One of the most challenging tasks for teachers in projects is to develop creative ideas. Due to the linear system perspective of education, fostering students' creativity is restricted. However, engineering design and scientific process skills that comprise creativity have an iterative structure. An iterative process-oriented education enables…

This report describes how effective environmental literacy can be for catalyzing Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) teaching, and how the California K-8 NGSS Early Implementers Initiative has provided professional learning about environmental literacy to prompt and support this synergy. The report also outlines how the California Science…

The California Next Generation Science Standards (CA NGSS) Toolkit for Instructional Materials Evaluation (TIME) is a suite of tools and processes for evaluating and selecting instructional materials aligned with the CA NGSS. This 11th report in the NGSS Early Implementers Initiative evaluation series is intended for school and district…

This report presents results from a survey of over 2,000 K-12 science teachers regarding their instruction related to COVID-19. Teachers were surveyed in the spring of 2020 shortly after school buildings closed. In addition, 40 teachers were interviewed. Results are reported separately for elementary, middle, and high school teachers. [This report…

Evidence shows that biomedical knowledge is more effectively taught within the medical curriculum by teaching in context, to facilitate learning transfer. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effect of combining high-technology simulation and physiology teaching on medical student learning and experience. First-year medical…

NGSS Early Implementers is a six-year initiative created to help eight California school districts and two charter management organizations, supported by WestEd's K-12 Alliance, implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Administrators need learning opportunities if they are to adequately understand the substantial shifts of the Next…

Promoting collaboration and discourse in asynchronous online courses is challenging; students need something engaging to talk about, a communications medium in which to fluidly discuss it, and a social environment that supports discourse. We designed a fully online introductory geoscience lecture and lab course called Geology Goes Hollywood that…

As global average temperatures rise, there has been an increase in the frequency and magnitude of meteorological natural hazards. To survive in the world and thrive in the work place, students need to utilize educational skills (such as creative thinking, non-routine problem solving, collaboration and systems thinking) and become independent…

Experiences and reflection have long been regarded as a foundation for pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) development. However, little is known about how experienced teachers develop their PCK via reflection-in-action during their moment-to-moment classroom instruction. Drawing upon data sources including classroom observations, semi-structured…

The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) has prepared this report on the Newark Public Schools (NPS) for the Merck Institute for Science Education (MISE) to assist them with the development of a strategic plan for improving science education in the district. The data used in the report have been gathered and analyzed through the…

This article describes a challenge given to students completing a senior high school biology course. The scenario described encourages students to apply their knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of scientific and commercial principles. It permits them the opportunity to develop skills in research, collaboration, cooperation, delegation, and…

This study attempts to determine whether there exists a negative interconnection between the creative and testable nature-of-science (NOS) conceptions in college students' conceptual ecology by investigating, through a pair of IHV-assisted teaching experiments, the effect of raising the status of each NOS conception in students' conceptual ecology…

With support from National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Goddard Space Flight Center, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) has developed educational materials that incorporate information and data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a joint satellite mission between the United States and Japan.…