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In order to promote justice-centered making in STEAM classrooms, the NASA Landsat-based Science and Technology Education for Land/Life Assessment (STELLA) instrument is proposed as an affordable educational tool for students to collect and analyze data pertaining to vegetation health, surface temperature, and air quality. This instrument can be used to investigate justice-centered, community-based problems and promote civic engagement toward policy change for a healthier world. Our study applies the MakerTPICK theoretical framework to a qualitative study to explore changes in teacher beliefs about the STELLA instrument following three justice-centered STEAM-making activities pertaining to urban heat islands, air quality, and vegetation health. The implications of this research can be used to inform professional development and promote justice-centered learning in the STEAM classroom. 

This paper examines the integration of justice-centered making into STEM teacher preparation programs, focusing on how these programs can foster equity and inclusivity while acknowledging the need for more research on the overlapping areas of STEM teacher preparation, social justice, and makerspace. Therefore, I synthesize recent literature in the overlapping areas and identify how each component brings insight to purposeful activity, identity formation, and connection. The discussion leads to how utilizing justice-centered-making activities can prepare educators to address systemic inequities in STEM fields. The implications of these pedagogical approaches for both teachers and students are discussed. 

To address the diversity of student differences, educators need to actively recognize and counter patterns of bias in their teaching practices as well as in their classroom environments. The topic is highly relevant to the education field including faculty of educator preparation programs, classroom teachers and administrators. The simulated teaching environment includes research-based outcomes that show improvement in teaching efficacy and culturally diverse teaching practices. The simulation is focused on allowing educators to “practice teaching” in a variety of content areas any time benefitting from the simEquity experience by learning how to change instructional practices based on bias awareness and guided improvement through targeted feedback. Context appropriate recommendations for improvements in equity-based teaching practices will provide participants with the tools needed for reducing implicit bias in instruction. The cycle includes planning instruction, teaching in a simulation, receiving feedback, improving instruction for subsequent simulations and reflecting on the practices that were used with the artificially created students. One strength of using simulations is the objective feedback provided to participants that allow improvements based on actual choices made with each of the simStudents. All participants will have access for any of their colleagues and students to the “Teaching without bias” module for one year. 

From teaching with technology to teaching through technology: this is an important shift that educator preparation programs must embrace as we continue to develop teachers who can facilitate meaningful learning experiences across a variety of delivery modalities. Drawing on the data from our three-year mixed methods research, the authors describe a programmatic model for preparing teacher candidates to implement digital pedagogy while ensuring that learning opportunities are equitable, accessible, and inclusive of all learners. This paper first identifies the Essential Elements of our critical digital pedagogy model for facilitating learning in hybrid, hyflex, and online environments. Second, we describe how we have integrated these Essential elements across the three phases of our teacher preparation programs, with a particular focus on the two asynchronous online workshops we have integrated into students’ clinical experiences. Third, we identify a set of indicators used to provide feedback to preservice teachers as they demonstrate their critical digital pedagogy during their student teaching semester. We present the research findings that examine how this programmatic approach impacts teacher candidates’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions for transforming teaching and learning through technology. We conclude with a discussion of how the programmatic model and research findings may impact the broader field of teacher education. 

The integration of Computational Thinking (CT) into K-12 education has gained significance in recent years as the field of education experiences the need to equip students with essential skills for the 21st century. This case study focused on two sequencing activities, involving plugged and unplugged tasks, conducted with four children aged four to seven, spanning pre-kindergarten to second grade. The central research question guiding the study was: "What computational thinking (CT) skills were demonstrated by K-2 students as they engaged in two different sequencing tasks?" The study identified competencies in sequencing, reverse sequencing, debugging, pattern recognition, and problem decomposition. The findings suggest that both unplugged and plugged sequencing tasks provide age-appropriate entry points for young children to develop various CT competencies. Furthermore, the study highlights the potential for plugged and unplugged sequencing tasks to be integrated into early childhood classroom activities, offering a practical approach to promoting CT skills in young learners. 

Assessment of the impact of teacher professional development is seldom accomplished by asking their students. This study addresses whether self-reported changes in teacher practices align with their students’ perceptions of changes in teaching practices. Participants were 39 teachers from two US states that completed at least 15 teaching sessions totaling more than 3.5 hours of teacher professional development (practice teaching) inside the simulated teaching environment of simSchool. The goals of the professional development were remediation of implicit bias in teaching practices and fostering equity in teaching. Pre-post surveys were completed by the teachers before and after the professional development sessions. Concurrent pre and post surveys were administered to 800 of the teachers’ G3-12 students. This study presents the results of examining whether teacher-reported changes in their teaching practices can be shown to align with changes reported by their students.