JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
More than 8 out of every 10 college students are not STEM majors, yet we have little understanding about learning expectations for them. We used the results of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute BioInteractive learning objectives survey of 38 instru...
By Austin Heil, Cara Gormally, and Peggy Brickman
Journal Article
Undergraduate STEM students may be overwhelmed by the complex information they are exposed to during their education. Even so, there are a handful of fundamental and powerful concepts that could be identified for each discipline. General education co...
By Nora Demers
Journal Article
Student Self-Care in the Sciences
Instructor support is associated with various positive outcomes for students. Self-care (taking care of one’s physical, mental, and emotional health) has become a mainstream concept. Self-care may be one way for students to increase wellness, parti...
By Carly Yadon
Journal Article
Development and Implementation of an Undergraduate STEM Peer Coaching Program
Undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) experiences have academic, psychological, and social challenges that require additional support to navigate. This article explains the implementation of a STEM peer coaching progr...
By Laura E. Swann, Jonathan L. Hall, Katie Vaccaro-Garska, Samantha R. Seals, and Pamela P. Benz
Journal Article
Using a Socioscientific Issues Approach in an Undergraduate Environmental Science Course
A perennial goal of science educators is to develop functional scientific literacy in their students, especially those who will not become professional scientists. This article provides an example of implementing a socioscientific issues approac...
By Mark H. Newton
Journal Article
Emphasis on Quality in iNaturalist Plant Collections Enhances Learning and Research Utility
Following the switch to remote online teaching in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the plant taxonomy course at the University of Georgia (UGA) switched to iNaturalist for the specimen collection portion of the course requirements. Building off ext...
By Mason C. McNair, Chelsea M. Sexton, and Mark Zenoble
Journal Article
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a series of emergency transitions to online learning for academic institutions around the world. Previous studies have shown that undergraduate Learning Assistants (LAs) improve student engagement in classroom activities ...
By Kathleen Hefferon and Esther Angert
Journal Article
Educators are increasingly recognizing that significant amounts of science learning take place over the course of one’s lifetime and that much of this learning takes place outside of school settings (NRC 2009). Americans spend on average “less th...
By M. Gail Jones and Megan Ennes
Journal Article
Q: What Can My Students See During the Upcoming Solar Eclipses?
A: It depends on where you are located. But first let’s briefly review what happens during a solar eclipse and clear up a few popular misconceptions about solar eclipses. You probably know that a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between th...
By Matt Bobrowsky
Journal Article
Making the Most of Field Trips
Field trips can be a unique way to engage elementary students in science content. However, budget cuts and a focus on standardized testing are causing some schools to greatly reduce the funding for field trips (Meyer 2008). In the wake of the last re...
By Nicole Hesson
Journal Article
Cardboard, a common maker space material, is inexpensive, readily available, and durable. It is also easy to manipulate. It can be folded, cut, painted, and taped or glued together. Caine’s Arcade, a video featuring Caine Monroy’s cardboard arcad...
By Julie Jackson, Julie Brenegan, Kristi Wagner, and Michelle Berry
Journal Article
How Does Sound Travel in a String?
In Chinese science curriculum, the sound unit generally starts with observing various sound making phenomena and finding out that they all involve vibration....
By Gang Shu, Xiaowei Tang, and Huimin Chen
Journal Article
Computational Modeling With Multilingual Learners
While the vision for science education through A Framework for K–12 Science Education (NRC 2012) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) continues to take hold in classrooms across the nation, computational modeling is becoming increasingl...
By Alison Haas, Scott E. Grapin, Lorena Llosa, and Okhee Lee
Journal Article
Growing Students' Meaning-Making
In this sensemaking lesson, K–2 students explore how different factors influence seed germination and explain the elements necessary to sprout. Notebook strategies are embedded throughout the explore-before-explain lesson to help students organize ...
By Patrick Brown, Jessica Fries-Gaither, and Kathy Renfrew
Journal Article
Using Argument to Reason About Science Practice
We have been working for nearly two decades with teachers across all grade bands to promote productive argumentation. From this experience, and those of others interested in the same goals, we have extracted a simple strategy for promoting and suppor...
By William Sandoval, Jon Kovach, Leticia Perez, Lynn Kim-John, and Jarod Kawasaki
Journal Article
The Astronomical Event of the Decade
On Saturday, October 14, 2023, and then again on Monday, April 8, 2024, sky gazers all across North America will experience what is arguably the most breathtaking of astronomical phenomena: a solar eclipse. During the October eclipse, everyone in Nor...
By Anna Hurst, Julia Plummer, Suzanne Gurton, and Dennis Schatz
Journal Article
Making the Most of the Upcoming Solar Eclipse Double-Header
Eclipses of the Sun, where the Moon gets in front of the Sun and blocks its light, are among the most spectacular of natural events. The total eclipse visible in the United States in 2017 fascinated and involved millions of people all across the coun...
By Andrew Fraknoi and Dennis Schatz
Journal Article
A circle of fourth-grade students sit around Mrs. Ray, who shows videos and images of two natural events: large rocks that have fallen from a cliffside and large rocks in the middle of a dry stream near a road. She asks, “What caused these events t...
By Lindsey Mohan, Emily Harris, and Candice Guy-Gaytán
Web Seminar
This interactive web seminar will begin with an overview of safety protocols specific for doing secondary-level safer science/STEM laboratory activities. The presenters will be Dr. Ken Roy, NSTA and NSELA Safety Compliance Advisor/Specialist and Dire...
Web Seminar
This interactive web seminar will begin with an overview of safety protocols specific for doing elementary level safer science/STEM classroom/laboratory activities with Dr. Ken Roy, NSTA and NSELA Safety Compliance Advisor/specialist and, Director of...
Journal Article
By Janet Struble, Kevin Czajkowski, Angela Rizzi, and Jessica Taylor
Journal Article
Astronauts Zoom: An Astronaut Alphabet
Astronauts Zoom: An Astronaut Alphabet By Deborah Lee Rose September 2020 Persnickety Press 36 pages $16.95 ...
By Peggy Ashbrook and Ann Caspar
Web Seminar
Archive: Science Update: Get Ready for the April 8 Total Solar Eclipse, February 8, 2024
In this Science Update, the presenters will share the tools that will help you make the eclipse a great experience for your students, your school, and your community....
Journal Article
The Importance of Partnership, Support, and Sustained Professional Development
By Jason Harding, Maria Pack, Chris Harrison, and Lucy Wood
Journal Article
By ChangChia Liu and Dorothy Bennett
Journal Article
By Eleanor M. Jaffee, Jennifer Bourgeault, Haley Wicklein, and Alicia Carlson
Journal Article
40 Years of Inspiring Students to Explore STEM: What Has Science Olympiad Learned?
By John F. Loehr and Jenny Kopach
Journal Article
Transition to Virtual Judging for In-Person Elementary School Science Fairs
By Amanda Horn
Web Seminar
Archive: NSTA/ASTE Archive: Starting and Sustaining an NSTA Student Chapter, November 15, 2023
This web seminar, delivered in collaboration between the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) and the Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE), will provide information on the benefits of starting and sustaining a student chapter for ...
Web Seminar
Identifying a rock or mineral can be the beginning of an investigation. Every rock has a story just waiting to be told, and everyone loves to hear a good story. Prof. Baxter will give rocks their own voice and share several rock stories about L...
Lesson Plan
Web Seminar
Archive: Exploration Generation: Sensemaking in Elementary Rocketry, November 29, 2023
This web seminar will introduce teachers to the Exploration Generation Elementary School Playlist and Unit Plan. These instructional materials provide equitable STEM experiences to students and increase educator confidence in teaching rocketry. Explo...