"Talent" identification based on multiple criteria is a common way of considering students for gifted education services. As part of a nationwide talent identification program led by UNK (New Generation Centre, Hungary of Talents Program, 2016-2020), we developed an online rating tool with which teachers could indicate the talent areas…

"Citizen science" gives students a unique opportunity to engage with their own research, as well as data collected by other citizen scientists. Often, citizen science projects focus on students collecting and submitting data for scientists, which can sometimes limit opportunities to engage in the entire scientific process. This article…

Higher education institutions are in a great position to create authentic programming to support local underfunded or underperforming public school districts. This article gives an overview of an education outreach collaborative between a 4-year public university, local schools, and a community institution and highlights lessons learned from the…

The purpose of this article is to introduce a collaborative online international exchange unit for physical education called CULTURE (Cultural Unit of Learning To Understand, Respect, and Empathize). The cultural unit occurred in the Fall of 2019 between an elementary school in New Jersey, U.S., and two elementary schools near Tokyo, Japan.

Over the course of six years, a diverse group of school districts and charter management organizations in California ran a substantial experiment in implementing the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in elementary and middle grades. WestEd led an extensive evaluation of that effort, the California K-8 NGSS Early Implementers Initiative,…

Although students do need hands-on experiences to master key skills in science, technology, and engineering, Cummins asserts, K-12 teachers should also help students understand key STEM concepts by reading, writing, and talking about the work of professional scientists and engineers. Cummins lists high-quality texts that help young people…

The European Primary Teacher Education programme (EPTE), a joint project from seven European Higher Education institutions, offers future primary school teachers the opportunity to participate in an international study programme, which includes the development of skills through different courses. The main aim of the project is to depart from the…

Sound propagation is not easy for children to understand because of its abstract nature, often best represented by models such as wave drawings and particle dots. Teachers Rebecca Hendrix and Charles Eick wondered how science inquiry, when combined with an unlikely discipline like drama, could produce a better understanding among their…

Over the last twenty-five years, the Minnesota Historical Society, the University of Minnesota Libraries, and Minitex have developed a partnership centered on creating pathways to higher education by engaging local middle school and high school students in immersive programs at academic libraries. These activities vary in scope and content, but…

In this article, the authors provide an overview of engineering and the engineering design process, and describe the steps they took to develop a fifth grade-level, standards-based engineering design task titled "Getting the Dirt on Decomposition." Their main goal was to focus more on modeling the discrete steps they took to create and…

Responsive teaching occurs when teachers take up and "respond" to their students' ideas during instruction (J. L. Pierson, 2008). Although responsive teaching is gaining recognition as an effective strategy for encouraging student learning, few methods of analysis are capable of characterizing the different ways in which teachers take up…

The People Learning Urban Science (PLUS) program creates partnerships and coordinates efforts involving a local zoo, university, and school district, seeking to instill within students a sense of the natural environment. Even though the majority of students live among concrete and metal structures, their eyes and ears can be trained to make…

Oranges, flying disks, pool noodles, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe may seem like items discarded after a Rube Goldberg experiment, but in fact, these objects were used in teaching science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). This article describes a project in which The Center of Ocean Sciences Education Excellence SouthEast (COSEE SE)…

Developing and implementing curriculum that is relevant, challenging, integrative, and exploratory is central to successful middle grades education (Erb, 2005; Jackson & Davis, 2000; National Middle School Association [NMSA], 2003, 2010). However, as one language arts teacher suggests, it can be difficult to create curricula that meet these…

This article features the Center for Inquiry, a school where the teachers are making their dreams come true. As a school designed wholly by teachers, the Center for Inquiry (CFI) in Indianapolis, Indiana, is teaching kids how to take ownership of learning. Originally designed to be a school within a school for exchange and preservice teachers, the…