At I AM STEM, the teacher always engaged you while you were learning, and it was fun! They engaged you and they encouraged you to try to get the right answer. If you got it right, there would be a prize and so we wanted to get the correct answers. (Ana, 7th Grade) Teacher quality is being recognized as one of the most powerful levers in improving education (Barton, 2007; Berry, 2013). With increasing student enrollments and high teacher turnover rates, many school districts are struggling to retain effective teachers, and have had to lower their hiring and recruitment standards in order to

Portfolios have recently gained traction within computer science education as a way to assess students’ computational thinking and practices. Whereas traditional assessments such as exams tend to capture learning within artificial settings at a single point in time, portfolios provide more authentic opportunities to document a trajectory of students’ learning and practices in everyday contexts. Furthermore, because communication itself has been defined as an important computational thinking practice, portfolios give students a place to practice this skill in the classroom. In this study, we

Every semester one of the authors of this article, Catherine Prudhoe, chal- lenges many of her preservice students’ perceptions of a familiar and often favorite children’s book, The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein (1964). She begins the class by reading the text aloud to the students. Most smile, fondly remembering hearing the book as a child. A few become teary- eyed as the tree selflessly gives to the boy throughout his life. After reading the text, it is then discussed. The students usually comment on how the book teaches children to share and to love their friends. They talk about their

Edited by a diverse group of expert collaborators, the Handbook of the Cultural Foundations of Learning is a landmark volume that brings together cutting-edge research examining learning as entailing inherently cultural processes. Conceptualizing culture as both a set of social practices and connected to learner identities, the chapters synthesize contemporary research in elaborating a new vision of the cultural nature of learning, moving beyond summary to reshape the field toward studies that situate culture in the learning sciences alongside equity of educational processes and outcomes. With

What is behind the current narrative “more STEM in schools and societies” that this special issue aims to address? If, indeed, we are committed to more STEM in schools and societies, what does this look like in practice? Where do we currently stand in terms of endorsing inclusive and com- prehensive STEM practices that engage in and are committed to questions about STEM learning for whom and toward what ends? With these questions in mind, I read the articles, but then also explored a recent report by the Committee of STEM Education of the National Science and Technology Council, mandated by

This study explored the role of critical consciousness as a key factor in predicting progress in career development among urban high school students. Critical consciousness, or the capacity to recognize and overcome sociopolitical barriers, was operationalized through sociopolitical analysis and sociopolitical control. Canonical correlation analysis indicated a statistically significant relationship between critical consciousness and progress in career development, which was supported by estimates of effect size, for a sample of 220 urban adolescents. Participants with greater levels of

In this article, Ladson-Billings reflects on the history of her theory of culturally relevant pedagogy and the ways it has been used and misused since its inception. She argues for the importance of dynamic scholarship and suggests that it is time for a “remix” of her original theory: culturally sustaining pedagogy, as proposed by Paris (2012). Ladson-Billings discusses her work with the hip-hop and spoken word program First Wave as an example of how culturally sustaining pedagogy allows for a fluid understanding of culture, and a teaching practice that explicitly engages questions of equity

The achievement gap is one of the most talked-about issues in U.S. education. The term refers to the disparities in standardized test scores between Black and White, Latina/o and White, and recent immigrant and White students. This article argues that a focus on the gap is misplaced. Instead, we need to look at the “education debt” that has accumulated over time. This debt comprises historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral components. The author draws an analogy with the concept of national debt—which she contrasts with that of a national budget deficit—to argue the significance of the

lack and Brown men continue to be underrepresented in engineering. One explanation for the dearth of Black and Latino men in engineering is that engineering (and STEM) identity often is not inclusive of People of Color. As a result, Black and Brown boys may be less likely to become interested in STEM subjects. The purpose of this study, then, was to investigate how the components of one afterschool engineering program tap into engineering identity formation among fourth- and fifth-grade Black and Brown boys. Leveraging research on the STEM and engineering identity, we argue that the program

Background: Rearchers have shown that students leave undergraduate engineering programs during the first 2 years. Justifiably, many studies have tried to tackle engineering student persistence and attrition, especially during the first year, and then developed interventions to address the challenges. Although those interventions have improved freshmen retention in some insti- tutions, less has been published on the impacts of these interventions on the sophomore student experience. Purpose: To contribute to the knowledge base about all engineering students, we examined the experiences of