Philly Scientists - Biodiversity Project

Curricular Materials

The Philly Scientists project is dedicated to developing innovative science curriculum for in-school and out-of-school programs for middle school students in the West Philadelphia Promise Zone. The website contains insight on curriculum development and an example lesson. The Philly Scientists mobile app was modified from a safari animal tracking tool and walks students through identifying and cataloging neighborhood plants and animals. Local scientists visit the school sites to engage students in discussions about how scientists make good observations and aid in data collection of neighborhood

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Massachusetts K–12 Computer Science Curriculum Guide

Curricular Materials

This guide helps school districts choose the computer science (CS) curricula that best suit their communities’ needs. The guide was developed as part of an initiative for school districts to accelerate the creation of classroom opportunities for learning CS that are standards based, high quality, career relevant, and accessible to all students at all grade levels.

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Gender Equitable Teaching Strategies

Curricular Materials

This resource provides the toolkit to enhance pedagogical approaches for the promotion of gender equity. A number of topics on gender equity in teaching are discussed such as promoting student creativity, critical thinking, and building role models.

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Becoming Technosocial Change Agents: Intersectionality and Culturally Responsive Pedagogies as Vital Resources for Increasing Girls’ Participation in Computing

Publications

Drawing from our two‐year ethnography, we juxtapose the experiences of two cohorts in one culturally responsive computing program, examining how the program fostered girls’ emerging identities as technosocial change agents. In presenting this in‐depth and up‐close exploration, we simultaneously identify conditions that both facilitated and limited the program's potential. Ultimately, we illustrate how these findings can enhance anthropological research and practice in youth identity, culturally responsive pedagogies, and computing education.

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National Science Foundation - Instructional Materials Development Program

Instruments

This document presents the final report on the evaluation of the Instructional Materials Development (IMD) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and focuses on issues related to the development, dissemination, adoption, implementation, and impact of new instructional materials. The IMD program evaluates products at each step, from product development to classroom use. Instruments are included for evaluating elementary and secondary school science and mathematics materials for classroom use.

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Learning at the Nano-Level: Accounting for Complexity in the Internalization of Secondary STEM Teacher Professional Development

Publications

Utilizing a case study research design, the factors that influence teacher learning and change, as well as the processes by which secondary STEM teachers internalize professional development (PD) content, are explored. The authors argue that conceptualizations of teacher learning often do not adequately account for teacher subjectivity and the role of exogenous variables in teacher development. The outcomes of PD are heavily influenced by teacher subjectivity, which includes perceptions, previous knowledge, and the internalization of the power and influence present in educational policy and

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Children’s Motivation Toward Science Across Contexts, Manner of Interaction, and Topic

Instruments

Understanding the features of science learning experiences that organize and motivate children at early ages can help educators and researchers findways to ignite interest to support future passion and learning in the sciences at a time when children’s motivation is declining. Using a sample of 252 fifth- and sixth-grade students, we systematically explore differences in children’s motivations toward science experiences across context (formal, informal, neutral), manner of interaction (consuming new knowledge, analyzing, action), and topic (e.g., biology, earth science, physics). Motivations

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The Efficacy of Educative Curriculum Materials to Support Geospatial Science Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Publications

Teaching and learning about geospatial aspects of energy resource issues requires that science teachers apply effective science pedagogical approaches to implement geospatial technologies into classroom instruction. To address this need, we designed educative curriculum materials as an integral part of a comprehensive middle school energy resources science curriculum. We examined teachers’ perceived impact of the curriculum materials to support their pedagogical content knowledge related to teaching science with geospatial technologies. Results indicated that the educative curriculum materials

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Computational Thinking in Elementary and Secondary Teacher Education

Publications

Computational thinking (CT) is broadly defined as the mental activity for abstracting problems and formulating solutions that can be automated. In an increasingly information-based society, CT is becoming an essential skill for everyone. To ensure that students develop this ability at the K-12 level, it is important to provide teachers with an adequate knowledge about CT and how to incorporate it into their teaching. This article describes a study on designing and introducing computational thinking modules and assessing their impact on preservice teachers’ understanding of CT concepts, as well

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Preservice Teachers’ Culturally Responsive Teaching Self-efficacy and Outcome Expectancy Beliefs

Instruments

Guided by the theoretical and empirical research on self-efficacy and outcome expectancy beliefs, and the Culturally Responsive Teaching Competencies [Siwatu, K.O. (2006a). The development of the culturally responsive teaching competencies: Implications for teacher education. Manuscript under review], two measures—the Culturally Responsive Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale (CRTSE) and the Culturally Responsive Teaching Outcome Expectancy (CRTOE) Scale—were developed and administered to a sample of preservice teachers in the Midwest. The findings from this study suggest that preservice teachers are

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