Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

Stem Learning In Your Own Backyard, Brooke A. Whitworth, Stephanie Beyea, Melora Purell

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Epa P3 Program: An Opportunity For Growing Student Entrepreneurs, Marc Compere, Yan Tang, Yung Wong

Publications

In this paper we will share our experiences of fostering entrepreneurial spirit through projects funded by EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) P3 (People, Prosperity, and the Planet) Program which hosts the P3 collegiate competition for designing solutions for a sustainable future. Since 2012, we have integrated the P3 competition with the capstone design course of Clean Energy Systems track in mechanical engineering as an effective educational vehicle for introducing the concept of sustainable design. Since the competition focuses on designs which have values of real world application, it is also a great opportunity to create entrepreneurial spirit. We have successfully turned …

The Viability Of Portraiture For Science Education Research: Learning From Portraits Of Two Scientific Classrooms, Cassie F. Quigley, Amy Trauth-Nare, Nicole Beeman-Cadwallader

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The purpose of this paper is to describe the relevance of a qualitative methodology called portraiture for science education. Portraiture is a method of inquiry that blends art and science by combining the empirical aspects of inquiry with the beauty and aesthetic properties. This method encompasses all aspects of a research study, including protocol, data collection and analysis, and presentation of findings. To examine the viability of portraiture as methodology for science education researchers, we provided two portraits of science teachers and their classrooms to illustrate how context played a significant role in teachers’ experiences and how it influenced their …

Formation And Assessment Of A Tool To Evaluate Stem Literacy In Service-Learning Projects, Barbara Hayford, Sally Blomstrom, Lori A. Mumpower

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The purpose of the authors’ research was to create a tool to evaluate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) literacy in service-learning projects. The researchers posited that components of service-learning, which in this case included the deliverable and reflections, are examples of fundamental STEM literacy and thus can be assessed for STEM learning outcomes. The authors review the literature on service-learning and on STEM literacy. Combining components of literacy-based learning objectives and service-learning objectives with the revised Bloom’s taxonomy in a taxonomy table, they created a general STEM literacy evaluation tool. They then applied the tool to a service-learning project …

Ethics Is Not Rocket Science: How To Have Ethical Discussions In Your Science Class, Kelly C. Smith

Publications

The Rutland Institute for Ethics at Clemson University seeks to encourage discussion on campus, in businesses, and in the community about how ethical decision-making can be the basis of both personal and professional success. In the last 15 years, our fellows have, among other things, served as Co-PI’s on a wide range of grants, produced Responsible Conduct of Research training for science and engineering graduate students and faculty, managed the ethics curriculum at a medical school, and produced video lectures on ethical thinking for undergraduate Biology majors. The crown jewel of our efforts to-date is our Ethics Across the Curriculum …

Engineering Design Challenge, Lindsay B. Wheeler, Brooke A. Whitworth, Amanda L. Gonczi

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No abstract provided.

Implementing The Common Core’S Promise Of Bringing Statistical Curricula Into Line With Recommendations Of Nctm, Maa, & Gaise, Beverly Wood, Carl Clark

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We plan to make a case for the necessity of GAISE-aligned college courses in order to prepare future teachers to teach in Common Core K-12 classrooms. Beginning with an overview of the parallel evolutions of Cobb/MAA suggestions - GAISE recommendations for teaching and NCTM process standards - Common Core mathematical practices, we will emphasize that we should be modeling what researchers continually conclude are best practices for teaching/learning across the K-16 continuum. We will provide some examples to illustrate classroom tasks that satisfy both GAISE and Common Core and hope to generate some discussion of other activities already used by …

Kinesthetic Investigations In The Physics Classroom, Brooke A. Whitworth, Jennifer L. Chiu, Randy L. Bell

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Inquiry can be defined practically as “an active learning process in which students answer research questions through data analysis.”2 This simple definition of inquiry is based on the National Science Educational Standards and is easy for teachers to understand. The National Research Council (NRC) identifies the scientific practices that support inquiry and that students should be engaged in, including: question generation, experimental design, data analysis, creating explanations, argumentation, and communicating results.3 The investigations created encourage inquiry and require students to develop their scientific practices skills.

Pre-Service Teachers’ Use Of Visualizations In The Science Classroom: A Case Study, Brooke A. Whitworth, Jennifer L. Chiu

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Scientific visualizations of phenomena can enhance the way learners understand scientific concepts (Honey & Hilton, 2011). Scientific concepts can be abstract and difficult for students to understand and visualizations can help make these abstract concepts more concrete for students. For example, chemistry students often struggle with understanding how atoms bond since they cannot directly see atoms. Using a visualization to show students how the electrons are shared or transferred can help students understand these abstract concepts. In addition, many visualizations are freely available online and can be a key element to maintain quality science instruction with limited resources.

Physics Portfolios: A Picture Of Student Understanding, Brooke A. Whitworth, Randy L. Bell

Publications

Traditionally, teachers assess students' physics understanding through lab activities, responses to open-ended word problems, and tests. But there's another way to measure student understanding, one in which students apply their learning to the world around them. This article shows how to implement student portfolios, which allow students to set goals they can monitor throughout the year and actively participate in assessment. When students build portfolios, they can evaluate and reflect on their own work, promoting engagement with the course and content (Danielson and Abrutyn 1997), and teachers can better assess students' goal movement and see growth in students' conceptual understanding. …

Gaise In Discipline-Specific Courses, Beverly Wood

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While acknowledging the diverse setting, audience, and purpose of introductory courses, existing research assumes that courses offered by different disciplines share the same goals and teaching practices. The purpose of this study is to examine the objectives for student outcomes and pedagogical delivery of introductory statistics courses designed for students in a specific major, providing explicit evidence for this assumption.

The American Statistical Association’s Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) are meant to apply to all introductory courses. The College Report’s Goals for Students and Recommendations for Teaching are used as a framework for a qualitative study …

Obstacles To Developing Digital Literacy On The Internet In Middle School Science Instruction, Jamie Colwell, Sarah Hunt-Barron, David Reinking

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Obstacles, and instructional responses to them, that emerged in two middle school science classes during a formative experiment investigating Internet Reciprocal Teaching (IRT), an instructional intervention aimed at increasing digital literacy on the Internet, are reported in this manuscript. Analysis of qualitative data revealed that IRT enabled students to explain and demonstrate appropriate strategies for locating and evaluating information on the Internet when they were asked to do so. However, students did not use these strategies or they quickly abandoned them when working independently or in small groups during inquiry projects. Data revealed three obstacles that inhibited efforts to promote …

Teacher's Toolkit: Differentiating Inquiry, Brooke A. Whitworth, Jennifer L. Maeng, Randy L. Bell

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Differentiated instruction and teaching science as inquiry are two pedagogical approaches frequently discussed among science teachers. Teachers know these approaches are important but often have difficulty translating them into their classroom science instruction. This article describes how to differentiate a density investigation for variations in student readiness by varying the level of inquiry using an approach that is easily translated to experiments in any science content area.

Models Of Interdisciplinary Research And Service Learning At Hope College, Aaron A. Best, Matthew Dejongh, Amanda J. Barton, Jeff R. Brown, Christopher C. Barney

Publications

"Children love to explore the world around them. In doing so they are not aware of disciplinary boundaries or even of disciplines. They move freely from watching ants (biology) to building structures (engineering) to counting rocks (mathematics and geology) to seeing what things dissolve in water (chemistry). Only as they go to school do they learn that humans divide up the way we learn about the universe and start to think within disciplinary boundaries. In doing so, those children, who are now us, lose the ability to think broadly and use the insights of various ways of thinking to solve …