All Resources

Journal Article

Health Wise: Be Prepared for Opioid Overdoses

This Q&A style column provides up-to-date information on current health topics—helping students (and teachers) make healthy choices. This month’s issue discusses student overdoses related to the national opioid epidemic....

Journal Article

Idea Bank: Setting the Stage: Your First Week of Science Class

The Idea Bank provides tips and techniques for creative teaching, in about 1,000 words. This month’s Idea Bank shows how to engage your students on the first day in stimulating activities....

Journal Article

Career of the Month: Epidemiologist

This column shares interviews with professionals using science in the workplace. This month’s issue describes Jennifer McQuiston's career path to becoming an epidemiologist....

Journal Article

Right to the Source: A Nose for Poison Gas Saved Lives

Exploring science and history with the Library of Congress. This month's issue discusses the Chemical Warfare School notebook of Earle Covington Smith who in WWII was responsible for sniffing the air to determine whether a gas attack was underway an...

Journal Article

Two Departments, Two Models of Interdisciplinary Peer Learning

On graduation, teacher candidates (TCs) are typically underprepared to teach science, particularly physical science, whereas physics graduates frequently lack training in teaching or effective communication. In response, the authors created two model...

Journal Article

A Serendipitous Benefit of a Teaching-Exploration Program at a Large Public University: Creating a STEM Workforce That Supports Teachers and Public Education

This study surveyed students who had participated over a 10-year period in California Teach courses, which integrate evidence-based, best practices of pedagogy, internship, and reflection. The authors found that well-crafted service-learning courses ...

Journal Article

Improving Undergraduate Climate Change Literacy Through Writing: A Pilot Study

A climate-literate population, capable of making informed decisions related to climate change, is of critical importance as society faces ever-increasing global temperatures and changes in the climate system. This project evaluates the effectiveness ...

Journal Article

Issues with Tissues: A Tale of Gameful Learning in an Introductory Undergraduate Biology Laboratory Course

An introductory undergraduate biology laboratory session about vertebrate tissues was gamified to elucidate the effects of gameful learning on students’ perceptions of their own learning and motivation....

Journal Article

An Integrated Approach to Training Graduate Teaching Assistants

We describe the implementation of a graduate teaching assistant (GTA) training program in the Department of Chemistry designed to integrate with the professional development initiatives of the Graduate School at a large, public, research-intensive u...

Journal Article

Research and Teaching: Writing to Learn in the Natural Sciences: Does Source Material Matter?

For over 4 decades, educational researchers have been studying best practices for introducing writing into the curriculum. One successful strategy, a low-stakes writing exercise called “writing to learn” (WTL), has been implemented across severa...

Journal Article

Research and Teaching: Integrating Lecture and Laboratory in Health Sciences Courses Improves Student Satisfaction and Performance

Students often struggle in introductory health sciences courses; some students have difficulty in upper level classes. To address this, the authors converted three lecture/lab courses, traditional first-year Anatomy and Physiology (A&P I), upper lev...

Journal Article

Research and Teaching: Delivery of Summative Assessment Matters for Improving At-Risk Student Learning

This study investigates how summative assessments could be used to reduce the achievement gap among at-risk groups of students in an introductory biology course....

Journal Article

Research and Teaching: The Impact of a Four-Step Laboratory Pedagogical Framework on Biology Students’ Perceptions of Laboratory Skills, Knowledge, and Interest in Research

Authentic undergraduate research laboratory experiences are essential to aid in the implementation of science education reform mandates and to effectively train a new generation of biology students. The authors present assessment data on a unique fou...

Journal Article

Two-Year Community: Resolving Misconceptions Through Student Reflections

This study aimed to identify and resolve misconceptions in three important STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) courses by using student reflective activities....

Journal Article

Case Study: Puttin’ On the Ritz: How to Put Science Into Cases

This column provides original articles on innovations in case study teaching, assessment of the method, as well as case studies with teaching notes. This month’s issue discusses different ways of presenting science in case studies....

Book Chapter

Maglevs, Maps, and Magnets

This lesson introduces students to the module and the culminating challenge for the module—the Maglevacation Train Challenge. The focus is on train travel, and it’s helpful to access students’ prior experiences and current understanding and per...

Book Chapter

Trains Through Time

This lesson provides information to enable students to identify the connection between the westward expansion of the United States and the proliferation of train travel. Students are also introduced to information about the railway engineers who are...

Book Chapter

Portable People

In this lesson, students explore passenger train travel today and compare it with other modes of transportation, using the jigsaw learning method. They explore electromagnets and identify independent and dependent variables and formulate hypotheses. ...

Book Chapter

Speeding Ahead–The Maglevacation Train Challenge

In this lesson, students apply their knowledge of mapping, geography, trains, and science concepts related to magnetism and speed to design their Maglevacation Trains. Each student team will design and build its train and prepare a video presentation...

eBook

Transportation in the Future, Grade 3: STEM Road Map for Elementary School (e-book)

What if you could challenge your third graders to design the train of the future? With this volume in the STEM Road Map Curriculum Series, you can! Transportation in the Future outlines a journey that will steer your students toward authentic pro...

eBook

Building the Science Department: Stories of Success (e-book)

New in 2017!...

eBook

Argument-Driven Inquiry in Physics, Volume 1: Mechanics Lab Investigations for Grades 9–12 (e-book)

Physics teachers—great news! Now there’s a guide to argument-driven inquiry (ADI) especially for you. Like the NSTA Press best-sellers for high school biology and chemistry, this book helps you build your students’ science proficiency. It makes...

eBook

Creating a STEM Culture for Teaching and Learning (e-book)

This is the book that will flip the way you think about STEM from “not me” to “I’m in!” Author Jeff Weld is the director of the acclaimed Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Council. He sees STEM as “a white-hot, transformative revolution in ...

Book Chapter

The STEM Imperative

This chapter highlights the story of STEM. There is a moral and economic underpinning to the STEM imperative. Anything short of the cultivation of a culture for STEM is insufficient. Success requires a systemic rather than a piecemeal approach to STE...

Book Chapter

Catalyzing Professional STEM Networks: Local, Regional, and Statewide

This chapter presents the essential role of networks—intra- and inter-school and cross-stakeholder alliances—for effective, sustainable STEM education. The journalist’s principle of the Five W’s leave no stone unturned regarding networks: Wh...

Book Chapter

School—Business STEM Partnerships

A signature of the STEM awakening has become the school–business connection. What was once the sole domain of career-technical education, workplace applications of content, and on-the-job learning permeate the core disciplines of math and science i...

Book Chapter

STEM Teachers, STEM Classrooms, STEM Schools

Over the course of the early 21st century, STEM has enjoyed a bandwagon effect as the brand strengthens. In this chapter, purists and pioneers have put structures in place to establish a certain standard that upholds important labels such as STEM tea...

Book Chapter

STEM Learning and Assessment

Interwoven with classroom and teacher designations are curricula and assessment strategies. This chapter profiles some of the exemplary materials that support STEM teaching and learning, as well as the emergent process of homegrown school–business ...

Book Chapter

The Making of STEM Teachers

There are teachers of STEM subjects and then there are STEM teachers. This chapter distinguishes the two, highlighting preparatory programs and pathways that integrate the best practices illuminated up to this point into the minting of a professional...

Book Chapter

The Professional Development of STEM Teachers

This chapter examines the challenges inherent in helping content area secondary teachers and generalist elementary teachers implement a STEM learning mission. Building capacity for STEM intricately involves transforming teachers of mathematics, scien...

Book Chapter

Hopes, Hazards, Horizons

This chapter is the result of answered invitations for experts across the STEM stakeholder spectrum to weigh in on where we go from here. Classroom practitioners, industry advocates, community catalysts, parents, elected officials, and interested bys...