The Flint, Michigan water crisis drew national attention to the effects of unsafe drinking water and issues of equity and social justice. It also opened up opportunities for engaging in socio-scientific issues in the science classroom (Ewing and Sadler 2020). Students consume hundreds of gallons of water daily, but do they know where their drinking water comes from and if it’s always safe to drink? A three-dimensional unit designed for upper elementary students (in this case, fourth graders) helps students answer these questions. Students follow the incredible journey of New York City’s water

Community college students face difculties in mathematics courses and may not understand the relevance of the topics they are learning to their intended career. When such connections are not made, mathematics courses can become barriers to pursuit of careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). In the present study, we assessed student interest in mathematics and various STEM career areas and students’ knowledge of ways mathematics was involved in STEM careers in order to better understand how these variables are related. We discovered that interest in mathematics

Community college students face difculties in mathematics courses and may not understand the relevance of the topics they are learning to their intended career. When such connections are not made, mathematics courses can become barriers to pursuit of careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). In the present study, we assessed student interest in mathematics and various STEM career areas and students’ knowledge of ways mathematics was involved in STEM careers in order to better understand how these variables are related. We discovered that interest in mathematics

The engineering design process (EDP) can be a wonderful tool to nurture creative problem-solving abilities, prepare students to tackle problems with intentional planning, and encourage learning from failures. Many lesson plans and instructional strategies are guided by the EDP (Hill Cunningham, Mott, and Hunt 2018). Visual representations of the EDP often show a set of actions arranged in a cycle. For example, many of you are probably familiar with the Engineering is Elementary graphical aid that shows five labeled steps, “Ask, imagine, plan, create, improve” (Museum of Science, Boston 2020)

Many block-based programming environments have proven to be effective at engaging novices in learning programming. However, most restrict access to the outside world, limiting learners to commands and computing resources built in to the environment. Some allow learners to drag and drop files, connect to sensors and robots locally or issue HTTP requests. But in a world where most of the applications in our daily lives are distributed (i.e., their functionality depends on communicating with other programs or accessing resources and data on the internet), the lack of support for beginners to

When designing learning environments and curricula for diverse populations, it is beneficial to connect with learners’ cultural knowledge, and the related interests, they bring to the learning context. To aid in the design and development of a computing curriculum and identify these areas of personal and cultural connection, we conducted a series of participatory design sessions. The goal of these sessions was to collect ideas around ways to make the instructional materials reflect the interests and voices of the learners. In this paper, we examine how the use of participatory design

This is the first of two sequential papers describing the design and first-year implementation of a collaborative participatory action research effort between Sociedad Latina, a youth serving organization in Boston, Massachusetts, and Boston University. The collaboration aimed to develop and deliver a combined STEM and career development set of lessons for middle school Latinx youth. In the first paper, life design and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals are described in relation to the rationale and the design of the career development intervention strategy that aims to help middle school

Broadening participation in engineering is an important national priority and has led to increasing demands for engineering content to be integrated into traditional K-12 curriculum. However, expecting teachers to incorporate en- gineering into their classrooms without additional training or resources is unreasonable. Partnering teachers with industry partners is one promising way to prioritize integrated science and engineering content while also introducing youth to pos- sible career paths. In this programmatic article, we introduce the Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural

Background: Adolescents on the autism spectrum often experience challenges participating socially in inclusive education. The majority of school-based social supports focuses on social skills training, although research shows that students on the spectrum prefer activity-based social groups over social instructions. Thus, activity-based school clubs incorporating student interests may support social participation. Method: This mixed-methods study explored the preliminary social participation outcomes of adolescents on the spectrum in an inclusive Maker Club at three public schools. The

Before the shelter-in-place orders began, Biotech Partners (BP) was already engaged in contingency plan- ning with its school and industry partners in an effort to mitigate potential disruptions caused by the looming health crisis. For 25 years prior, BP had successfully mentored and prepared underrepresented high school students to complete profes- sional internships at diverse STEM institutions. Often working in a laboratory or pharmaceutical manufacturing setting, the internships allowed students to apply bioscience, biotechnology, and professional career skills developed in school within