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Pets are beloved family members in many cultures. Companionship with pets motivates and positions humans as inquirers as they find out their pets' experiences with them. With the need to advance science education from dualist notions of the world and the learner as separate entities, our research team conducted a two-week online summer camp to engage teens and their pets in investigations around pets' senses. Following a qualitative analysis of participants' talk and projects at the workshop, we found that teens engaged in science learning practices while investigating aspects of their pets' lives and designing experiences for them. Additionally, participants adopted an ecological and relational approach to science learning that positioned themselves and their pets as subjects. We discuss implications for future work with pets, and for the design of other STEM learning environments that engage perspective-taking, empathy, and care. 

Teachers often find it challenging to learn computational thinking (CT) and integrate it with classroom learning. In this systematic review, we focus on how professional learning experiences have supported K-12 teachers to integrate CT into their classrooms. The findings suggest some effective strategies for building professional learning experiences but highlight the need for more agreement about the nature of CT. 

Ecologists construct physical microcosms that exemplify mechanisms and relations in ecosystems. This poster describes how a 7th-grade classroom complemented field study of an intertidal ecosystem with design of classroom microcosms. Initial designs appeared constrained by literal resemblance. As students’ inquiry increasingly focused on interactions among organisms, they configured microcosms to facilitate observation of these interactions. Microcosms became sites for studying processes that could be inferred from field data but rarely observed directly. 

Socio-ecological histories of places are political, contested, and intimately linked with ways of knowing and being in the world. Supporting students in perspective taking and reasoning through contested histories of places are equity practices that allow for multiple and diverse stories to be told, honored, and incorporated in science learning. In this paper, we describe an approach to teaching about socio ecological systems from the Learning in Places project using a framework called Socioecological Histories of Places. We first describe the framework and its design within the Learning in Places project. We then analyze one teacher’s implementation of this approach and discuss implications for understanding issues of power, historicity, and ethical decision-making in field-based science learning and teaching. 

Robotics activities can provide students with opportunities to engage in computational thinking (CT) as well as support disciplinary learning goals. The goal of the Robots in Science project is to create, implement, and refine a PD program for middle school science teachers to design and implement robotics and CT-integrated science lessons. Two case studies illustrate how teachers used robotics activities to provide opportunities for science learning. 

Robotics activities can provide students with opportunities to engage in computational thinking (CT) as well as support disciplinary learning goals. The goal of the Robots in Science project is to create, implement, and refine a PD program for middle school science teachers to design and implement robotics and CT-integrated science lessons. Two case studies illustrate how teachers used robotics activities to provide opportunities for science learning. 

Robotics activities can provide students with opportunities to engage in computational thinking (CT) as well as support disciplinary learning goals. The goal of the Robots in Science project is to create, implement, and refine a PD program for middle school science teachers to design and implement robotics and CT-integrated science lessons. Two case studies illustrate how teachers used robotics activities to provide opportunities for science learning. 

Iteration is pervasive in current perspectives of student reasoning, but it is also often assumed, backgrounded, or minimized in favor of other empirical interests and results, despite being foundational to reasoning processes and inquiry. This paper forefronts iterative practice while examining student reasoning in a reform-based undergraduate physics lab course. We present an instrumental case study analysis of a single student group, documenting how they engaged in micro- and macro-levels of iterative practice at the nexus of experimental activity and sensemaking throughout their experimentation. These results illustrate the nuance in students’ iterative practice at different levels and prompt new questions about how different forms of iterative practice may impact student learning. 

Learners’ choices as to whether and how to use visual representations during learning are an important yet understudied aspect of self-regulated learning. To gain insight, we developed a choice-based intelligent tutor in which students can choose whether and when to use diagrams to aid their problem solving in algebra. In an exploratory classroom study with 26 students, we investigated how learners choose diagrams and how their choice behaviors relate to learning outcomes. Students who proactively chose to use diagrams achieved higher learning outcomes than those who reactively used diagrams when they made incorrect attempts. This study contributes to understanding of self-regulated use of visual representations during problem solving.