Anchoring High School Students in Real-Life Issues that Integrate STEM Content and Literacy

The STEM Literacy Project sets out to support student learning through developing teacher expertise in collaborative integration of STEM in student writing and literacy skills development. Facilitated by teachers, students will read, discuss, and then write about real-world STEM scenarios, such as water quality or health. The project will build on and research a professional development program first developed through a state-supported literacy program for middle and high school science and math teachers to improve literacy-integrated instruction. The goals of this project include the following: (1) Create a community of practice that recognizes high school teachers as content experts; (2) Implement high quality professional development for teachers on STEM/Literacy integration; (3) Develop assessments based on STEM and literacy standards that inform instruction; and (4) Conduct rigorous research to understand the impact of the professional development. The program is aligned with state and national standards for college and career readiness. Project resources will be widely shared through a regularly updated project website (stemliteracyproject.org), conference presentations, and publications reaching researchers, developers, and educators. These resources will include scenario-based assessment tools and instructional materials.

Through the integration of STEM content and literacy, the project will study the ways teachers implement project practices integrating literacy activities into STEM learning. Teachers will facilitate instruction using scenarios that present students with everyday, STEM-related issues, presented as scenarios, that they read and write about. After reading and engaging with math and science content, students will write a source-based argument in which they state a claim, support the claim with evidence from the texts, and explain the multiple perspectives on the issue. These scenarios provide students with agency as they craft an argument for an audience, such as presenting to a city council, a school board, or another group of stakeholders. Project research will use a mixed methods design. Based on the work completed through the initial designs and development of scenario-based assessments, rubrics, and scoring processes, the project will study the impact on instruction and student learning. Using a triangulation design convergence model, findings will be compared and contrasted in order for the data to inform one another and lead to further interpretation of the data. project will analyze the features of STEM content learning after program-related instruction. Data collected will include pre-post student scenario-based writing; pre-post interviews of up to 40 students each year; pre-post teacher interviews; and teacher-created scenario-based assessments and supporting instructional materials. Student learning reflected in the assessments paired with student and teacher interview responses will provide a deeper understanding of this approach of integrating STEM and literacy. The use of discourse analysis methods will allow growth in content learning to be measured through language use. Project research will build knowledge in the field concerning how participation in teacher professional development integrating STEM content in literacy practices impacts teacher practices and student learning.