This descriptive case study tells how one urban K12 school district hosted virtual STEMgagement activities in celebration of Computer Science Education Week (CSEd Week) 2020. An ethnographic lens was used with document review to conduct an analysis of projects, programs, and services set up through the central office for nearly 24,000 students at…

This meta-analysis study aims to explore the game-based learning (GBL) effects on students' learning motivation and academic achievement in K-12 science education. Recently GBL has been broadly used for students with low learning motivation because the dynamic learning activities in computer games could provide benefits for K-12 education. We…

We developed assessment tasks aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that require students to use argumentation and explanation practices along with disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts to make sense of energy-related phenomena. Scoring rubrics were created to evaluate students' ability to make accurate claims, cite…

This review study includes 19 articles from 2016 to 2021 focusing on in-service science teachers' professional development targeted to promote student conceptual understanding. The present study is guided by the following research question: "What characterizes high-quality in-service science teachers' professional development targeted to…

STEM-related educational outreach offers students enriching opportunities to become more familiar with science, in terms of how it relates to their daily lives and with respect to possible career paths that they might want to follow. At the same time, graduate student trainees providing that outreach act as important resources for elementary and…

This paper describes the extent to which the science content in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is similar to that in the science assessment frameworks for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) at the middle school level. Using NAEP as a common…

Instructional materials are an important resource in US classrooms. They represent the intersection of standards, subject matter knowledge and practice, and pedagogy. In light of the Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012) and the subsequently released Next Generation Science Standards (Next Generation Science…

Biochemistry and molecular biology education starts before our students get to university. From a very early age, they start learning informally about science beginning with the basics of science and as they progress through their school years they should be exposed to more advanced topics such as biochemistry and molecular biology. This session…

Only Ethiopia in Africa has had Christianity as its official religion for more than 1,500 years. Churches and monasteries were established as the Kingdom and Christianity spread to Ethiopia's south and southwest. The study was planned with an ethnographic, qualitative methodology. The researcher primarily collected textual data by transcribing and…

We compared students' performance on a paper-based test (PBT) and three computer-based tests (CBTs). The three computer-based tests used different test navigation and answer selection features, allowing us to examine how these features affect student performance. The study sample consisted of 9,698 fourth through twelfth grade students from across…

This study investigated the collaboration of five science teacher leaders in a vertical group, supported by a grant-funded teacher leadership professional development program. It utilized video artifacts of teaching and transcriptions of collaborative meetings to answer the following research question: What happens when science teachers in a…

One of the fundamental practices identified in Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is argumentation, which has been researched in P-12 science education for the previous two decades but has yet to be studied within the context of P-12 engineering education. This research explores how elementary and middle school science teachers incorporated…

As we talked with school teachers about the use of physical computing systems in class, one major drawback of these systems became obvious: almost nobody--next to enthusiastic autodidacts--has been able to tell us on an abstract basis for which educational purposes a certain physical computing system can be used, i.e. in a goal-oriented way. This…

The recent movement in K-12 education toward common standards in key subjects represents an unprecedented opportunity for improving learning outcomes for all students. These standards initiatives--the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)--are informed by…

With only 34% of 8th grade students earning a rating of proficient or higher in science education (from the 2011 National Assessment of Education Progress data), much work is needed in our classrooms to achieve the new more rigorous performance expectations found in the "Next Generation Science Standards." For decades, researchers have…