STEM Education

The new vision in the NRC Framework and the Next Gen Science Standards call for instruction that engages students in personally relevant, extended investigations where they use science and engineering research practices to learn disciplinary core ideas while making connections to broad cross-cutting concepts (or themes). New curricula and instructional materials are needed to support students in this kind of learning experience to accomplish the new K-12 learning goals across subjects.

A new set of ambitious learning goals for K-12 science and engineering education are outline in the recently released Next Generation Science Standards. The standards were developed based on a new consensus vision, built upon consensus findings of research on science learning and teaching and described in the National Research Councils A Framework for K-12 Science Education.

The DRK12 project is now in its third year with three redesigned fifth grade science units; namely, My Skokomish River Challenge, My Solution to Pollution, and Algae Invasion. My Skokomish River Challenge is in its third enactment. In Spring 2012 My Solution to Pollution was enacted for the first time, followed by The Algae Invasion which is currently being implemented in two participating schools in Bellevue.

The first phase of collaboration has focused on supporting teachers working together in Design Teams--small cohorts of subject-specific teachers--as they collaborate on the re-design of curriculum. Institute support varies throughout the project, ranging from providing evidence from the literature to reinforce curriculum decisions to conducting student focus groups that provide student feedback for teacher consideration and implementation.

Institute staff Carrie Tzou and Blakely Tsurusaki are presenting in a talk series entitled "Beyond the Ivory Tower" on March 5th on the University of Washington Seattle campus. They will be presenting with Tansy Clay on best practices for translating research for K-12 audiences. The talk series is sponsored by the COSEE Ocean Learning Communities center.

The recent NRC/NAS report Successful K-12 STEM Education was discussed at three regional conferences. Déana Scipio and Elizabeth Write held sessions on youth voice in STEM instruction and Philip Bell synthesized the conference held in Seattle on February 28th at the Pacific Science Center.