Making STEM concepts accessible and relevant to everyday life experiences of grades 6-12 students

Abstract:

The Understanding STEM Teaching Through Integrated Contexts in Everyday Life (USTRIVE) Project is a National Science Foundation’s Discovery Research PreK-12 (NSF DRK-12) grant designed to foster teacher implementation of SocioScientific Issues (SSI) and SocioTransformative Constructivism (sTc) in middle and high school STEM classrooms. USTRIVE facilitates the integration of social and cultural issues, while considering issues in social justice, into STEM classrooms in a large urban school district in the northeastern United States. For SSI and sTc ideas to be applied to the classroom, teachers must be well-versed in the SSI and sTc frameworks and how these frameworks intersect with their content. Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) connects the teacher’s content knowledge to the pedagogical knowledge of how content is implemented in the classroom. This study aims to address the following research question: To what extent do teachers implement components of SSI in their t? This study will analyze teacher unit plans to investigate what SSI and sTc aspects teachers are able to bring into the classroom after going through professional development to develop their PCK.