In 2012, engineering was adopted as a content area in K-12 science education. Yet few science teachers have engineering content or pedagogical content knowledge. Teachers learn how to teach engineering through professional development experiences, for which Darling-Hammond et al. (2017) outline seven characteristics of effectiveness. This…

Science education is not just about learning facts in a classroom--it's about doing activities where students put their understanding of science principles into action. That's why two unique types of activity-based tasks were administered as part of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment. In addition to the…

Background: Most policy doctrines promote the use of scientific inquiry in the K-12 classroom, but good inquiry is hard to implement, particularly for schools with fiscal and safety constraints and for teachers struggling with understanding how to do so. Purpose: In this paper, we present the design of a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE)…

The Technology Enhanced Elementary and Middle School Science II project (TEEMSS), funded by the National Science Foundation, produced 15 inquiry-based instructional science units for teaching in grades 3-8. Each unit uses computers and probeware to support students' investigations of real-world phenomena using probes (e.g., for temperature or…