This study explores how middle school science teachers took up participatory practices in professional learning and enacted them in their classrooms. Drawing on a three-year design-based research project with 12 teachers across four U.S. districts in three states, we analyzed 17 post-implementation interviews alongside classroom observations and related artifacts using constant comparative thematic analysis. Findings show that teachers explicitly designed participatory learning cultures by modeling epistemic uncertainty, redistributing authority, broadening access to resources, and establishing norms for help seeking, critique, public sharing, and collaboration through routines such as pair programming. These designs supported student agency, peer expertise, social interdependence, and affective engagement. We suggest that professional learning should function as a participatory learning culture and position teachers as designers of pedagogy by making epistemic, social, and affective dynamics available for rehearsal and adaptation.

To help address the growing demand for highly qualified and licensed K-12 CS teachers, many US states offer an endorsement pathway through the Praxis Computer Science test. However, the test presents significant challenges for teachers with limited prior experience in programming, especially due to its use of an unfamiliar pseudocode notation. Over the past three years, a research-practice partnership (RPP) including nonprofit educators, in-service teachers, and university researchers have developed a "Praxis Prep" professional development course. Central to the latest iteration of the course is Praxly, a web-based IDE built specifically for the Praxis test's pseudocode. In this experience report, we describe the evolution of Praxis Prep, the integration of Praxly, adjustments to the technical aspects of the course, and reflections from participating teachers across two cohorts. We share lessons learned about sequencing instruction, addressing diverse learner backgrounds, fostering community and learner engagement, and creating productive opportunities for teachers to learn programming concepts and the pseudocode notation. This paper offers insights and guidance for other professional development providers supporting teachers on the pathway to CS licensure.

The BioRobots curriculum uses biomimetic robot design as a natural context to integrate science, engineering, and computational thinking (CT). During 21 class sessions, students research structure-function relationships in digging animals, and design, build, and program a prototype search and rescue robot. The paper examines how students used CT practices to generate models of biological structure-function relationships, and then applied their analyses to engineer a biomimetic model. Student-created models, including sketches, storyboards, physical prototypes, Scratch programs, and gestures, supported sensemaking about structure-function relationships during animal analysis (biology) and robot building (engineering design). We argue that the CT practices abstraction and decomposition played a critical role in helping students capture their biology ideas and try to turn them into engineering ideas. Creating the multiple representations that constituted students’ models, based on their abstraction of mole structures and how they function, was a helpful way for students to understand the mechanism of digging. Our findings have several implications for our understanding of how students learn in integrated STEM environments. For example, this work reinforces the importance of identifying core disciplinary ideas (animal adaptation), drawing on science and engineering practices (modeling) and cross-cutting concepts (i.e., structure-function) relationships to support three-dimensional learning (NGSS Lead States, 2013). The research also speaks to the value of curriculum materials that support students’ development of models in multiple disciplines. Finally, biomimicry as an approach to integrated STEM is understudied in middle school students. Our work adds to this body of research.

For the past two years, we have implemented a new professional development (PD) course for high school Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers. The course meets for an entire academic year and is divided into two phases. “Phase 1” (Aug–Dec) focuses on CS content knowledge by preparing participants to take the Praxis CS 5652 test, a pathway in many states for K-12 teachers to obtain an add-on CS endorsement for their teaching licenses. “Phase 2” (Jan–May) focuses on pedagogical content knowledge as participants complete a self-directed project related to their individual CS teaching goals. We strive to deliver personalized PD that is effective in training high school teachers from a variety of education and CS skills backgrounds to teach advanced CS courses. This poster considers the following research question: To what extent do teachers who participate in our PD develop (a) self-efficacy as a well-prepared teacher of advanced CS content and (b) identity as a CS teacher? We know that CS teacher self-efficacy, specifically teacher perceptions of preparation and readiness, is required for teachers to effectively implement a CS curriculum [3]. Furthermore, CS teacher professional identity provides a foundation for sustained motivation, job satisfaction, and commitment [1]. We are particularly interested in how CTE teachers from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels perceive themselves as CS teachers, and what impact our PD has on the development of their identity as CS teachers. We are conducting a mixed-methods study that includes surveying and interviewing participants before, during, and after the PD course. All responses are linked so that we can measure changes in self-efficacy and identity. We administered the Computer Science Teacher Identity Survey [2] at three points. Before the course, participants complete an intake interview to capture prior knowledge and learning goals. In the middle of the course, we interview participants about their experience preparing for and taking the Praxis test. After the course, participants complete an exit interview about their overall experience. Additional data include Praxis test scores, session attendance, and demographic information. Our first cohort (2023–24) had 14 teachers, and our second cohort (2024–25) had 12 teachers. Participants worked in a wide range of contexts: rural, urban, suburban, under-resourced, well-resourced, majority white, majority non-white, etc. At the time of writing, we are about to begin the exit interviews for the second cohort. So far, we see a positive correlation between pre-existing goal-directed behaviors before Phase 1 and passing the Praxis test. We also found that teachers experienced a larger positive shift in their identity as a CS teacher during Phase 2 than during Phase 1. Teachers more commonly attributed their increase in CS teacher identity to in-service experiences, rather than their endorsement exam result. The poster will highlight additional findings and identify cases of interest for further discussion.

There is a compelling need to strengthen professional learning (PL) regarding systems thinking, since it crosses all disciplinary boundaries and is a crosscutting concept in the Next Generation Science Standards. Yet research has shown that effectively deploying systems thinking in the classroom is challenging both for students and for teachers. The Exploring the Integration of Systems Thinking into Biology (ExIST) project engages teachers in PL that seeks to enhance teachers’ perception of the important role of systems in biology and understand how game design can support students’ systems thinking. Building on prior research, the PL is informed by the synergy between systems thinking in biology and systems thinking as inherent in game design. This paper presents a case study of how two middle school science teachers, engaged in systems thinking and a game design task, worked together to modify a Scratch game during a PL workshop. Their goal was to use the modified game during classroom enactment of a systems and game design unit. Our study focuses on what the teachers learned while they were remixing the game. Findings suggest that remixing the Scratch game helped the teachers clarify their instructional goals for their students. But it also helped the teachers themselves learn about systems dynamics, how Scratch works, and the utility of game design as a way to model real-world phenomena. We conclude with lessons learned about the design of PL based on game design.

Computer Science (CS) education is becoming increasingly important in K-12 schooling, with some U.S. states now requiring educators to integrate CS into various disciplinary courses. The CS for Social Studies project supports the integration of CS into Social Studies (SS) classes in rural middle schools. Twenty-five teachers, working mostly in pairs (one SS teacher and one CS or instructional technology teacher), participated in professional learning workshops and received coaching support to design and implement integrated lessons that address both SS and CS learning standards. The current analysis examines the corpus of year-end, project-based integrated CS-SS lessons (n=8), to illuminate how integrated CS-SS lessons can address learning goals across both disciplines. Data sources included teacher-created lesson materials, classroom observations/video, implementation logs, teacher interviews, and student work. Utilizing a framework created to characterize integrated CS-SS lessons, analysis of lessons (as designed and enacted) focuses on three dimensions: (1) depth of CS concepts, (2) integration of CS-SS, and (3) alignment of instructional tools/resources with integration objectives. All lessons addressed standards-aligned CS concepts such as variables, conditionals, branching, and computational thinking skills (e.g., decomposition), and a variety of SS topics including the Civil War, the Great Migration, and personal finance. However, lessons varied in the extent to which they leveraged students' CS knowledge to explicitly enhance SS learning (or vice versa). This analysis suggests there are multiple approaches to using CS concepts to support disciplinary learning, including creating new learning experiences to explore SS content.

Robotic technologies provide an innovative way to engage students in design and computational thinking practices while supporting disciplinary learning goals. Integrating robotics technology into core content courses also supports a broader range of students to engage in technology exploration. The Robots in Science project supported middle school science teachers to integrate robotics and computational thinking practices into their classrooms, in ways that are aligned with their disciplinary goals for students. This article describes the work of two experienced science teachers who designed integrated robotics and science units for their students and then revised these units for re-teaching. Taking a qualitative data analysis approach, the research examines changes the teachers made to their integrated units, and how those changes were influenced by both their evaluations of student learning, and their own knowledge about instructional design, teaching, and technology. The article concludes with suggestions for how best to support teachers who wish to design integrated robotics units to enhance their disciplinary teaching.

The landscape of education is dynamically evolving with the infusion of technology into classrooms, but it is not just math or science disciplines that are getting a digital makeover. Social studies education has entered a transformative phase as well. Amidst the rush to modernize curricula, an innovative approach in Virginia is channeling the power of computer science into social studies classrooms. The Computer Science for Social Studies project, funded by the National Science Foundation, proposes a groundbreak- ing model tailored for rural middle schools. This initiative aims to weave computer science into the fabric of social studies, rather than teaching it as an isolated skill, making both subjects more relevant, engaging, and beneficial for 21st-century students.

Student-Teacher-Scientist Partnerships (STSPs) provide opportunities for students and teachers to participate in citizen science and engage with scientific concepts and practices, thereby bridging school learning with issues of importance to society, such as climate change. But STSPs require partners to cross boundaries between the cultures of science and schooling, which is extremely difficult. This three-year case study illuminates how successful designers tackled boundary crossing challenges while creating a scalable STSP for environmental education. Analysis of data gathered from three sources – designer-generated documents, interviews with designers, and researchers’ observations of the designer work - through an in-depth participant-observation approach revealed how designers (curriculum writers and partner ecologists) made it possible for middle school students and teachers from partner schools to contribute climate-related data to the ecologists’ research and to other citizen science programs, while accommodating teacher preferences and curricular constraints to pursue educational goals. Findings about how designers used specific methods and created curriculum supports to aid processes of boundary crossing are discussed in light of relevant literature, highlighting their considerations about specific stakeholder needs related to pedagogical, curricular, and scientific goals of the partnership. Further, distilled from the empirical findings and in light of relevant literature are three guidelines in designing for STSPs to foster student inquiry, to support teachers, and to provide multiple benefits through the STSP. These findings and guidelines can help designers anticipate and attend to boundary crossing challenges in STSPs designed for environmental education, with broader implications for science education in general.

School-based citizen-science can be a powerful means to engage youth in environmental education, yet developing robust science curricula around citizen-science activities is tremendously challenging. Prior research provides limited examples and very little guidance for curriculum designers. To support the designers of school-based citizen-science curricula, this research article presents a participant-observation case study of designer thinking and processes in creating and integrating in-class curriculum with citizen-science fieldwork. Interviews, observations, and documents of designer work aimed at supporting middle school students' learning of climate change were analysed to gain insight into designer thinking, challenges, and resolutions. Findings indicate how designer work evolved through various measures, including appraisal by external advisors, inspiring examples, surveys of teachers' implementations, and written pre-post assessments of student learning throughout the phases of analysis, development, and evaluation of the curriculum. Four key considerations for designing school-based citizen-science curricula emerged from the data: creating the learning environment around the fieldwork; tackling concerns about data quality and utility; making scientist-designed fieldwork engaging to students; and balancing scientific and educational goals. These considerations are discussed in light of relevant literature, and educational implications for design and research are presented.

In most middle schools, learning is segregated by discipline. Yet interdisciplinary approaches have been shown to cultivate creative thinking, support problem solving, and develop interest while supporting knowledge gains (NAE & NRC in STEM Integration in K-12 Education: Status, Prospects, and an Agenda for Research. National Academies Press, Washington, 2014). The Designing Biomimetic Robots project emphasizes problem-based learning to integrate engineering, science, and computational thinking (CT). During a 3 to 4-week unit, students study the natural world to learn how animals accomplish different tasks, then design a robot inspired by what they learned. The project engages students in science, engineering, and CT practices. Over the course of a 3-year project, we used a design-based research approach to: (1) identify and describe strategies and challenges that emerge from integrated curriculum design, (2) explicate how a balance of integrated disciplines can provide opportunities for student participation in science, engineering, and CT practices, and (3) explore how a technology design task can support students’ participation in integrated learning. Data from three focal groups (one from each year of the project) suggest that a focused design task, supported by explicit and targeted supports for science, CT, and engineering practices, led to a student technology design process that was driven by disciplinary understanding. This work highlights the importance of drawing out and prioritizing alignments between disciplines (Barber in Educ Des, 2(8), 2015), to enable integrated learning. Additionally, this work demonstrates how a technology design task can support student learning across disciplines, and how engaging in CT practices can further help students draw these connections.

Educative curricula support teacher learning as well as the learning of students. High quality educative curricula contain features that help teachers customize learning opportunities and environments in ways that meet the needs of their learners. Designing these features requires expertise related to subject matter content, pedagogy, teacher and student learning, and instructional design. In other words, it requires interdisciplinary team work – which is notoriously challenging. To understand and support collaborative interdisciplinary design processes, a retrospective case study was conducted on interdisciplinary design team work that yielded a high quality educative curriculum for inquiry-based science learning. Design documents and transcripts of interviews with six designers (a cognitive psychologist, a practising physicist, and four science educators) were analyzed to identify their contributions during the phases of analysis, development, and evaluation to create educative features for developing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Findings articulate specific educative features that can contribute to supporting PCK and thereby supporting instructional performance. Findings also reveal the proactive and reactive nature of designer contributions, describing different ways in which designers provide specialized inputs from a disciplinary perspective. Further, this study shows how designer contributions intermeshed, with contributions from one discipline shaping the work of colleagues, and thereby coordinating varied inputs to yield coherent educative materials. In addition, theoretical insights and recommendations for research on the nature of collaborative interdisciplinary design processes and implications for practice are given for supporting designers working in interdisciplinary teams to create educative curriculum materials for teacher (and student) learning.

As states are adopting NGSS, engineering is increasingly being integrated in K-12 science education. While middle schools have typically segregated learning by discipline, educators are recognizing the importance of making connections across STEM disciplines. This paper presents robot artifacts built by students in an interdisciplinary middle school curriculum that combines biology, engineering, and computational thinking. In this curriculum, students analyze animals and use them as inspiration to build biomimetic robots - robots inspired by animals. We characterized and classified these artifacts based on their robots' mechanical structure and biomimetic structure and motion.

Robotics activities engage students in critical and computational thinking, problem solving, and collaboration, as well as engineering and computer science. By integrating robotics into disciplinary courses, educators offer these opportunities to a wider range of students. However, teachers may be less likely to use new technology without evidence that it can support their teaching and student learning. This paper presents two descriptive case studies as a 'proof of concept' for integrating robotics construction activities into disciplinary courses. They focus on teachers' motivation for integration, and how they used robotics to support disciplinary goals.

This study examines and compares how developers designed two primary science curricula to support teacher adaptation and enable use of innovative materials at scale. The two cases-Literacy Science(a science and literacy curriculum for grades 2-5)and Science as Inquiry(a curriculum focused on matter for grades 3-5)-were selected because the curricula shared many key features, yet the designers undertook the challenge of designing for adaptation in substantially different ways. Data sources for analysis included interviews with design team members, the curriculum materials, and a range of project documentation. A comparative case study approach was chosen to enable an examination of key contrasting features within the context of each curriculum. Both curricula provide teachers with supports to enact an inquiry-based curriculum in ways that honor science epistemologies. However, one designer team designed explicitly for adaptation by providingworked examplesthat described a range of possible classroom and learner contingencies, along with alternative solutions. By contrast, the other design 9team sought tobuild teachers' pedagogical capacityby providing access to content and explanations from the cognitive and natural sciences. The paper examines how these design stances informed materials developed to support teachers' content knowledge, as well as students' scientific inquiry and classroom discourse. These approaches represent different points on a continuum of design for adaptation, each with its own consequences for enactment and the design of written materials. The cases provide models for designers seeking to support teachers at scale.