The ability to engage in informed decision-making about socioscientific issues (SSI) is an important aspect of scientific literacy. Although science knowledge and practice are necessary for developing solutions to SSI, additional skills are also needed to attend to the complex social, political, economic, and ethical concerns of such issues.…

This paper deals with an integration of STEM education and project-based learning (PBL) by introducing a hybrid hardware/software-based learning platform covering eight learning units. PBL not only bridges the gap between theory and practice, but also focuses on improving students' soft skills, which is important as they prepare for further…

This paper reports on a transdisciplinary approach to science with a Year 4/5 class incorporating citizen science through the Birds in Backyards project. This transdisciplinary approach created opportunities for student engagement through science, mathematics, design and technology, humanities and social sciences (HASS), arts and English, while…

Teachers value students' close reading of and text-based writing about diverse texts while eliciting their awareness of the world, privilege, and power. Carefully selected literature coupled with primary sources can bridge the classroom and society. To engage modern students in America's racialized past and present, this article guides teachers to…

When middle school teachers and leaders commit themselves to being responsive to the personal concerns of adolescents and the social concerns of their community, it results in opportunities to build capacity in students to be agents of change. This article captures the story of one school's process in designing and implementing a yearlong…

In the Fall of 2015 and in the 2016-2017 academic year, we conducted a two-week, team-taught, interdisciplinary module concurrently in an advanced biochemistry course, offered in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department, and a sophomore-level environmental-ethics course, offered in the Religion Department, at Oberlin College. The focus of the…

The connections the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") creates between science content and practices to literacy and mathematics are especially beneficial at the elementary level. In this article, the authors present a series of lessons a second-grade teacher taught within a thematic unit that integrated standards…

Severe flooding was prevalent within the authors' region at the beginning of the school year. Many homes and fields were affected by the amount of rain that fell within a short period of time over multiple days. Their students were concerned about the impact this natural phenomena was having on their local community. Natural phenomena can provide…

This article describes the design of a social studies unit about the Johnstown Flood of 1889 with a particular emphasis on how specific unit resources engaged middle school students in learning about the geographical and historical context of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. We also report on how the resources supported the teaching and learning of the…

Our paper describes a solution we found to a still existing need to develop mathematical modeling courses for undergraduate biology majors. Some challenges of such courses are: (i) relatively limited exposure of biology students to higher-level mathematical and computational concepts; (ii) availability of texts that can give a flavor of how…

This article describes an interdisciplinary unit in which students explore biological "ice nucleation"--by particles that cause water to freeze at temperatures above -38°C--through the lens of the microbial ice nucleator "Pseudomonas syringae." Such This activity, which aligns with the "Next Generation Science…

This manuscript explores the power of using inquiry in a second-grade classroom to make students' understanding of citizenship more complex. It describes an inquiry unit in which students studied primary sources, engaged with fiction and nonfiction children's literature, and participated in interdisciplinary learning to further understand the…

This report illustrates the context and development of the Intercultural Learning module, provided by the Modern Language Centre (MLC), King's College London. The Intercultural Learning Module is a one semester undergraduate course mostly attended by visiting study abroad students. The module aims to enhance students' intercultural awareness and…

The purpose of this article is to describe how an elementary art specialist scaffolded learning of specific academic vocabulary during a unit on how to create hollow clay ceramic sculptures. Although much has been written recently on how elementary teachers might better teach academic vocabulary in reading and language arts contexts as well as in…

We describe our team-taught, interdisciplinary course "Numb3rs in Lett3rs & Fi1ms: Mathematics in Literature and Cinema," which explores mathematics in the context of modern literature and cinema. Our goal with this course is to advance collaborations between mathematics and the written/theatre-based creative arts.