Curriculum

Our study investigates the first year of a two-year place-based education (PBE) professional development model that focuses on career development in rural middle schools through project-based learning (PBL) units. Rural science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educators face unique challenges, including geographic isolation, limited resources, and reduced access to professional development opportunities, which can hinder the effective integration of career-oriented learning in the classroom.

We describe the development of a visual model to represent the implementation of an ambitious mathematics program, which serves as an example of a complex educational reform. Visual models can be both conceptual and empirical, representing aspirational and theoretical perspectives while simultaneously incorporating empirical details specific to the context. Integrating conceptual and empirical aspects leads to tensions in managing the complexity of the model. Our process began with a simple model that guided our empirical work, which involved qualitative analysis.

There is a need for research on effective classroom strategies available for teachers that promote equitable school-family collaborations. Such effective strategies are needed in general but also specifically in the area of content, skill acquisition, and positive dispositions in early mathematics. This exploratory qualitative study looked at a mathematical routine, focused on family-provided photos and artifacts, that elicited children’s mathematical and general observations and inquiries and engaged families in mathematical communications.

There is a need for research on effective classroom strategies available for teachers that promote equitable school-family collaborations. Such effective strategies are needed in general but also specifically in the area of content, skill acquisition, and positive dispositions in early mathematics. This exploratory qualitative study looked at a mathematical routine, focused on family-provided photos and artifacts, that elicited children’s mathematical and general observations and inquiries and engaged families in mathematical communications.

There is a need for research on effective classroom strategies available for teachers that promote equitable school-family collaborations. Such effective strategies are needed in general but also specifically in the area of content, skill acquisition, and positive dispositions in early mathematics. This exploratory qualitative study looked at a mathematical routine, focused on family-provided photos and artifacts, that elicited children’s mathematical and general observations and inquiries and engaged families in mathematical communications.

There is a need for research on effective classroom strategies available for teachers that promote equitable school-family collaborations. Such effective strategies are needed in general but also specifically in the area of content, skill acquisition, and positive dispositions in early mathematics. This exploratory qualitative study looked at a mathematical routine, focused on family-provided photos and artifacts, that elicited children’s mathematical and general observations and inquiries and engaged families in mathematical communications.

In the United States, reforms put forth by Next Generation Science Standards have increased the demand for K-12 teacher professional development in science instruction. This study investigates a new professional development model, entitled Schoolyard SITES, that partners elementary teachers with University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension science volunteers to create a community-based partnership that improves teachers' understanding of NGSS-aligned instruction.

Research has shown that teaching mathematics through problem posing, or problem-posing based learning (P-PBL), is a student-centered instructional approach that can improve students’ cognitive and affective aspects of learning. However, since textbooks continue to include very few opportunities for problem posing, researchers have been working to support teachers to integrate problem posing into classroom instruction, drawing on textbooks as a resource.

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.

Science and engineering offer ways to maintain the thermal comfort of our homes while minimizing impacts on the environment. This article introduces the Energy-Plus House Design Project, an NGSS-aligned curriculum unit developed to inspire and prepare high school students for tackling this challenge. In this project, students learn and practice science and engineering by designing a house that generates more renewable energy than it consumes over the course of a year (hence known as an energy-plus house).