“Research” can refer to a wide range of activities. It can describe when students in science classes investigate a topic, gather evidence, and analyze data to develop their own ideas and present them to others. Or it might refer to investigations conducted by scientists. The NSTA Research Division focuses on another kind of research: the systematic study of how people learn science, including investigations into teaching methods, curriculum design, student understanding of scientific concepts, and factors that influence science learning—with the goal of improving science education practices and student outcomes across various levels of learning. The NSTA Research Committee is here to help keep you updated on the latest research in science education. Watch for our quarterly blog posts, or subscribe to NSTA’s Research listserv.

The following studies, published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching (2024) have been recognized as Research Worth Reading by NSTA Affiliate NARST (the National Association for Research in Science Teaching), a global organization dedicated to improving science teaching and learning through research. In addition to the summaries given below, the entire articles are available through Open Access via the links provided.

Home Experiments With Families Can Make Science Relevant

Students often view school science as abstract and disconnected from their daily lives. But new research shows that inviting families into the learning process through simple home experiments can help students experience science as more meaningful—and more their own.

That’s the key finding from a study by researchers at Tel Aviv University, who developed a program called Together with Science. The program used video blogs (Vlogs) to guide middle school students and their families through simple home-based experiments, like turning cream into butter or making “colorful rain.” These activities were designed to spark discussions about the science behind familiar everyday phenomena, helping students connect science to their lived experiences.

The researchers analyzed dozens of audio and video recordings from 72 students and their families. They found that these shared activities led to rich conversations about food, traditions, and culture, what the researchers call funds of knowledge. Many discussions initially were one-sided (with either parents or students doing most of the talking), but over time, they became more balanced, as both students and family members were able to relate everyday experiences to scientific ideas.

The results suggest that family members can help students understand the relevance of science in their lives and foster deeper engagement with science learning.

How can this study support science teaching?

• Home life is a resource, not a barrier. Students’ family routines, traditions, and experiences can be powerful tools for making science meaningful. Celebrate this diversity, and let students’ stories fuel science learning.
• Family engagement doesn’t require complexity. Short, guided experiments with open-ended prompts can create space for discussions.
• Simple shifts can make a big difference. Positioning families as co-learners helps students view science as something they do, not just something they’re taught, boosting their engagement in science learning.

By recognizing the value of everyday experiences and family engagement, teachers can help students believe that science isn’t confined to the classroom, but is all around them.

“We Need to Step It Up—We Are Basically the Future”: Latinx Young Women Co-Construct Science Storylines in High School Chemistry

A classroom is a complex space where one teacher works with 20–30 students from a wide range of backgrounds. It can be challenging to support students in authentically contributing to class discussions and interactions, especially in science classes in which teachers are asked to follow a preset “science storyline” to structure students’ activities.

This article by Jasmine Nation and Hosun Kang shows how co-constructed science storylines can create space for rich scientific thinking. “Co-constructed science storyline” refers to a storyline emerging from the classroom interactions driven by students’ identities, developing ideas, and concerns. The researchers ask, “How can students, especially those from historically marginalized communities, change the storyline originally developed by the teacher and become co-authors of the science they learn in school?”

Through in-depth analysis of three 10th-grade Latinx female students’ experiences in a chemistry classroom, research reveals how meaningful learning emerges when students bring personal experiences and community concerns into the classroom. The findings highlight three instructional practices.

1. Connect to students’ personal concerns. The unit focused on local wildfires, an issue that directly impacted students' lives. This helped students see chemistry as relevant to their communities.
    
2. Support thinking across learning spaces. Students had opportunities to think and talk in individual, small-group, and whole-class contexts, which allowed them to contribute meaningfully and assume scientific identities for different audiences.
    
3. Recognize students as knowledge-makers. The teacher validated students’ questions and reasoning, recognizing students’ ideas as scientific and relevant both in the moment and over time. This made students’ contributions visible and positioned students as legitimate contributors to scientific inquiry.

For educators, this research offers actionable insights.

• Design science units around relevant phenomena with meaningful essential questions so students are motivated to engage and contribute. Start with a teacher-created activity sequence in which the science story is a blueprint for higher-level goals. Focus on bigger-picture instructional goals to cover the preset curriculum, yet be responsive to students—balancing the “what” and “why” of practice.
• View the preset storyline and curriculum as a tool—not a script—to adapt based on student input and lived experience.
• Encourage epistemic agency by recognizing students’ ideas as scientific and relevant to the science storyline, and creating participation structures that value diverse voices and ways of knowing.

Through co-constructing storylines, teachers can support equity and authentic scientific identity construction—especially for Latinx youth and other groups underrepresented in STEM.

Exploring Science Teachers’ Efforts to Frame Phenomena in the Community

How can science teachers help students understand that science does not just consist of labs and textbooks; it can be used to investigate and solve real-world issues in their own communities?

This study by Heather Clark, Symone Gyles, Darlene Tieu, Shriya Venkatesh, and William Sandoval introduces the teaching strategy of community-oriented framing— an instructional practice that helps educators anchor science lessons in local phenomena, allowing students to grasp how science intersects with community concerns, personal experiences, and social justice.

Researchers worked with two teachers at a Title 1 school to implement NGSS-aligned science units using this approach. In one seventh-grade unit on food justice, students examined nutrition, cultural recipes, and barriers to accessing healthy food. In a 10th- grade chemistry unit, students explored environmental justice by modeling the local carbon cycle and analyzing land use and access to green spaces.

Teachers used two key community-oriented framing practices.

• Localizing phenomenon, or investigating how a phenomenon appears in a specific place. This practice includes teachers supporting students to investigate how science concepts—like carbon cycling or food systems—manifest specifically in their own communities. Teachers had students use local data, maps, and firsthand observations to make sense of the issues.
   
• Personalizing phenomenon, or centering and “scientizing” personal experiences and interactions with a phenomenon as relevant and important to learning. While employing this practice, teachers encouraged students to draw from their own lived experiences as evidence to make sense of the phenomenon. This practice helped students grasp how science connects to their lives and values, and to understand themselves as knowledge-makers.

This justice-centered science instructional practice showed that when students are given tools to explore problems that affect themselves and their communities, they become more engaged and begin to view science as a tool for change.

Some of the major takeaways for teachers and science educators from this article are the following.

• Frame science lessons around local, relevant issues—from food access to environmental health.
   
• Encourage students to bring in their personal experiences as valid sources of data and insight.
   
• Use community-based investigations to highlight the social dimensions of scientific phenomena.
   
• Align NGSS instruction with equity- and justice-oriented goals.
   
• Foster a classroom culture in which diverse ways of knowing are not only accepted, but also valued as sources of scientific data.

By using community-oriented framing, teachers can help students connect science learning to everyday life, social and political systems, and students’ diverse knowledge and experiences—making science meaningful and empowering for all learners.

Computational Thinking for Science: Positioning Coding as a Tool for Doing Science

How can we teach coding in a way that feels natural in science class—and truly meaningful for students?

This study by Ari Krakowski, Eric Greenwald, Natalie Roman, Christina Morales, and Suzanna Loper introduces the Computational Thinking for Science (CT+S) model, a powerful teaching approach designed to help students develop coding and computational thinking (CT) skills through science learning. Rather than treating coding as an “add-on,” this model integrates it directly into authentic science tasks—making it both relevant and engaging for middle school students.

The research team partnered with classroom teachers to design and test the CT+S model in real science classrooms. Their work revealed three key strategies for meaningful integration.

1. Multimodal learning experiences. Blending hands-on, “unplugged” activities, coding tasks, and group discussions to build deep conceptual understanding.
    
2. Real-world problem-solving. Framing science lessons around relevant challenges, such as coral reef restoration or air quality analysis, to show the value of CT in everyday life.
    
3. Disciplinary authenticity. Ensuring that CT supports core science practices, like modeling and data interpretation, without adding to teachers’ workload.

This STEM teaching model helps students not only develop computational skills, but also view themselves as capable, creative problem-solvers. Teachers in the study noted how students became more confident and motivated when they understood how coding could be used to explore scientific questions that matter to them and their communities.

What this means for teachers and educators

• Use coding to enhance science instruction, not replace it.
   
• Choose authentic science contexts—like environmental data or health topics—to make computational thinking relevant.
   
• Incorporate student voices and experiences to boost engagement and inclusivity.
   
• Use unplugged activities to lower barriers to entry and build conceptual foundations.

By positioning computational thinking as a tool for doing real science, the CT+S model supports both teacher goals and student learning. It offers a scalable, equity-driven approach to STEM education that connects classroom learning to future opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math.

The mission of NSTA is to transform science education to benefit all through professional learning, partnerships, and advocacy.