NSELA Virtual SLI 2021

Engineering design is a key aspect of the Next Generation Science Standards. Engineering design projects require students to build and use science ideas and grapple with competing criteria and constraints and alternative solutions to problems. But what kinds of problems should engineering design projects address in science classrooms?

In this presentation, I will develop some criteria that we are using in two projects for developing compelling engineering design challenges for students. Our criteria are that engineering design challenges should: (1) address a priority of students’ communities or global matter of concern that impacts students’ everyday lives; (2) foreground what is at stake for students for particular stakeholder groups; (3) engage with the economic, social, and political systems implicated in addressing the issues at hand for stakeholders; (4) support students in developing a caring approach to the engineering design and testing process and (5) culminate in a decision or action students conclude is necessary to promote justice.

I will illustrate these criteria applied in the context of a culminating design challenge from a high school curriculum unit and a middle school assessment.

This session is an introduction to a new approach to STEM instruction called Argument-Driven Engineering (ADE). ADE is an instructional model that gives students an opportunity to learn to use core ideas and practices from science, engineering, and mathematics to figure out a solution to a problem that will help make the world a better place. This instructional approach also gives students an opportunity to use disciplinary literacy skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) in the service of sense-making because they must obtain information, share and critique potential solutions through talk, and communicate what they figured out and how they know the solution is acceptable through writing. In this session, participants will learn about the stages of the ADE instructional model, and how teachers can use this model to create lessons that allow students to become “knowers and doers” of STEM. Participants will also have a chance to experience an example of an ADE design challenge that invites them to design a new shipping and storage container for insulin and see examples of how students who completed this design challenge used science, engineering, and mathematics ideas and practices to figure out how to keep insulin cold without electricity for at least 24 hours. Participants will also learn about how this new approach was developed through three years of classroom-based research by a team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and how well ADE instructional materials are aligned with current standards in science, mathematics, and ELA. 

The agenda for the presentation is:
• A discussion of “what counts” as STEM and a design challenge (5 minutes)
• An overview of the ADE instructional model with opportunities for participants to experience different stages as students would (40 minutes)
• Overview of the research on ADE and examples of what students create during a design challenge (5 minutes)
• Alignment of the ADE instructional model with national standards (5 minutes)
• Questions and suggestions for learning more (5 minutes) 

The presentation will give teachers an opportunity to participate in the same sort of rich, and meaningful learning that current academic standards require. Such learning places the focus squarely on the nature of instruction. It is rooted in ongoing, active experiences that will prompt teachers to expand their content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and examine their beliefs about teaching and learning. The presenter, therefore, will guide the participants in a series of focused, small-group activities that are structured like a typical day’s lesson using the ADE instructional models, allowing teachers to experience instruction as student do in a classroom.

Hillsborough County Public Schools is the seventh largest school district in the nation, with over 220,000 students from extraordinarily diverse communities. Eight years ago the district created a STEM "playbook" outlining instructional frameworks for science and STEM education that included engineering opportunities aligned with NGSS SEPs for ALL students, and developed a complimentary out-of-school time program to accompany the instructional shifts in the classroom. Through subsequent partnerships with NSTA, The Museum of Science (Boston), University of South Florida and 100Kin10, the district fine-tuned a professional learning pathway for K-5 teachers to support inquiry-based, hands-on engineering opportunities in the science classroom.

The STEP UP program includes two lessons that have been proven to improve students’ physics identity: a Careers in Physics lesson that introduces students to the variety of careers paths and fields related to physics and the Women in Physics lesson on the underrepresentation of women in physics and the role of implicit bias and cultural stereotypes.
As many of us transition back to full in-person classes in the next school year the Everyday Actions Guide will also be introduced which includes teacher actions to make physics classrooms more inclusive for all students. The grassroots STEP UP community that spans the country has developed extensions and adaptations of these lessons for their own classrooms. The STEP UP curriculum will be introduced as well as select community created material related to engineering with time suggestions for different course levels.

With the amount of time for science constantly under scrutiny, developing experiences that connect engineering and STEM careers into content standards is critical. Through game-based learning and experiential learning, leaders across the country are innovating and embedding these into practice. 

Given that over 90% of school-age kids play video games on a regular basis, it is the ideal medium to engage kids in learning, promote productive struggle voluntarily, and meet students where they are while building 21st century skills. While educators leverage games frequently, they often struggle to integrate meaningful activities tied to standards, STEM skills, careers, and engineering practices that deepen student understanding. Discuss with a panel of experts how to effectively incorporate STEM into instructional practice.

Leonardo da Vinci was the quintessential Renaissance man: a painter, sculptor, inventor, architect, musician, engineer, and scientist. Similar to how da Vinci’s interests and expertise stretched across a variety of domains, successful engineers of tomorrow will need to exhibit depth in one or two core disciplines and breadth across multiple spheres. To foster the development of such Renaissance Engineers, colleges and universities will need to reexamine engineering teaching and learning. The nascent, yet complex, field of engineering education sits at the epicenter of this reform and must lead our reimagination of how we develop future Leonardo’s.

Three-dimensional learning that incorporates the disciplinary core ideas, the science practices and the cross-cutting concepts is the driving force of the Framework for K-12 Science Education, Next Generation Science Standards, and the other State standards. In order to better integrate the different topics typically taught in the high school biology classroom, storyline units that are coherent and phenomenon-driven have been created so that students can make sense of how science works in real world situations. For example, storylines have been written to address the phenomena of albinism for the teaching of genotype to phenotype, group hunting in lions to address social behavior and genetic relatedness, tusklessness in elephants to introduce keystone species and natural selection, observing homeostasis from ecosystem to cells, and so much more. These units, written as part of a biology teacher collaborative, have proven to be effective models of how three-dimensional learning can be applied in today's science instruction and lead to students becoming self-directed learners and thinkers. Many educators have struggled with the shifts needed to create a Three-Dimensional science classroom and these storylines have supported teachers to make these shifts in a holistic way.

As students return to school this fall, educators will have opportunities and challenges as they pick up where student learning left off in the last school year. To offer guidance through this process and through the education disruptions over the past year, the Board on Science Education at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released Teaching Science and Engineering During a Crisis in early September, 2020. This session with the book's author will engage participants in a discussion of back-to-school decisions, including addressing "unfinished learning" and increasing student engagement through a focus on explaining phenomena and solving problems throughout the learning process.

This session will highlight the work in Michigan and nationally to create phenomenon based assessment tasks, and to develop capacity in the state to help work toward NGSS designed equitable assessments and assessment practices.

Every science assessment is also an assessment of language. In this session, participants will learn about science classroom assessment design principles that support linguistically equitable tasks. Participants will have the chance to work in small groups to modify a sample task using the Science Assessment for Emergent Bilingual Learners (SAEBL) checklist in this interactive workshop. Presenters will also share how a teacher-researcher collaborative is working to make this a reality as well as opportunities and challenges they have encountered along the way.

The purpose of the session is twofold: (1) to offer guidance on how teachers can select and use local phenomena with diverse student groups and (2) to illustrate the implementation of local phenomena with diverse student groups in fifth-grade science classrooms in an urban school district. The session highlights how local phenomena compel students from diverse backgrounds to engage in three-dimensional learning and build their science understanding coherently over a sustained period of instruction. As a result, teachers who select and use local phenomena that are real and relevant to their diverse student groups advance the goal of “all standards, all students.”

Phenomena are at the heart of any high-quality assessment meant to align with three-dimensional science standards. But, not just any phenomena will do. In this session, the presenters will describe how they have used principled-assessment design (PAD) to support the selection and evaluation of phenomena for science tasks for use on classroom and large-scale assessments. Presenters will provide examples of PAD resources and processes, of phenomena and associated tasks, and of how phenomena can be adapted to ensure that students have the opportunity to demonstrate a range of sophistication within and across tasks.

As our world has become more scientifically complex and our problems more interconnected, teachers are working to build learning environments in which students can make sense of complex issues and have agency to innovate. It is critical for organizations that support teachers to foster space for teacher-leaders to innovate, support, and work through unanticipated challenges associated with diverse contexts. We take seriously the parallels between the journey of the teacher and the journey of the scientist — professional satisfaction is gleaned from working in teams to investigate problems of practice. In doing so, we generate new knowledge which contributes to the discipline. 

Learn how the PEER Physics curriculum-supported, teacher-facilitated professional community weaves together professional learning with research-based curricular resources. Led by teacher facilitators who have been successful in the classroom, this experience amplifies the use of responsively designed curricular resources aligned to the current standards. Participating PEER Physics teachers develop and hone skills for building supportive and inclusive learning environments that can be applicable in any discipline. They have opportunities to become teacher leaders within the community and work as facilitators in their own districts and regions. Teaching is never finished; like science, it is an intellectual journey. PEER Physics is a national organization in which teachers support teachers in the journey of cultivating expert learners, not just expert knowers.

In this session, participants will learn about the educational and political structures within a state both support and roadblock high-quality science learning. By providing a historical perspective and uncovering current challenges, this session will support leaders considering what available resources they might identify and then leverage to continue to support science learning. Participant questions will be utilized to provide current perspectives. Bring your questions and let's talk about statewide implementation!

The Observation Protocol for Teaching in Interactive Classrooms (OPTIC) is an observation tool developed by The POGIL Project. It’s main uses are for: 1) the coaching and mentoring of learner-centered practitioners who use collaborative small groups, 2) experienced practitioners to obtain feedback on their facilitating, 3) administrators to aid in the evaluation of teachers who participate in learner-centered collaborative teaching styles, and 4) the documentation of collaborative small-group learning in a learner-centered classroom.

This workshop will introduce participants to the OPTIC tool. By the end of this event, participants will be able to distinguish between different OPTIC codes including examining and interpreting the meanings of the OPTIC Facilitator Action codes and the Interaction codes. Participants will also consider how to use the tool to support teachers and their professional learning in a variety of settings.

This session will be an experiential workshop to support educators and leaders to integrate moments of mindfulness and compassion in daily life and work. Research has shown that mindful self-compassion builds resilience and counteracts burnout, which we know is so prevalent among educators. The capacity to treat ourselves with care is foundational to our ability to sustain hard work, stay grounded, and respond to difficulty with skill. Self-compassion is also a form of strength and fierceness that can serve as a resource in working to make schooling more just and caring for all.

The workshop will include a brief introduction to mindfulness and self-compassion as concepts. The majority of the session will include guided meditations, exercises to evoke compassion and self-compassion, and small group discussions to support you to bring these practices into daily life.

District leaders play a critical role in ensuring all students in their district have access to meaningful science experiences. The NextGenScience (formerly Achieve) team shares lessons learned from their work with school districts across the nation to identify and address barriers to equitable science programs. This session will engage participants in examining their definition of equitable science education and consider key strategies for school and district leaders to evaluate and re-design systems in ways that eliminate inequitable practices, engage stakeholders, and cultivate the identities and interests of all students.

Join an authentic and interactive conversation with the author, Rodger Bybee, in the context of leadership and his upcoming book, “Profiles of Leadership”. Consider the themes that Rodger has discovered from the 20 science leaders he visited. One of the book profiles, James Blake, will engage with Rodger as you observe and participate. Pause and appreciate all of the things you are already doing as a leader. Give a brief presentation on a contemporary issue in science leadership.