Our question: How can policymakers support standards-based reform? Standards-based reforms in science and mathematics often require significant teacher learning, particularly of subject matter content and new instructional practices. Thus, since the first calls for standards-based reforms, circa 1990, reformers have explored several avenues for supporting teachers’ growth. New curriculum materials, such as those produced to […]
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The ADAPTATIONS blog advances research toward and replication of what works in the STEM education of preservice teachers in high-need school districts through programs’ sharing of evidence-based innovations to encourage adaption by other programs and move forward collective evolution of effective STEM teacher preparation.
How Can Elementary Teachers Improve Their Ability to Run Productive Science Discussions?
The Challenge of Teaching Science Teaching science is challenging, not in the least because many of the ideas that we ask our students to believe are not obvious. After all, why should we believe the ground on which we stand is spherical rather than flat? Why should we believe that day and night are caused […]
Opportunity to Learn Mathematics: Time, Task, & Talk
Blog reprinted with permission from NCTM’s President’s Messages, copyright 2019, by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. All rights reserved. The question of how teachers of mathematics should structure opportunities to learn (OTL) is sometimes a difficult one to answer. In my own work, I often use OTL as a framework to explore the […]
Preparing Our Next Generation of Science Teachers: What Should a Science Teacher Know and Be Able to Do?
With the advent of the Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council [NRC], 2012), it was suggested that the instruction of science education in K-12 classrooms make a radical change; more specifically, there was a shift from focusing on Scientific Inquiry to learning about science from the perspective of three-dimensions. Three-dimensional thinking about science […]
Preparing New Teachers: How Collaboration Across Professional Associations Can Advance Technology Infusion
Despite heavy investment in STEM (e.g., STEM for ALL), most PK-20 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics instruction remains heavily siloed. To date, educators have not agreed on a clear definition of STEM. Is it curriculum or a teaching technique/pedagogy? Can a science lesson be called STEM, even if the other domains are not fully represented? […]
