Practical guidance for teachers aiming to strategically support the full participation and engagement of minoritized students in STEM education. In Teaching Toward Rightful Presence in Middle School STEM, Edna Tan and Angela Calabrese Barton introduce the rightful presence framework, a multifaceted approach to instruction that enables historically marginalized students to gain agency in their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. This necessary work presents practical, justice-centered STEM pedagogy that can begin to reverse the messages of exclusion that have pervaded K–12 science education. Tan and Calabrese Barton first delve into the complex legacy of systemic injustice in education, showing how forms of racialization and colonization that are manifest in schooling practices have excluded and led to the disengagement of students who have been historically marginalized because of their race, immigration status, language, class, sexuality, or gender. Through cases and vignettes from middle-school classrooms, they illustrate real-life strategies and instructional decisions that help counteract inequalities. Reaching beyond inclusion, they suggest approaches such as coplanning, coproduction, and community ethnography that disrupt the norms of the science classroom and validate the community's powerful cultural knowledge and relevant experience. Tan and Calabrese Barton show how the rightful presence framework can foster student engagement and support identity formation. This work gives teachers and other practitioners a means to critique, challenge, and disrupt underlying power structures in middle school STEM.

Practical guidance for teachers aiming to strategically support the full participation and engagement of minoritized students in STEM education. In Teaching Toward Rightful Presence in Middle School STEM, Edna Tan and Angela Calabrese Barton introduce the rightful presence framework, a multifaceted approach to instruction that enables historically marginalized students to gain agency in their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. This necessary work presents practical, justice-centered STEM pedagogy that can begin to reverse the messages of exclusion that have pervaded K-12 science education. Tan and Calabrese Barton first delve into the complex legacy of systemic injustice in education, showing how forms of racialization and colonization that are manifest in schooling practices have excluded and led to the disengagement of students who have been historically marginalized because of their race, immigration status, language, class, sexuality, or gender. Through cases and vignettes from middle-school classrooms, they illustrate real-life strategies and instructional decisions that help counteract inequalities. Reaching beyond inclusion, they suggest approaches such as coplanning, coproduction, and community ethnography that disrupt the norms of the science classroom and validate the community's powerful cultural knowledge and relevant experience. Tan and Calabrese Barton show how the rightful presence framework can foster student engagement and support identity formation. This work gives teachers and other practitioners a means to critique, challenge, and disrupt underlying power structures in middle school STEM.

How might science education reflect the values of a socially just and democratic society? How do urban youth living in poverty construct science in their lives in ways that are enriching, empowering, and transformative? Using a combination of in-depth case studies and rigorous theory, this volume: Offers a series of teaching stories that describes youth’s practices of science, providing valuable insight to help teachers work with inner-city youth.Explores the importance of inclusiveness, membership rules, and the purposes and goals of good science, including utility, pragmatism, and doing good for others.Shows how science connects to the lives of youth both in and out of school. Builds on and critiques current reform initiatives in science education.Features stories taken from six years of teaching and research in after-school science programs with children and youth in homeless shelters.Illustrates how the children’s unique situations framed their constructions of science in compelling and challenging ways.

“We are among those who have come to enjoy the blossoming intellects, often comical behaviors, and insatiable curiosity of middle schoolers—and choose to work with them! With more than 130 years of combined experience in the profession, we’ve gathered a lot of ideas to share. We know from our interactions with educators around the country that precious few quality resources exist to assist science teachers ‘in the middle,’ and this was a central impetus for updating Doing Good Science in Middle School.” —From the preface This lively book contains the kind of guidance that could only come from veterans of the middle school science trenches. The authors know you’re crazy-busy, so they made the book easy to use, whether you want to read it cover to cover or pick out sections to help you with lesson planning and classroom management. They also know you face new challenges, so they thoroughly revised this second edition to meet the needs of today’s students. The book contains: • big-picture concepts, such as how to understand middle school learners and explore the nature of science with them; • a comprehensive overview of science and engineering practices, STEM, and inquiry-based middle school science instruction, aligned with A Framework for K–12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards; • 10 new and updated teacher-tested activities that integrate STEM with literacy skill-building; • information on best instructional practices and professional-development resources; and • connections to the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics. If you’re a new teacher, you’ll gain a solid foundation in how to teach science and engineering practices while better understanding your often-enigmatic middle-grade students. If you’re a veteran teacher, you’ll benefit from a fresh view of what your colleagues are doing in new times. Either way, Doing Good Science in Middle School is a rich opportunity to reaffirm that what you do is “good science.”

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Ambitious Science Teaching outlines a powerful framework for science teaching to ensure that instruction is rigorous and equitable for students from all backgrounds. The practices presented in the book are being used in schools and districts that seek to improve science teaching at scale, and a wide range of science subjects and grade levels are represented. The book is organized around four sets of core teaching practices: planning for engagement with big ideas; eliciting student thinking; supporting changes in students’ thinking; and drawing together evidence-based explanations. Discussion of each practice includes tools and routines that teachers can use to support students’ participation, transcripts of actual student-teacher dialogue and descriptions of teachers’ thinking as it unfolds, and examples of student work. The book also provides explicit guidance for “opportunity to learn” strategies that can help scaffold the participation of diverse students. Since the success of these practices depends so heavily on discourse among students, Ambitious Science Teaching includes chapters on productive classroom talk. Science-specific skills such as modeling and scientific argument are also covered. Drawing on the emerging research on core teaching practices and their extensive work with preservice and in-service teachers, Ambitious Science Teaching presents a coherent and aligned set of resources for educators striving to meet the considerable challenges that have been set for them.

In this incisive and practical book, H. Richard Milner IV provides educators with a crucial understanding of how to teach students of color who live in poverty. Milner looks carefully at the circumstances of these students’ lives and describes how those circumstances profoundly affect their experiences within schools and classrooms. In a series of detailed chapters, Milner proposes effective practices—at district and school levels, and in individual classrooms—for school leaders and teachers who are committed to creating the best educational opportunities for these students. Building on established literature, new research, and a number of revelatory case studies, Milner casts essential light on the experiences of students and their families living in poverty, while pointing to educational strategies that are shaped with these students' unique circumstances in mind. Milner’s astute and nuanced account will fundamentally change how school leaders and teachers think about race and poverty—and how they can best serve these students in their schools and classrooms.

Making Science: Reimagining STEM Education in Middle School and Beyond is a guide to help educators use new technology and a designer mindset to create personalized learning experiences that engage students in the wonder of science. This is an inclusive STEM curriculum that empowers students to become informed citizens and global problem-solvers.

A diverse group of scholars redefine constructionism—introduced by Seymour Papert in 1980—in light of new technologies and theories. Constructionism, first introduced by Seymour Papert in 1980, is a framework for learning to understand something by making an artifact for and with other people. A core goal of constructionists is to respect learners as creators, to enable them to engage in making meaning for themselves through construction, and to do this by democratizing access to the world's most creative and powerful tools. In this volume, an international and diverse group of scholars examine, reconstruct, and evolve the constructionist paradigm in light of new technologies and theories. Taken together, their contributions show that constructionism has advanced in educational research and practice—and also that, in turn, researchers and practitioners can learn from constructionism how to foster learning in ways that respect learners' creativity and communities. The contributors examine how constructionist design can function within contexts ranging from school and home to virtual spaces; explore ways to support learners who have been under-resourced, overlooked, or oppressed; discuss learning by collaboration; and consider the implications of learning as a creative process of construction, exploring ways to support creative enterprises within the constraints of formal classrooms. Finally, leading visionaries imagine where constructionism, design, and research will go next Contributors Konstantin Aal, Dor Abrahamson, Edith K. Ackermann, Michael Ahmadi, Emma Anderson, Edward Baafi, Stephanie Benson, Laura Benton, Matthew Berland, Marina Umaschi Bers, Paulo Blikstein, Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Karen Brennan, Leah Buechley, Angela Calabrese Barton, Teresa Casort, David Cavallo, Kiera Chase, Alison Clark-Wilson, Sequoia L. Dance, Joshua A. Danish, Sayamindu Dasgupta, Michael Eisenberg, Noel Enyedy, Deborah A. Fields, Andrea Forte, Gayithri Jayathirtha, Brian Gravel, Sara M. Grimes, Idit Harel, Erica R. Halverson, Nathan Holbert, Celia Hoyles, Raquel Jimenez, Yasmin B. Kafai, Ivan Kalas, Anna Keune, Susan Klimczak, Eric Klopfer, Maximilian Krüger, Chronis Kynigos, Tim Kubik, Breanne K. Litts, Benjamin Mako Hill, Amon Millner, Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Richard Noss, Seymour Papert, Kylie Peppler, Judy Perry, Mitchel Resnick, Rebecca Reynolds, Ricarose Roque, Piers Saunders, Kristin A. Searle, Kimberly M. Sheridan, Arnan Sipitakiat, R. Benjamin Shapiro, Gary S. Stager, Gunnar Stevens, Vanessa Svihla, Edna Tan, Orkan Telhan, Naomi Thompson, Nalin Tutiyaphuengprasert, Anne Weibert, Michelle Hoda Wilkerson, Volker Wulf, Uri Wilensky, Jianwei Zhang

This report aims to 'crack the code' by deciphering the factors that hinder and facilitate girls' and women's participation, achievement and continuation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and, in particular, what the education sector can do to promote girls' and women's interest in and engagement with STEM education and ultimately STEM careers.

The widely used STEM education book, updated Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide covers teaching and learning issues unique to teaching in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. Secondary and postsecondary instructors in STEM areas need to master specific skills, such as teaching problem-solving, which are not regularly addressed in other teaching and learning books. This book fills the gap, addressing, topics like learning objectives, course design, choosing a text, effective instruction, active learning, teaching with technology, and assessment—all from a STEM perspective. You’ll also gain the knowledge to implement learner-centered instruction, which has been shown to improve learning outcomes across disciplines. For this edition, chapters have been updated to reflect recent cognitive science and empirical educational research findings that inform STEM pedagogy. You’ll also find a new section on actively engaging students in synchronous and asynchronous online courses, and content has been substantially revised to reflect recent developments in instructional technology and online course development and delivery. Plan and deliver lessons that actively engage students—in person or online Assess students’ progress and help ensure retention of all concepts learned Help students develop skills in problem-solving, self-directed learning, critical thinking, teamwork, and communication Meet the learning needs of STEM students with diverse backgrounds and identities The strategies presented in Teaching and Learning STEM don’t require revolutionary time-intensive changes in your teaching, but rather a gradual integration of traditional and new methods. The result will be a marked improvement in your teaching and your students’ learning.