Climate Education Pathways (CLIM8)

The Making Computing Visible & Tangible (MCVT) project is exploring how a paper-based, physical computing kit can empower youths’ and educators’ learning and engagement with key computing concepts and practices.

Project Inspiration

Traditional approaches to teaching and learning about computer science continue to present barriers for participation, especially for youth and students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. 

At BSCS Science Learning, we aim to design opportunities that break down these barriers. 

To do so, we build on findings from physical computing materials to engage learners in making and programming personally relevant, hands-on projects. These types of constructive making activities expand the breadth and reach of computing by using familiar materials and appealing to new communities who share their interests, resources, practices, and knowledge with each other in social interactions. 

We believe that young people need to be able to see and more deeply interrogate multiple systems–social, material, and computational–upon which powerful computational tools rely. This could enable learners to gain a greater sense of possibility, a sense that they can modify the tools and cultures of computing to better fit their own purposes, values, and identities. 

To accomplish this, we purposefully make visible and modifiable selected components of normally opaque, or “black boxed”, computational technologies so that all learners can investigate, understand, and appreciate their parts, purposes, and complexities. 

Figure: Early prototype of the MCVT cards
Photo Credit: HyunJoo Oh

About the Project

In this project, “making computing visible and tangible” refers to a design stance that values the beauty and transparency of seeing the inner workings of technical and computational systems, including electrical and mechanical systems. Designed in partnership with the CoDE Craft Group at Georgia Tech, the paper-based, physical computing kits scaffold youths and educators through using everyday materials to flexibly build onto different cards that involve key computational practices, such as inputs and outputs, logic statements, and sensing and actuating. 

The kits “unblackbox” normally opaque computational processes, while enabling 

• easy access and exploration through tinkering (in contrast to learning code syntax or programming languages) and
• interchangeability for educators and youths to use materials they have on hand to build onto the original kit design. 

A key design feature of the MCVT kits is to enable space for personal stories and expertise through project design prompts that invite self-expression, such as “What lights you up?” and “Choose a place, a word, and/or an object that has meaning and importance to you.”

Figure: Projects created using MCVT cards by youth and educators
Photo Credit: Sherry Hsi & Sarah Jenkins

Over the past 2.5 years, the MCVT project has involved iterative co-design cycles of enactment by educators and youths from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, positioning them as experts to provide feedback that then informed the redesign of the kit components. In collaborative design, participants, including young people, can gain direct experience in design practices, design critiques to shape technology futures, and experience connecting to the tools, materials, and representations of computing systems under development.

Along the way, we are documenting how interacting with the MCVT tools and culturally relevant design activities influences educators’ and youths’ 

• learning about computing concepts and practices,
• identification with and relationship to computer science as a discipline, and
• views on how to leverage those computational practices for their own pursuits and possible futures. 

This research project has resulted in the MCVT kit of materials and parts to support inclusive computing education. The kit is now available, fully open-access.

What’s Next

By 2024, the site will feature accompanying lesson plans designed by participating teachers. We are committed to share these important, co-designed materials and resources at a broader scale and to contribute to new design knowledge about inclusive and responsive designs for computing education.

Making Waves with Radio is a suite of museum activities, apps, and camp curricula for engaging educators, youth, and public audiences about radio technologies.

Project Inspiration

Energy waves operating at radio frequencies surround us at all times. Engineers design devices and systems to harness this energy and provide wireless communications that allow us to send data and messages across the world at the speed of light. That’s why we can use cell phones, make contactless payments, monitor weather conditions, and control air traffic. 

Radio technologies are undergoing rapid technological changes and are highly relevant to our advancing, 21st-century society. Still, many people are unfamiliar with how radio carries our information and how we can participate in its development, governance, and use. 

At BSCS Science Learning, we are working with informal educators to change that. 

Informal educators working in museums, out-of-school programs, and other informal settings across the nation are uniquely positioned to engage and educate public and youth audiences about complex topics. And with the right tools and resources, these educators can make a significant impact.

About the Project

The Making Waves with Radio project aims to promote awareness and understanding of radio frequency technologies and wireless technologies across informal learning environments. 

BSCS is partnering with STEM professionals across academic and informal education to create a suite of resources, including digital apps, craft-based activities, and mobile and online professional learning. These resources will be inclusive, accessible, and adaptable to engage youth and the public about radio frequency communications.  

BSCS is co-designing each of these resources with our partners: Georgia Tech, the Children’s Creativity Museum, Museum of Life and Science, Sciencenter, Teknikio, Global Alliance of Community Science Workshops, and NISE Network museum partners.

The project features a rigorous and multipronged research and development approach that builds on prior studies about Learning sciences to advance a learning-design framework for nimble, mobile, informal education while incorporating the best aspects of hands-on learning. We are testing two related hypotheses: 

1. A mobile strategy can be effective for supporting just-in-time, informal education of a highly technical, scientific topic. 
2. A mobile suite of resources, including professional learning, can be used to raise greater awareness and teach informal educators, youth, and the general public about radio frequency communications. 

Materials from this project are informed by a front-end evaluation study of educators and public audiences; formative testing and co-design sessions at partner and community sites; and a summative evaluation to be conducted at museums, science festivals, summer camps, and community science workshops. Data sources include pre- and post-surveys, interviews, and focus groups with a wide array of educators and learners. 

All materials and reports will be released under an open-source license and will be free to use.

Related Resources

Making Waves: Teaching Radio to Youth and the Public (https://bscs.org/news/making-waves-teaching-radio-to-youth-and-the-public/)

Keeping Voices in the Room: Values Clarification in Codesign for Equitable Science and Technology Education (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cura.12529)

BSCS Science Learning has developed a nationally-recognized program for teacher learning called STeLLA^®, Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis. K-12 science teachers who want to implement research-based curriculum, improve their teaching, or navigate next generation science all have something to gain from this proven program. And so do their students. STeLLA is based on a 17-year line of research and development at BSCS. It has demonstrated impacts on both teacher and student learning above and beyond any impacts from a traditional science teacher professional learning program.

STeLLA’s impact is significant across contexts. It works in preservice and inservice settings for elementary, middle, and high school teachers.

So what’s next? We’re translating research into practice by creating broadly accessible versions of the program.

STeLLA is now available online and will soon be available in hybrid format. We’re currently working to expand STeLLA to different grade levels and science disciplines.

How STeLLA Works

STeLLA helps teachers motivate students to learn science. Specifically, it supports teachers in learning to use effective teaching strategies through a powerful video-based lesson analysis approach. Strategies include engaging student thinking and organizing instruction in a way that connects science ideas. Teachers learn to use these strategies by analyzing classroom videos, and sharing their thinking in facilitated sessions with other teachers. The STeLLA program takes place in-person, online, or in a hybrid format over the course of one school year (typically 90 hours), during which teachers apply what they’re learning in their own classrooms.

A Program Based on Research

Over the last 17 years, STeLLA has demonstrated impacts on both teacher and student learning above and beyond any impacts from a traditional science teacher professional learning program.

See our growing line of research at-a-glance: Development of STeLLA 

Hire Us

High quality science education is more important than ever. Teachers must prepare students to succeed in a 21st century society, where scientific reasoning and critical thinking skills are essential. To prepare teachers to achieve this goal, BSCS is working to bring the STeLLA approach to teachers nationwide through partnerships with schools, districts, teacher educators, and funders. Learn more.

Place-Based Learning for Elementary Science at Scale (PeBLES2) supports educators in making science learning experiences meaningful for their students—by connecting to local phenomena, communities, and cultures.

Project Inspiration

What do today’s science learners find interesting and relevant?  

This is a question we consistently wrestle with at BSCS Science Learning—particularly when we are developing instructional materials programs for broad audiences nationwide. Our goal is to create materials that engage, inspire, and prepare all learners to use science effectively throughout their lives. And to do that, we must anchor the materials in compelling, real-world phenomena. 

But what is compelling—for all learners? Realistically, there is not one phenomenon that will resonate with everyone in exactly the same way. Our world is made up of individuals with different backgrounds, cultures, and everyday lived experiences that shape their perspectives and interests. Still, we feel strongly about reaching all learners, especially those from underserved communities.

At BSCS, we want to support educators in tailoring science learning experiences for their specific contexts—so that all kids get to learn science through the lens of what really matters to them. We’ve partnered with the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance (MMSA) to do just that.

About the Project

In the PeBLES2 project, we are working with MMSA to support equitable access to place-based science learning opportunities. This entails collaborating with upper elementary educators to make science learning meaningful for students—by connecting to local phenomena, communities, and cultures. 

BSCS is leading the development of phenomena-driven units for grades 3–5. These units are designed for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and are grounded in phenomena that can be adapted for various local contexts. MMSA is guiding teachers in incorporating locally or culturally relevant phenomena into these units through a two-year enactment study. 

We’re currently exploring how teachers adapt units over multiple years as well as the impact of this intervention on teacher self-efficacy and agency in science teaching and students’ perceptions of relevance. 

What’s Next

A tested and revised 4th grade Earth Science unit and accompanying professional learning materials will be freely available by December 2024. This unit focuses on weathering erosion and deposition.

The Issue

Racism is a serious problem in the United States. Research has shown that the biology curriculum can affect how students think about race. It can lead students to believe more strongly in three misconceptions:

1. People of the same racial group are genetically uniform.
2. People of disparate races are categorically different.
3. Biologically-influenced abilities cannot change.

Individuals often justify racism with these misconceptions by arguing that it is pointless to try and reduce social inequality, because race biologically determines ability.

Our Focus

How can such beliefs be (un)learned through biology education?

What We’ve Learned

Teaching about human difference is not socially neutral.

Insights from our research have begun to illustrate how biology education affects the development of racism, for better or worse. We’ve learned:

• When biology education causes youth to perceive too much genetic variation between racial groups, it can increase prejudice.
• Conversely, the way we teach biology can reduce racial prejudice by helping students understand that there is more genetic variation within racial groups than there is between them.

In sum, the humane genetics research project is beginning to suggest that genetics education can create humane or inhumane outcomes depending on how it addresses human difference. If this hypothesis is correct, then learning about the social and quantitative complexities of human genetic variation research could prepare students to become informed participants in a society where human genetics is invoked as a rationale in sociopolitical debates concerning racial inequality.

At present, genetics education does very little to address how information about human genetic difference is distorted by racialist ideologues (The New York Times). Instead, our scholarship suggests that genetics curricula could actually contribute to harmful racial ideologies (The Atlantic). The kind of genetics education that we envision would promote human welfare by exposing the scientific flaws in biological justifications of racism and sexism. Our research and development explores how to bring that kind of education into existence.

What are the important ideas to teach students?

To learn about the content of a humane genetics education click here.

It is difficult to predict the potential impact of implementing a more humane genetics education in all school settings because we have not yet studied our intervention using a nationally representative sample of schools. Nevertheless, we can make some predictions about the clinical significance of implementing a more humane genetics education using statistics from our recent field experiments in 8th-12th grade biology classrooms, such as the one below:

Donovan, B. M., Semmens, R., Keck, P., Brimhall, E., Busch, K. C., Weindling, M., Salazar, B. (2019). Towards a More Humane Genetics Education: Learning about the social and quantitative complexities of human genetic variation research could reduce racial bias in adolescent and adult populations. Science Education, 1–32. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1002/sce.21506 

For example, using data from this most recent publication we can calculate the number needed to treat, which tells us how many people need to receive an intervention in order to prevent one additional case of a disease. The disease we are trying to prevent through our research is racism. Studies have found that racism is a public health problem because it is significantly associated with mortality in African Americans (e.g. read this study). The racially biased beliefs we have attempted to prevent through our intervention research are the following:

1. the belief that there is more genetic variation between races than there is within them.
2. the belief that racial groups differ cognitively and behaviorally simply because of genetic differences between races.

Changing these beliefs through genetics education is important because previous studies have found that people use these beliefs to justify racially prejudiced policies.

To calculate the number needed to treat one merely takes the inverse of the absolute risk reduction (or 1/ARR). We found that our humane genetics intervention reduced the risk that students developed a racially biased perception of genetic variation by 16.2%, and this risk reduction was statistically significant (p < 0.05). Likewise, we found that our humane genetics intervention resulted in a 6.6%, statistically-significant, reduction in the risk of students believing that racial groups differ cognitively and behaviorally simply because of their genes.

Our results therefore suggest that for every six students who learn from our intervention, we can prevent one additional student from developing the misperception that there is more genetic variation between races than there is within them. Furthermore, for every 15 students who learn from our intervention, our results suggest that we can prevent one additional student from agreeing that racial groups differ cognitively and behaviorally because of genetic differences between races. Altogether, if a biology classroom has 30 students, then our results suggest that implementing a more humane genetics education could prevent five students from developing the misperception that there is more genetic variation between races than within them and two of these students may also be prevented from believing that racial groups differ cognitively and behaviorally because of genes.

For a deeper dive into our line of research, review our research statement  and published papers below. Click here to watch a video of the presentation, Towards a More Humane Genetics Education, or here to watch a video of the presentation, Genomics Literacy Matters.

Watch the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2019 briefing, Better Biology Instruction for a More Equitable Society, here (the presentations begin at 9 minutes and 18 seconds).

What We’re Currently Exploring

1. Genetics education could affect the development of racial bias among adolescents. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 1660985.
2. Genetics education could affect the development of gender bias among adolescents. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 1956152.
3. Genetics education could affect the development of undergraduates’ motivation to pursue STEM. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 1914843.

Published –

1. Donovan, B. M., Semmens, R., Keck, P., Brimhall, E., Busch, K. C., Weindling, M., Duncan, A., Stuhlsatz, M., Buck Bracey, Z., Bloom, M., Kowalski, S., Salazar, B. (2019) Towards a More Humane Genetics Education: Learning about the social and quantitative complexities of human genetic variation research could reduce racial bias in adolescent and adult populations . Science Education.
2. Donovan, B.M., Stuhlsatz, M., Edelson, D.C., Buck Bracey, Z.B. (2019) Gendered Genetics: How reading about the genetic basis of sex differences in biology textbooks could affect beliefs associated with science gender disparities . Science Education.
3. Donovan, B.M. (2018). Looking backwards to move biology education toward its humanitarian potential: A review of Darwinism, Democracy, and Race . Science Education.
4. Donovan, B. M. (2017) Learned inequality: Racial labels in the biology curriculum can affect the development of racial prejudice . Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 54(3), 379-411.
5. Donovan, B. M. (2016). Framing the genetics curriculum to support social justice: An experimental exploration of how the biology curriculum influences students’ beliefs about the racial achievement gap . Science Education. 100(3), 586-616.
6. Donovan, B. M. (2015a). Putting humanity back into the teaching of human biology . Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 52, 65-75.
7. Donovan, B. M. (2015b). Reclaiming race as a topic of the United States biology curriculum . Science Education. 99(6) 1092-1117.
8. Donovan, B. M. (2014). Playing with fire? The impact of the hidden curriculum in school genetics on essentialist conceptions of race . Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51(4), 462–496.
9. Donovan, B. M., Moreno Mateos, D., Osborne, J. F., & Bisaccio, D. J. (2014). Revising the Economic Imperative for US STEM Education . PLoS Biology, 12(1), e1001760.

Media Mentions –

The New York Times

The New York Times Learning Network

Education Week

The Atlantic

Learning & the Brain

Independent

The ABC 

The ABC Media 

The Brown Daily Herald

Boston Globe

OpenSciEd

The OpenSciEd initiative was launched by a consortium of funders led by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to address a critical need in science education: the need for high quality instructional materials that are standards-aligned and practical for broad implementation. In its first phase, OpenSciEd produced a comprehensive, three-year middle school science program.

OpenSciEd Developers Consortium

OpenSciEd instructional materials and accompanying resources for teacher professional development were created and field tested by a consortium of five nationally-recognized educational research and development organizations with the support of a broad network of leaders in science education.

The Consortium included BSCS Science Learning, Boston College, the Dana Center at The University of Texas-Austin, Digital Promise Global, and Northwestern University. These organizations and a network of expert individuals collaborated on all areas of work, under the direction of a steering committee made of educational leaders from ten OpenSciEd partner states.

BSCS was responsible for the leadership and coordination of the Consortium, whose work was organized across specialized centers.

Work of Consortium

The Consortium’s goal was to create high quality instructional materials that are designed for next generation science and practical for teachers to implement in a diverse range of classroom contexts nationwide.

As a first step toward this goal, The Consortium created program design specifications and a three-year scope and sequence. These foundational documents helped guide the Consortium in developing the full middle school science program—which includes student materials, teacher guides, and resources for teacher professional development including classroom videos. The resulting program implements the entire set of NGSS for grades 6-8 and meets the review criteria for Achieve’s EQuIP rubric.

This was a highly collaborative project, and the Consortium was committed to working closely with classroom teachers, specialists, and education leaders in the design and implementation of all materials. Each unit underwent an 18-month development process that included professional learning, robust field tests, revisions, and external reviews.

Professional Learning

The Consortium has designed professional learning around goals to promote the shifts in science standards. Teachers learn how to support productive science discussions and coherence in student learning, for example, as they navigate effective OpenSciEd unit instruction. After internally designing and delivering professional learning institutes for the first sets of units, the Consortium prepared science education leaders across the ten partner states to facilitate institutes moving forward.

Robust Field Tests

The Consortium field tested all units, measuring success through both student and teacher surveys. For example, do students feel they are able to contribute their own ideas? Are teachers able to use their students’ questions to drive learning? This survey data, which was largely positive across the ten partner states, informed unit revisions and the focus of future professional learning institutes. Hundreds of teachers and thousands of students across all ten partner states participated in the field testing process.

Revisions and External Reviews

The Consortium revised all units based on data from the field test and external reviews, including an EQuIP review by Achieve.

The first three units were released in August 2019, with three additional units released every six months thereafter. The complete middle school program was completed and released in 2022. As of February 2023, the program has earned “All-green” ratings from EdReports.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) identifies three equally important dimensions to learning science: science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. This focus on 3D learning has created a critical need for assessments that can measure students’ ability to use these three dimensions together to make sense of real-world phenomena.

BSCS Science Learning is currently continuing a line of research started at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)* to directly address this need. In our ASPECt-3D project, we will develop and validate scenario-based assessment tasks to measure students’ ability to use the three dimensions to make sense of energy-related phenomena. The assessment tasks will consist of multiple-choice and constructed-response items aligned to elementary, middle, and high school NGSS standards. Our assessment study will include a diverse range of teachers and students in grades 4-12 from urban, rural, and suburban locations across the United States.

As a result of this project, we will produce sets of NGSS-aligned assessments for measuring students’ 3D understanding of energy. We will also develop supporting materials for teachers, including the unpacking of the performance expectations, summaries of student misconceptions and difficulties, scoring rubrics, psychometric properties of the assessments, and guidelines for the use of the assessments and interpretation of results. Additionally, we will use our findings to create a professional learning workshop to help support assessment developers and classroom teachers in creating their own three-dimensional assessments. All products will be made available online for elementary, middle, and high school grade levels.

*ASPECt-3D builds on a previously funded IES project (R305A120138) focused mainly on assessing students’ understanding of science content. The researchers developed three vertically equated, multiple-choice instruments to assess students’ progress on the energy concept.

Current research suggests that scientific models can help teachers transform their science instruction and enhance student learning. This premise grounds the Model-Based Educational Resource (MBER)—developed by Dr. Cindy Passmore and colleagues at UC Davis—which engages high school biology students in constructing models to make sense of science. Now researchers are wondering: How effectively can this approach to biology education support next generation science learning?

BSCS Science Learning has been awarded a grant to study the impact of the MBER program through a cluster-randomized trial (CRT) and expand the promise of efficacy and feasibility established in previous work. Throughout this project, we will revise the MBER program, develop associated assessment, and conduct an experimental study with 32 teachers in diverse California schools.

Our General Research Questions

• What is the impact of MBER on high school students’ science achievement?
• What factors influence that impact?

This study will also address a significant gap in the research on next generation curriculum materials. As we seek to advance the field’s knowledge about the impact of innovative materials on student learning, we will examine the following exploratory research questions:

• How does using MBER develop teachers’ vision of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)?
• How is student learning mediated by the fidelity of implementation of the materials?
• How do teachers interact with materials designed to be modified for their classroom context?
• To what extent do MBER materials provide equitable opportunities to learn and close achievement gaps?

In addition to generating important research findings, the materials revised and studied in this project will be open source and freely available to teachers and schools, thereby maximizing the broader impacts of this work.

Health-related information from family, friends, social media, and the internet bombard our lives every day. We make decisions as consumers about questions such as these:

• Why is caffeine powder dangerous when people consume caffeinated drinks every day?
• Why do people get a flu shot every year? Isn’t once enough?
• Who should take multivitamins daily?
• Why are some treatments used in other parts of the world not available in the United States?

Answers about health topics can be complicated. Understanding the science behind these questions requires the ability to ask questions and find and evaluate information from different sources.

BSCS Science Learning’s Developing Skills in Health Literacy project aimed to help middle and high school students develop critical thinking skills in topics about health that enabled them to accurately evaluate the information they got from various sources. This five-year project (2015-2020) worked with teachers from across the country to develop and study innovative instructional materials designed to enhance students’ skills and abilities in understanding human health.

In 2022, online curriculum modules for middle school and high school students were released and are freely available.