclusions:Participatory design is an effective student-centered approach for tailoring computational learning experiences aligned to students’ voices, values, and interests. The use of various participatory design activities revealed different facets of students’ interests that informed the creation of an interest-driven curriculum that could not have been created without the input of the students themselves.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2141655
- PAR ID:
- 10653756
- Publisher / Repository:
- Taylor & Francis
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACM Transactions on Computing Education
- ISSN:
- 1946-6226
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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