National Science Education Standards

Engineering education in K-12 classrooms is a small but growing phenomenon that may have implications for engineering and also for the other STEM subjects--science, technology, and mathematics. Specifically, engineering education may improve student learning and achievement in science and mathematics, increase awareness of engineering and the work of engineers, boost youth interest in pursuing engineering as a career, and increase the technological literacy of all students. The teaching of STEM subjects in U.S. schools must be improved in order to retain U.S. competitiveness in the global economy and to develop a workforce with the knowledge and skills to address technical and technological issues. Engineering in K-12 Education reviews the scope and impact of engineering education today and makes several recommendations to address curriculum, policy, and funding issues. The book also analyzes a number of K-12 engineering curricula in depth and discusses what is known from the cognitive sciences about how children learn engineering-related concepts and skills. Engineering in K-12 Education will serve as a reference for science, technology, engineering, and math educators, policy makers, employers, and others concerned about the development of the country's technical workforce. The book will also prove useful to educational researchers, cognitive scientists, advocates for greater public understanding of engineering, and those working to boost technological and scientific literacy.

http://www.nmu.edu/seaborg/sites/DrupalSeaborg/files/UserFiles/Files/NGSS/Engineering_in_k-12_education-_Understanding_the_status_and_improving_the_prospects.pdf

Engineering in K-12 Education: Understanding the Status and Improving the Prospects.

STEM Integration in K-12 Education examines current efforts to connect the STEM disciplines in K-12 education This report identifies and characterizes existing approaches to integrated STEM education, both in formal and after- and out-of-school settings The report reviews the evidence for the impact of integrated approaches on various student outcomes, and it proposes a set of priority research questions to advance the understanding of integrated STEM education STEM Integration in K-12 Education proposes a framework to provide a common perspective and vocabulary for researchers, practitioners, and others to identify, discuss, and investigate specific integrated STEM initiatives within the K-12 education system of the United States STEM Integration in K-12 Education makes recommendations for designers of integrated STEM experiences, assessment developers, and researchers to design and document effective integrated STEM education This report will help to further their work and improve the chances that some forms of integrated STEM education will make a positive difference in student learning and interest and other valued outcomes

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STEM integration in K-12 education : status, prospects, and an agenda for research

CONCLUSIONS This paper’s theoretical contribution is an emergent educational theory of informed design that identifies key performance dimensions relevant to K–16 engineering and STEM educational contexts. Practical contributions include the Informed Design Teaching and Learning Matrix, which is fashioned to help teachers do informed teaching with design tasks while developing their own design pedagogical content knowledge.

The Informed Design Teaching and Learning Matrix

This project consisted of a meta-analysis of U.S. research published from 1980 to 2004 on the effect of specific science teaching strategies on student achievement. The six phases of the project included study acquisition, study coding, determination of intercoder objectivity, establishing criteria for inclusion of studies, computation of effect sizes for statistical analysis, and conducting the analyses. Studies were required to have been carried out in the United States, been experimental or quasi-experimental, and must have included effect size or the statistics necessary to calculate effect size. Sixty-one studies met the criteria for inclusion in the meta-analysis. The following eight categories of teaching strategies were revealed during analysis of the studies (effect sizes in parentheses): Questioning Strategies (0.74); Manipulation Strategies (0.57); Enhanced Material Strategies (0.29); Assessment Strategies (0.51); Inquiry Strategies (0.65); Enhanced Context Strategies (1.48); Instructional Technology (IT) Strategies (0.48); and Collaborative Learning Strategies (0.95). All these effect sizes were judged to be significant. Regression analysis revealed that internal validity was influenced by Publication Type, Type of Study, and Test Type. External validity was not influenced by Publication Year, Grade Level, Test Content, or Treatment Categories. The major implication of this research is that we have generated empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of alternative teaching strategies in science. 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 1436-1460, 2007

A Meta-Analysis of National Research: Effects of Teaching Strategies on Student Achievement in Science in the United States

Design-Based Science (DBS) is a pedagogy in which the goal of designing an artifact contextualizes all curricular activities. Design is viewed as a vehicle through which scientific knowledge and real-world problem-solving skills can be constructed. Following Anderson and Hogan's (1999) call to document the design of new science pedagogies, this goal of this article is twofold: (a) to describe DBS, and (b) to evaluate whether significant science knowledge was constructed during consecutive enactments of three DBS units. In this study, 92 students participated in the consecutive enactments of three different DBS units. The development of their scientific knowledge was assessed through posters and models constructed during the curricular enactments and by identical pre- and post-instruction written tests. The posttests showed considerable gains compared with the pretests, while the models and posters show application of this newly constructed knowledge in solving a design problem. These positive results support efforts being made to restructure school science around inquiry-based curricula in general and design-based curricula in particular. 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 1081-1110, 2004

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R. Charles Dershimer

Papers

Design-based science and student learning