Blog

Recently, STEM teachers have been afforded more opportunities to grow as leaders, such as through the Noyce Track 3 Master Teaching Fellows (MTF) program. However, as Poekart (2012) noted, the movement from teacher to teacher leader requires a “profound identity shift” (p. 174). Not enough research exists that delves deeply into how this identity shift […]

One half of U.S. school districts are rural, and 20% of U.S. students are educated in schools classified as rural (Showalter et al., 2019). There are many reasons to teach in rural schools. From smaller class sizes to smaller communities, they offer the potential for teachers to foster ties with students and families (Barley & […]

Ever since Jeannette Wing’s seminal article (2006) on the growing importance of thinking computationally, there has been a significant push to infuse Computational Thinking (CT) into K-12 education.  While the majority of those efforts have focused on helping students develop this emergent 21st century skill, our team has been exploring how to help educators apply […]

Over the past three years, like so many of you, our research team grappled with complex questions around how to become more intentional in our social justice research agenda. The year 2020 was a painful reminder of the persisting inequity and injustice for racially and ethnically minoritized groups in the United States (Romano, 2021; Sidik, […]

We are both fortunate to engage with and hear from science teachers working in different settings. They often share the joys of the profession, as well as the struggles they encounter. Most recently, we are hearing more about the struggles. There are shortages of teachers in schools–the result of teachers leaving the profession and fewer […]