Science

The Technology Tools for Teaching and Training (dot-EDU T4) project seeks to assist the education departments in the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Delhi, for quality teaching and learning for the primary education sector. To this end, dot-EDU T4 has created interactive, multimedia tools in audio, video, and software formats that established new standards for education quality while delivering education services on a large scale and reaching out to girls and other vulnerable populations.

The Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) is one of ten regional laboratories and has a mission to help pre-K–16 educators use the best available evidence to make decisions leading to improved student achievement and reduced performance gaps. REL-NEI places a special emphasis on helping states, districts, and schools build capacity to use their data effectively; forming and conducting high-quality research and evaluation through new “research alliances”; and helping regional education stakeholders incorporate data-based inquiry practices into their decision-making.

The ITEST Learning Resource Center at EDC held a convening designed to develop a theoretical framework to guide future research on youth motivation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) with a particular emphasis on populations most underrepresented in the STEM workforce. Two guiding questions were the focus of the event: 1) What is currently known about motivation in STEM for underrepresented youth? 2) What can be done to cultivate new research around STEM motivation for underrepresented youth?

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) is an online portal for education and research on learning in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). The NSDL Youth Resources project (NYR) is designed to increase utilization of the NSDL by middle school students and their teachers by adding relevant, high-quality and engaging content. The project focuses on the quality, accessibility, and interactivity of content to determine what student’s identify and conceptualize as high-quality online STEM content.

The smart grid uses the most advanced digital technology to upgrade the aging, century old electrical grid in the United States, in ways that are radically transforming the ways energy is used and consumed. EDC has developed two three-lesson curriculum units that introduce high school students to the smart grid. In the first unit students learn about the smart grid and develop materials that will educate others in their community about the smart grid concept and its potential benefits.

‘Be a Scientist!’ is a full-scale development project that examines the impact of a scalable, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) afterschool program which trains engineers to develop and teach inquiry-based Family Science Workshops (FSWs) in underserved communities. The project targets underserved youth in grades 1-5 in Los Angeles and New York, their parents, and engineering professionals. The science activities are provided in a series of FSWs which take place in afterschool programs in eight partner schools in Los Angeles and at the New York Hall of Science in New York City.

This project tests the efficacy of the Foundations of Science Literacy (FSL), a professional development program that was developed for use with Head Start teachers. By focusing on the Head Start community, FSL directly addresses the achievement gap in early science education by providing a framework for teachers to learn and implement preschool science instructional practices in classrooms serving children from low-income backgrounds.

This project is evaluating the Talk Science! program, led by TERC, which strives to enhance and study the development of teachers’ skills in managing productive classroom talk in inquiry-based science. The Talk Science! project is documenting teachers’ learning and closely studying the changes in discussion patterns in 18 science classrooms in urban, suburban, and rural schools. The project hypothesizes that aligning professional learning with conceptually driven curricula and emphasizing the development of scientific discourse will change classroom culture and increase student learning.