Connections in the Making: Elementary Students, Teachers, and STEM Professionals Integrating Science and Engineering to Design Community Solutions

该项目将推动学生和教师创新技术体验(ITEST)计划的努力，以更好地了解和促进提高学生在科学、技术、工程或数学(STEM)领域追求职业生涯的动机和能力的实践。这个项目将开发和研究社区连接的综合科学和工程课程单元，利用移动制造商空间和数字笔记本技术来支持不同小学生的科学和工程想法、实践和态度。学生们将开发原型并分享解决方案，以解决植根于当地社区的设计挑战，同时探索相关现象的科学解释。综合单元将通过来自两所当地大学的科学和工程教育研究人员、来自两个当地学区的教师和管理人员以及波士顿公共交通系统的STEM专业人员的合作来共同开发和颁布。这种合作将促进综合学习体验，不仅将支持学科的想法和实践，还将增加学生的职业兴趣，并认识到科学和工程可以应对自己社区中的挑战的变革性方式。以设计为基础的研究方法与嵌入式课程比较研究将促进对社区和学科联系支持小学生在科学和工程方面的不同能力、动机和毅力的机制的了解。将通过三个设计周期收集数据，涉及1,440名小学生和36名小学教师，以调查如何通过与社区相连的综合科学和工程单位提高教和学的能力。该项目的成果将为课程开发和实施提供一个模式，将教师、地区领导人和STEM专业人员定位为编制和颁布综合科学和工程课程的宝贵贡献者，这一模式将是独特的。它还将促进利用伙伴关系，扩大来自社会经济和文化不同的公立学区的学生和教师的参与。除了对项目参与者的影响外，这项研究的信息将通过职前教师教育课程、教师入职网络和在职专业发展来传播。项目成果，包括课程单元、课程开发框架和学生作业样本，将通过学区在线门户网站和大学托管的在线课程资源集合与教育工作者共享。将利用教师、地区领导人和STEM专业人员的专业网络来提高对这些资源的认识。

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). This project will develop and study community-connected, integrated science and engineering curriculum units that leverage mobile maker space and digital notebook technologies to support diverse elementary students' science and engineering ideas, practices, and attitudes. Students will develop prototypes and share solutions to a design challenge rooted in their local community while exploring scientific explanations of related phenomena. The integrated units will be co-developed and enacted through a collaboration of science and engineering education researchers from two local universities, teachers and administrators from two local school districts, and STEM professionals from Boston's public transportation system. This collaboration will promote integrated learning experiences and will not only support disciplinary ideas and practices but also increase students' career interests and recognition of the transformative ways in which science and engineering can address challenges in their own communities. A design-based research approach with an embedded curriculum comparison study will advance knowledge about mechanisms through which community and disciplinary connections support diverse elementary school student competence, motivation, and persistence in science and engineering. Data will be collected through three cycles of design involving 1,440 elementary students and 36 elementary teachers to investigate ways to improve the capacity to teach and learn through integrated science and engineering units in a community-connected way. Outcomes from this project will provide a model for curriculum development and implementation that will be unique in positioning teachers, district leaders, and STEM professionals as valued contributors in crafting and enacting integrated science and engineering curricula. It will also promote the utility of partnerships as vehicles for broadening participation of students and teachers from socioeconomically and culturally diverse public school districts. Beyond the impact on project participants, information from this study will be disseminated through pre-service teacher education courses, teacher induction networks, and in-service professional development. Project outputs, including curriculum units, curriculum development framework, and student work samples will be shared with educators both through school-district online portals and through university-hosted online collections of curriculum resources. The professional networks of the teachers, district leaders, and STEM professionals will be leveraged to raise awareness of these resources.