The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Building STEM Education Pipelines." Contents include: (1) IDRA Youth TechXperts…

Since the launch of Sputnik by the U.S.S.R. on October 4, 1957, the United States has aimed to bolster nationwide STEM education with the intention of creating a strong STEM pipeline. Despite many efforts, there remains a distinct lack of diversity in the STEM career fields, and many people cannot accurately describe what engineers do. These two…

This paper charts the recent history of the STEM Learning UK contracts with local Science Learning Partnerships (SLPs) and identifies what leadership has been made available to support the Early Years and Primary school sector. A case study approach is taken using 'Super SLP' hubs in England. Curriculum Hubs exist in core subject areas such as…

Two common goals of science teacher professional development (PD) are increased content knowledge (CK) and improved readiness to teach through inquiry. However, PD assessment challenges arise when the context is structured around inquiry-based, participant-driven learning, and when the content crosses scientific disciplines. This study extended…

Despite the increasing demand for non-formal science learning activities, few studies report on practitioners' perspectives and experiences with designing and implementing such activities worldwide. This paper focuses on their challenges by drawing upon twenty-two interviews with practitioners involved in diverse science learning activities in…

The Teacher Academy in the Natural Sciences (TANS) provided middle school (U.S. Grades 6-8) teachers (N = 81) with intensive professional development (PD) in chemistry, geosciences, and physics, with teachers enrolled in one scientific discipline per year. Because some teachers were retained and rotated into different disciplines, the TANS program…

Concern has been raised globally that a lack of interest by teachers towards teaching science has a negative impact on the children they teach. While attention has been paid to the teacher as a contributing factor to students' attitudes, less has been written about the attitudes of teachers. To bridge this gap, the current study examines six Year…

"Thinking Science" is a 2-year program of professional development for teachers and thinking lessons for students in junior high school science classes. This paper presents research on the effects of "Thinking Science" on students' levels of cognition in Australia. The research is timely, with a general capability focused on…

Informal science opportunities provide authentic experiences to stimulate students' interests in science and engineering and foster their curiosity through problem-based investigations. STEMulate Engineering Academy was designed to provide children (Grades 3-5) engineering opportunities and offer teachers a unique professional development…

This report is based on several evaluations of NSF-funded geoscience projects at Stony Brook University on Long Island, NY. The report reviews the status of K-12 geoscience education, identifying challenges posed by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the experiences of university faculty engaged in teacher preparation, state…