Data literacy is the ability to ask questions, analyze, interpret, and draw conclusions from data. As the world and the workplace become more data-driven, students need to have stronger data literacy across multiple disciplines, including science. This project uses an instructional framework, Data Puzzles, to investigate how to support middle grades teachers learning to include data literacy in their science teaching. Data Puzzles integrate mathematical and computational thinking with ambitious science teaching instructional practices and contemporary science topics. Students engaging with Data Puzzles resources can analyze real-world climate science data using web-based data analysis tools to make sense of science phenomena and develop data literacy.
Projects
Transdisciplinary science integrates knowledge across STEM disciplines to research complex challenges such as climate science, genetic engineering, or ecology. In this project, teachers and students will design smart greenhouses by connecting electronic sensors that can detect light or other environmental data to microcontrollers that can activate devices that water plants and regulate other environmental factors such as temperature or light. This activity brings together engineering, computer science, and horticulture. Working across urban and rural contexts, the project will engage teachers in professional development as they adopt and adapt instructional materials to support their students in learning across disciplines as they build smart greenhouses.
With recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), the United States needs to develop a diverse workforce with strong computational skills and the knowledge and capability to work with AI. Recent studies have raised questions about the extent to which youth are aware of AI and its application in industries of the future that may limit their interest in pursuing learning that lead toward careers in these industries. To address this challenge, learning trajectories (LTs) will be developed and researched for AI concepts that are challenging for middle and high school students. The project will design and pilot test learning activities and assessments targeting these concepts based on the LTs, offer teacher professional development on the LTs and related activities, and research the effectiveness of the LT-based activities when implemented by teachers during the regular school day.
Transdisciplinary science integrates knowledge across STEM disciplines to research complex challenges such as climate science, genetic engineering, or ecology. In this project, teachers and students will design smart greenhouses by connecting electronic sensors that can detect light or other environmental data to microcontrollers that can activate devices that water plants and regulate other environmental factors such as temperature or light. This activity brings together engineering, computer science, and horticulture. Working across urban and rural contexts, the project will engage teachers in professional development as they adopt and adapt instructional materials to support their students in learning across disciplines as they build smart greenhouses.
As the nation tackles the challenges of energy transition, K-12 education must prepare a future STEM workforce that can not only apply STEM skills but also address reasoning through complex sociotechnical problems involving social justice. Aligned with the principles of socially transformative engineering and focused on students of color, this project involves the design and implementation of a novel STEM education curriculum that will support the development of secondary students’ abilities to reason through ambiguous and ethical challenges through design projects and to transfer these competencies to everyday life and future workplaces.
Transdisciplinary science integrates knowledge across STEM disciplines to research complex challenges such as climate science, genetic engineering, or ecology. In this project, teachers and students will design smart greenhouses by connecting electronic sensors that can detect light or other environmental data to microcontrollers that can activate devices that water plants and regulate other environmental factors such as temperature or light. This activity brings together engineering, computer science, and horticulture. Working across urban and rural contexts, the project will engage teachers in professional development as they adopt and adapt instructional materials to support their students in learning across disciplines as they build smart greenhouses.
To successfully understand and address complex and important questions in the field of environmental science, many kinds of communities’ knowledge about their local environment need to be engaged. This one-year partnership development project involves a collaboration to design an approach that would yield opportunities for K-12 students to learn about environmental science in ways that honor both traditional STEM knowledge and Native ways of knowing among the Pomo community in California.