By some estimates, over 1.2 billion tons of soil was blown across the Great Plains during the height of the Dust Bowl. The so-called "black blizzards" these massive dust storms caused suffocated cattle, sickened children, and destroyed thousands of family farms. Formerly prosperous farmers, unsure why they had such bad luck, wondered if…

School pedagogies that expand opportunities for learners to build and use knowledge for meaningful purposes are resources for hope. Internationally, standards-based reforms in science education position schooling as a context for building and using disciplinary knowledge to explain phenomena and solve problems. There is also growing research…

This column presents ideas and techniques to enhance science teaching. In this month's issue an upper elementary Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) challenge brings an engineer into the classroom while emphasizing cooperation, communication, and creativity. STEM activities come in various shapes and sizes. Some are quite involved…

This column presents ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month's issue shares information about a unit promoting scientific literacy and the engineering design process. The integration of engineering with scientific practices in K-12 education can promote creativity, hands-on learning, and an improvement in students'…

Organic chemistry problems that interrelate and integrate synthesis with spectroscopy are presented. These synthesis-spectroscopy roadmap (SSR) problems uniquely engage second-year undergraduate organic chemistry students in the personal discovery of organic chemistry. SSR problems counter the memorize-or-bust strategy that many students tend to…

Young children need to develop creative problem-solving skills to ensure success in an uncertain future workplace. Although most teachers recognize the importance of creativity, they do not always know how integrate it with content learning. This repeated measures study on animal and plant lifecycles examined student learning of vocabulary and…

Have your students ever wondered what NASA scientists do? Have they asked you what their science and mathematics lessons have to do with the real world? This unit about Earth's atmosphere can help to answer both of those questions. The unit described here showcases "content specific integration" of science and mathematics in that the lessons meet…

The third annual conference of the National Academy for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (NAIRTL) was held at Trinity College Dublin on 11-12 November 2009, and was attended by over 300 delegates. The theme--"Research-Teaching Linkages: Practice and Policy"--was timely and generated some fascinating papers, workshops and…

Presents a hurricane evacuation project in which students use reading, math, and problem solving skills while engaging in a hands-on multitask problem. (YDS)

In this article we recount our experiences of teaching photosynthesis in an integrated way to secondary school students and teachers, science undergraduates and postgraduates. Conceptual questions were posed to investigate learners' fundamental understanding of simple light-dependent and light-independent processes taught to most students at…

Presents a problem-solving investigation on coal mining that integrates science and mathematics with geology. Engages students in a scenario in which they play the roles of geologists and mining engineers. (NB)

The concepts, processes, and methods found in science are used in other disciplines. Many science-class activities are predicated on students' reading and writing skills. Students read textbooks, read directions for conducting experiments, and write their own reports of observation. Integrating science with mathematics usually requires little…

Presents a course for natural resource conservation and management students that explicitly teaches integration of disciplinary knowledge using an internet-based approach to natural resource issues. (Author/CCM)

Describes an activity in which students construct relationships between their leg lengths, stride lengths, and movements in order to estimate the speeds of the dinosaurs that made various fossilized tracks. (WRM)

NASA CONNECT is an annual series of integrated mathematics, science, and technology instructional distance learning programs for students in grades 6-8. This program is designed for students to learn about the evolution of flight. The program has three components--television broadcast, Web activity, and lesson guide--which are designed as an…