ITEST Resources

Welcome to the ITEST Resource Library

The curricula, instruments, and publications included in this library were submitted by ITEST projects and are relevant to the work of the NSF ITEST Program. Use the filters to the right to find relevant materials. A PDF and/or URL to the original resource are included within the resource description whenever possible. In some cases, full text publications are located behind publishers’ paywalls and a fee or membership to the third party site may be required for access.

Please note: permission for the use of instruments must be requested through the publisher or author listed in each entry, and cannot be granted by STELAR.

STEM Partnership Toolkit

Curricular Materials

The STEM Partnership Toolkit was created to share tools and strategies around the practice of connecting STEM education to community partnerships that enrich learning experiences for youth. This toolkit describes how in-school and out-of-school STEM educators and professionals worked with our research team to establish and integrate community STEM education partnerships into their existing STEM programs. The toolkit provides the STEM Career Connections model, practice briefs focusing on specific issues, and links to other resources, including a resource pack, publications, and newsletters. We

STEM Career Connections Resource Pack

Curricular Materials

The STEM Career Connections project developed educational materials to support implementation of the STEMCC model within both formal and informal education settings, included here as the Resource Pack. The technology curricula and career connections activities define what youth were actually doing throughout the STEMCC project, while the community partnerships, detailed in the STEM Partnership Toolkit, provided the backbone to shape youth experiences. The Resource Pack contains STEM career connections activities as well as links to the technology curricula that were implemented during the

Effects of Designing a Narrative-Based Video Game on High School Students’ Climate Change Perspectives

Publications

This study examined how high school students’ participation in designing an extended reality (XR) video game influenced their understanding of climate change. The Make Games, Save the World program, supported by a National Science Foundation grant, engaged students, from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM fields, in a year-long, out-of-school initiative. Working collaboratively in narrative and design teams, students created a story-driven game set in a fictional future world impacted by extreme heat and water scarcity. To assess changes in understanding, participants completed Personal

Scientific Communities of Practice: A K12 Outreach Model That Supports Authentic Scientific Inquiry Around Very Long-Term Studies

Publications

Scientific outreach to K12 education typically centers around the direct dissemination of scientific findings or by engaging students in citizen science data collection. Rather than viewing science outreach purely through the lens of knowledge transmission or through the lens of specific data collection practices, we present a view of science outreach as a bridge to bring K12 students into ecologists’ communities of practice. We exemplify this outreach model using the Luquillo Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Schoolyard program as an example. The schoolyard program brings middle-school and

Data Jam

Curricular Materials

Engaging students with local ecological data in Puerto Rico Data Jam is an initiative of the Luquillo Long -Term Ecological Research (LTER) program. The University of Puerto Rico's Luquillo LTER has compiled decades of data on the El Yunque rainforest ecosystem and made it publicly available. The Data Jam program engages middle and high school students in the process of formulating their own questions about environmental phenomena in El Yunque and then exploring, analyzing, and summarizing long-term data as evidence to support their scientific research questions. Successful Data Jam projects

Luquillo Data Jam: A Powerful Model for Broadening Participation in Science

Publications

The Luquillo Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program in Puerto Rico has implemented a Data Jam initiative that fosters student engagement in ecological data science. In December 2023, over 175 middle and high school students presented 51 data-driven projects at a symposium in El Yunque National Rainforest. The initiative, rooted in the LTER’s extensive datasets, allows students to develop research questions, analyze data using the CODAP tool, and present findings. The program includes professional development for teachers, with workshops and Virtual Lab Meetings that equip them to guide

The Design & Pitch Challenges in STEM: A Theoretical Framework for Centering Mathematics Learning in Entrepreneurial Pitch Competitions

Publications

Solving many of the pressing issues facing the world today will require a deep and integrated understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). To prepare today’s K-12 students to tackle these challenges, STEM education must create opportunities to learn disciplinary content while inventing actionable solutions to messy, interdisciplinary problems. Learning frameworks, such as Project-Based Learning (PBL), Design-Based Learning (DBL), and Entrepreneurial-Based Learning (EBL), could support this reconceptualization of STEM education. New approaches are needed that

Designing to transform: High school students’ reasoning with geometric transformations in an authentic real-world project

Publications

As educators pursue more authentic and relevant approaches to mathematics instruction, it is essential to understand how students reason mathematically in innovative learning environments. This study examines students’ reasoning with geometric transformations during a summer camp, in which they used dynamic geometry environments (DGEs) to design transforming, multi-functional products. Student artifacts were analyzed using two frameworks on reasoning in transformational geometry. taxonomy of transformational reasoning. Findings show that students’ reasoning was closely tied to their product

Algorithms, spreadsheets and functions: exploring middle graders’ functional reasoning during a STEM entrepreneurial pitch competition

Publications

This paper reports on a five-day study exploring six middle school students’ developing understanding of algorithms and functions during the Building Algorithms challenge, an entrepreneurial Design & Pitch Challenge in STEM. Students proposed businesses and built automated spreadsheet algorithms to inform users’ decision making by assigning ratings to objects (e.g. videos, music, racetracks) based on their preferences. Part of a larger NSF study of students’ participation in entrepreneurial experiences with mathematical connections, the study used a design-based research methodology

Amplifying Mathematics Learning Through Teacher Discourse Moves: Investigating Teachers' Personal Practical Knowledge Within an Entrepreneurial Design Projects

Publications

This study investigates how teachers facilitate small-group mathematical discourse during Design & Pitch (D&P) Challenges in STEM, an experiential framework combining entrepreneurial, project-based, and design-based learning. By examining teacher interactions, we explore how educators draw on their personal practical knowledge to support student thinking and navigate the unpredictable nature of student-generated ideas in these innovative learning environments. This exploratory study investigates how teachers drew on their personal practical knowledge during group check-ins, leveraging teacher

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