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…

This research is a needs analysis study aimed at developing a curriculum based on an interdisciplinary context-based learning approach within the 10th-grade physics course, focusing on the electricity and magnetism unit. The research was designed according to the case study model and data were collected from expert, teacher, and student sample…

In this study, to examine the change in individuals' critical thinking skills, a new unit was developed in which STEM was integrated. The outcomes of this 7th-grade unit were selected from related disciplines. During the learning process of the developed Force and Energy unit, it was aimed that individuals could make judgments by gaining critical…

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…

This paper explores Computational Thinking (CT) through the experiences and interactions of sixth-grade students as they were engaging in a science lesson utilizing robotics. This robotics unit institutes the shifting from traditional to engaging hands-on activities coupled with CT skills that are exciting, intriguing, and inviting to students.…

To promote rich discourse around scientific and engineering practices, teachers may turn to engineering design-based science curricula; however, this has discursive demands which have yet to be examined in a unit focused on integration of engineering and science. To investigate these discursive demands, we expand on the definition of discourse to…

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…

Creating learning environments that integrate arts, sciences, and computing in education can improve learning in these disciplines. In particular, transdisciplinary integrations of these disciplines can lead to expansive alterations or dissolutions of epistemological, ideological, and methodological boundaries. We wish to support teachers in the…

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 research study explored robotics as the catalyst for computational thinking (CT) by sixth-grade students as they are engaged in a science lesson. The interactions, understandings, and applications are discussed, along with the participants' connections and implementations of CT concepts (decomposition, abstraction, pattern recognition, and…

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of multilingual and multicultural students in U.S. schools. Because of high-stakes testing and English-only mandates, instructional practices and curricula in most urban school districts neglect the cultural and linguistic interests of their diverse student populations. In this interpretive study,…

In this article, we present the results of a cluster-randomized trial of an inquiry-based science curriculum conducted in grades 6-8 with 551 students in 13 schools. The intervention integrates science and civics instruction in a unit about community and family water conservation. The intervention also includes teacher professional development and…

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 study used the framework of technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) to examine how elementary education preservice teachers integrated technology in science units that they designed after completing courses on science education and technology integration. The findings indicate that technologies included at the end of lessons…