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Peer ideas can be valuable contributions to scientific inquiry. Divergent peer ideas can enrich students' thinking and encourage curiosity. Meanwhile, similar peer ideas can promote convergent thinking that can reinforce understanding. However, students need guidance in critically evaluating peer ideas in relation to their own, and in recognizing the influence of peers’ ideas. Guided by the Knowledge Integration framework, we explore whether students’ perceptions of the impact of peers’ ideas align with the revisions made to their written explanations. In a technology-rich, classroom-based inquiry unit on cancer cell division, Grade 7 students (N = 144) investigated the effects of different cancer treatments on cell division, and developed explanations for a recommended treatment. We prompted one group of students to visit a class repository to seek peer ideas similar to their own, and another to seek ideas different from their own. Both groups then revised their recommendations. Based on analyses of students' reflections, initial and revised explanations, and pre and posttests, we found that students prompted to seek divergent ideas perceived peers’ ideas to be more impactful, even though both groups of students revised at the same rate and made similar pre to posttest gains. This study suggests a need to attend to students’ perceptions of the roles of their peers, particularly in environments designed to reflect authentic processes of the social construction of scientific knowledge.

We explored the COVID-19 pandemic as a context for learning about the role of science in a global health crisis. In spring 2020, at the beginning of the first pandemic-related lockdown, we worked with a high school teacher to design and implement a unit on human brain and behavior science. The unit guided her 17 students in creating studies that explored personally relevant questions about the pandemic to contribute to a citizen science platform. Pre-/postsurveys, student artifacts, and student and teacher interviews showed increases in students' fascination with science--a driver of engagement and career preference--and sense of agency as citizen scientists. Students approached science as a tool for addressing their pandemic-related concerns but were hampered by the challenges of remote schooling. These findings highlight both the opportunities of learning from a global crisis, and the need to consider how that crisis is still affecting learners.

Citizen science programs offer opportunities for K-12 students to engage in authentic science inquiry. However, these programs often fall short of including learners as agents in the entire process, and thus contrast with the growing open science movement within scientific communities. Notably, study ideation and peer review, which are central to the making of science, are typically reserved for professional scientists. This study describes the implementation of an open science curriculum that engages high school students in a full cycle of scientific inquiry. We explored the focus and quality of students' study designs and peer reviews, and their perceptions of open science based on their participation in the program. Specifically, we implemented a human brain and behavior citizen science unit in 6 classrooms across 3 high schools. After learning about open science and citizen science, students (N = 104) participated in scientist-initiated research studies, and then collaboratively proposed their own studies to investigate personally interesting questions about human behavior and the brain. Students then peer reviewed proposals of students from other schools. Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of students' artifacts created in-unit and on a pre and posttest, we describe their interests, abilities, and self-reported experiences with study design and peer review. Our findings suggest that participation in open science in a human brain and behavior research context can engage students with critical aspects of experiment design, as well as with issues that are unique to human subjects research, such as research ethics. Meanwhile, the quality of students' study designs and reviews changed in notable, but mixed, ways: While students improved in justifying the importance of research studies, they did not improve in their abilities to align methods to their research questions. In terms of peer review, students generally reported that their peers' feedback was helpful, but our analysis showed that student reviewers struggled to articulate concrete recommendations for improvement. In light of these findings, we discuss the need for curricula that support the development of research and review abilities by building on students' interests, while also guiding students in transferring these abilities across a range of research foci.

Transmedia design, which involves extending a narrative from one medium to another, offers a context for potentially rich, interdisciplinary learning. We explored these opportunities by creating a week-long workshop to guide 7th-grade student teams in designing games based on comic books about viruses. This design case describes the framework and rationale behind our design choices. It illustrates our experiences by drawing on field note observations and audio recordings, student-generated design artifacts, student and facilitator interviews, and planning documentation from across two iterations of the workshop. We reflect on our experiences in attempting to balance (1) the dual focus of the workshop on science learning and game design through our choices of comic and game genres; and (2) the ability for students to be both autonomous and to receive necessary guidance through our enforcement of design constraints and interdependent team roles. We also reflect on the contextual factors that mediated our work, including students' existing interests and peer relations, their teachers' involvement, and our own team's shifting expertise as membership changed from one iteration to the next. Among other things, our experiences highlight the importance of designing to allow for change, particularly as learning through collaborative transmedia game design can occur in unanticipated ways. Finally, we reflect on plans for future iterations of this workshop.

Data-art inquiry is an arts-integrated approach to data literacy learning that reflects the multidisciplinary nature of data literacy not often taught in school contexts. By layering critical reflection over conventional data inquiry processes, and by supporting creative expression about data, data-art inquiry can support students' informal inference-making by revealing the role of context in shaping the meaning of data, and encouraging consideration of the personal and social relevance of data. Data-art inquiry additionally creates alternative entry points into data literacy by building on learners' non-STEM interests. Supported by technology, it can provide accessible tools for students to reflect on and communicate about data in ways that can impact broader audiences. However, data-art inquiry instruction faces many barriers to classroom implementation, particularly given the tendency for schools to structure learning with disciplinary silos, and to unequally prioritize mathematics and the arts. To explore the potential of data-art inquiry in classroom contexts, we partnered with arts and mathematics teachers to co-design and implement data-art inquiry units. We implemented the units in four school contexts that differed in terms of the student population served, their curriculum priorities, and their technology infrastructure. We reflect on participant interviews, written reflections, and classroom data, to identify synergies and tensions between data literacy, technology, and the arts. Our findings highlight how contexts of implementation shape the possibilities and limitations for data-art inquiry learning. To take full advantage of the potential for data-art inquiry, curriculum design should account for and build on the opportunities and constraints of classroom contexts.

Cognitive neuroscience research is typically conducted in controlled laboratory environments and therefore its contribution to our understanding of learning in real-world environments is limited. In recent years, however, portable and wearable brain devices have become more readily available for classroom-based research. Complementing existing education research methods, these emerging technologies could provide information about learning processes that might not be reflected in classroom observations or learners' self-reports. This essay critically evaluates the value added by portable brain technologies in education research and outlines a proposed research agenda, centered around questions related to student engagement, cognitive load, and self-regulation. We also address ethical concerns regarding student privacy and the potential misuse of students' brain data.

Equitable learning opportunities are critical to the goals of science education. However, major curriculum standards are vague on how to achieve equity goals, and educators must often develop their own resources and strategies to achieve equity goals. This study examines how educators used a comic book series designed to interest youth in virology as a way to make science more broadly appealing to their diverse students. We begin with the notion of Pedagogical Design Capacity, which describes a dynamic relationship between teachers and their tools and the ability for teachers to perceive and leverage affordances of artifacts as tools in their curriculum design. In a qualitative analysis of 18 interviews with educators, survey responses, instructional artifacts, and classroom observations, we describe the potential that educators saw in the comics and the strategies they used to take advantage of that potential to promote equitable science teaching. Notably, we observed how the comics enabled educators to incorporate multiple literacies and disciplinary lenses into their lessons, thereby expanding traditional views of science literacy. We documented the range of techniques by which they used comics and fictional narratives to support specific scientific practices, such as modeling. We also observed challenges that participants encountered in using comics, which included overcoming their own and their students' attitudes and beliefs regarding the role of informal reading materials in science education. By investigating how resourceful science educators use comic books, this study informs both researchers and educators on how innovative curriculum materials can broaden and diversify participation in science. Findings have implications for the design of similar curriculum materials and instructional approaches, as well as professional development to support equitable science teaching.

Inquiry instruction often neglects graphing. It gives students few opportunities to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to take advantage of graphs, and which are called for by current science education standards. Yet, it is not well known how to support graphing skills, particularly within middle school science inquiry contexts. Using qualitative graphs is a promising, but underexplored approach. In contrast to quantitative graphs, which can lead students to focus too narrowly on the mechanics of plotting points, qualitative graphs can encourage students to relate graphical representations to their conceptual meaning. Guided by the Knowledge Integration framework, which recognizes and guides students in integrating their diverse ideas about science, we incorporated qualitative graphing activities into a seventh grade web-based inquiry unit about cell division and cancer treatment. In Study 1, we characterized the kinds of graphs students generated in terms of their integration of graphical and scientific knowledge. We also found that students (n = 30) using the unit made significant learning gains based on their pretest to post-test scores. In Study 2, we compared students' performance in two versions of the same unit: One that had students construct, and second that had them critique qualitative graphs. Results showed that both activities had distinct benefits, and improved students' (n = 117) integrated understanding of graphs and science. Specifically, critiquing graphs helped students improve their scientific explanations within the unit, while constructing graphs led students to link key science ideas within both their in-unit and post-unit explanations. We discuss the relative affordances and constraints of critique and construction activities, and observe students' common misunderstandings of graphs. In all, this study offers a critical exploration of how to design instruction that simultaneously supports students' science and graph understanding within complex inquiry contexts.

As visual cultures scholars have argued, visual expression and aesthetic artifacts largely comprise the modern world. This includes the production of the school as an institution. A critical approach to education therefore must reinscribe students with the ability to see what educational processes attempt to hide and to construct an understanding of the real for themselves. To illustrate this argument, we explore the production of visuality within data science education as one example of how the visual manifests within schools. In response, we propose a visual literacy informed approach to engaging students with data, one that expands beyond contemporary forms of critical data literacy by involving an ontological critique of educational aestheticization. To ground this work, we examine the role of visuality and aesthetics within the implementation of co-designed arts-infused data science projects in four US middle schools. In analyzing interviews with teachers and students, we uncover a series of tensions that reveal the ongoing influence of school visualities alongside the potential for student generated images to amplify their right to look. We therefore argue that critical pedagogies must not only involve reading and critiquing aesthetic artifacts but also engage students in a critique of visuality itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in technology, science, and learning sciences research over the past 100 years have reshaped science education. This chapter focuses on how investigators from varied fields of inquiry who initially worked separately began to interact, eventually formed partnerships, and recently integrated their perspectives to strengthen science education. Advances depended on the broadening of the participants in science education research, starting with psychologists, science discipline experts, and science educators; adding science teachers, psychometricians, computer scientists, and sociologists; and eventually including leaders in cultural studies, linguistics, and neuroscience. This process depended on renegotiating power structures, deliberate funding decisions by the National Science Foundation and others, and sustained, creative teamwork. It reflects a growing commitment to ensure that all learners are respected and that all students learn to address the complex scientific dilemmas they face in their lives. This chapter traces the evolution of research on science education in the United States with a focus on 5- to 17-year-olds. It highlights trends in the view of the learner, the design of instruction, the role of professional development, and the impact of technology. The chapter closes with recommendations designed to realize the full potential of these advances.

Biologists use tree diagrams to illustrate phylogenetic relationships among species. However, both novices and experts are prone to misinterpret this notational form. A difficulty with reasoning with cladograms is that intuitive narrative conceptions of evolution as a linear progression interfere with perceiving the hierarchical relationships that tree diagrams are intended to convey. We challenge the use of standard cladograms to teach phylogenetic reasoning and attempt to disentangle the effects of content beliefs, conceptual metaphors, and visual structure. We explain how and why students misinterpret cladograms and investigate the effects of alternative, more intuitive representations and approaches. Through clinical interviews with 24 undergraduate students. Study 1 describes students' invented representations for depicting the concept of relatedness and investigates the impacts of recontextualizing their representational activities within non-evolutionary contexts. Study 2 examines the effects on students' reasoning with the standard cladogram after they first invent a diagram of their own. Findings from our mixed quantitative and qualitative analyses display the range of representational resources that students bring to the task of reasoning about relatedness. They suggest potential value in building upon such representations when teaching novices to reason about phylogenies. We observed that the quality of students' reasoning differed depending on whether students invented a representation, what kind they invented, and in what context. While some findings are promising, others reaffirm the powerful influence of Gestalt perceptual processes on students' misinterpretations of these difficult, but critical scientific diagrams. We end by discussing implications for instructors and designers.

Science inquiry challenges students to synthesize various ideas about complex phenomena into coherent explanations. It also challenges teachers, who must guide their diverse students' developing understanding during student-paced investigations. We describe the Idea Manager, a suite of web-based, curriculum-integrated tools that (a) guides students' knowledge integration as they generate, distinguish, and reconcile their ideas; and (b) provides means for teachers to monitor learning over the course of technology-enhanced science inquiry units. With the Idea Manager tool, students document short, text-based ideas, tag and sort them along various attributes, and exchange them with classmates. At culminating points of their investigations, students graphically organize their ideas to prepare written scientific explanations. Meanwhile, logs of idea entries, revisions, and meta-data inform teachers' and researchers' decisions about instruction and design. This paper offers an account of the design moves made in refining the Idea Manager, and highlights the importance of teacher-researcher partnerships and classroom implementations. Through designers' artifacts, classroom research findings, and teachers' and researchers' reflections, we illustrate the tool's origins; our strategies for testing new features and eliciting stakeholders' feedback, and how middle and high school classroom implementations inform the tool's continued iterations. Based on learning theory and on our own 40+ collective years of classroom teaching experience, we explain our design decisions and describe how new features and patterns for the tool's use emerged from a community of researchers. Finally, we reflect on the process of iteration that advances both theory and design, and on the value of pedagogically-driven technology design.

Advances in technology, science, and learning sciences research over the past 100 years have reshaped science education. This chapter focuses on how investigators from varied fields of inquiry who initially worked separately began to interact, eventually formed partnerships, and recently integrated their perspectives to strengthen science education. Advances depended on the broadening of the participants in science education research, starting with psychologists, science discipline experts, and science educators; adding science teachers, psychometricians, computer scientists, and sociologists; and eventually including leaders in cultural studies, linguistics, and neuroscience. This process depended on renegotiating power structures, deliberate funding decisions by the National Science Foundation and others, and sustained, creative teamwork. It reflects a growing commitment to ensure that all learners are respected and that all students learn to address the complex scientific dilemmas they face in their lives. This chapter traces the evolution of research on science education in the United States with a focus on 5- to 17-year-olds. It highlights trends in the view of the learner, the design of instruction, the role of professional development, and the impact of technology. The chapter closes with recommendations designed to realize the full potential of these advances.

Science is increasingly characterized by participation in knowledge communities. To meaningfully engage in science inquiry, students must be able to evaluate diverse sources of information, articulate informed ideas, and share ideas with peers. This study explores how technology can support idea exchanges in ways that value individuals' prior ideas, and allow students to use these ideas to benefit their own and their peers' learning. We used the Idea Manager, a curriculum-integrated tool that enables students to collect and exchange ideas during science inquiry projects. We investigated how students exchanged ideas, how these exchanges impacted the explanations they ultimately produced, and how the tool impacted teachers' instruction. We implemented the tool with 297 grade 7 students, who were studying a web-based unit on cancer and cell division. Among other results, we found a relationship between the diversity of students' ideas, and the sources of those ideas (i.e., whether they came from the students themselves or from their peers), and the quality of students' scientific explanations. Specifically, students who collected more unique ideas (i.e., ideas not already represented in their private idea collections) as opposed to redundant ideas (i.e., ideas that reiterated ideas already present in their private idea collections) tended to write poorer explanations; and students who generated their own redundant ideas, as opposed to choosing peers' ideas that were redundant, tended to write better explanations. We discuss implications for formative assessment, and for the role of technology in supporting students to engage more meaningfully with peers' ideas.

Technology can enhance teachers' practice in multiple ways. It can help them better understand patterns in their students' thinking, manage class progress at individual and group levels, and obtain evidence to inform modifications to curriculum and instruction. Such technology is most effective when it is aligned with teachers' goals and expectations. Participatory methods, which involve teachers closely in the design process, are widely recommended for establishing accurate design requirements that address users' needs. By collaborating with researchers, teachers can contribute their professional expertise to shape the tools of their practice, and ultimately ensure their sustained use. However, there is little guidance available for maintaining effective teacher--researcher design partnerships. We describe four strategies for engaging teachers in designing tools intended to support and enhance their practice within a web-based science learning environment: discussing physical artifacts, reacting to scenarios, customizing prototypes, and writing user stories. Using design artifacts and documents of teachers' reflections, we illustrate how we applied these techniques over 5 years of annual professional development workshops, and examine their affordances for eliciting teachers' ideas. We reflect on how these approaches have helped inform technology refinements and innovations. We moreover discuss the further benefits these strategies have had in encouraging teachers to reflect on their own practice and on the roles of technology in supporting it; and in allowing researchers to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between technology, teaching, and design.

Teachers' involvement in curriculum design is essential for sustaining the relevance of technology-enhanced learning materials. Customizing--making small adjustments to tailor given materials to particular situations and settings--is one design activity in which busy teachers can feasibly engage. Research indicates that customizations based in evidence from student work lead to improved learning outcomes. In this paper, we examine the customizations of four middle and high school teachers during their enactments of web-based inquiry science units. We examine how specific technology features afforded their customizations by providing tools for making adaptations and by making student work available as evidence for those adaptations. Cases built from classroom video and field note observations, interviews, and teachers' curriculum artifacts, revealed three kinds of customizations: (a) devising timely instructional interventions to provide individualized guidance; (b) planning activities and adjusting milestones to align with students' progress; (c) modifying existing materials to better integrate content into overall curriculum plans; and (d) incorporating scaffolds to better address students' needs. We also identified three technology features that supported teachers' customizations: (1) a system that logs student work for teachers' inspection; (2) tools for conducting dynamic, formative assessment; and (3) an authoring environment that supports the re-design of units at multiple levels of granularity. We end by suggesting design principles for curriculum materials that support teachers' customizations, as well as future directions for technology that would enhance teachers' participation as designers.

Despite many years of efforts to communicate new scientific knowledge to the public, surveys continue to suggest that many people remain uninformed about current scientific research (Miller, 2001; Miller, 2004) and fail to recognize how it can be relevant to their lives. There is continued need for investigation on improving methods for engaging people with scientific knowledge. Our goal is to contribute to efforts to disseminate emerging science knowledge by focusing on a particularly relevant science topic, viruses, and a critical age group, teenagers. Prior research suggests that many teenagers have low science achievement and/or low interest in science (Gonzalez, et al., 2008), and thus can be characterized as having low science identity. How can educators engage all teenagers, even those with low science identity? Guided by identity theory and a model of interest development, we assess one possible, unconventional approach -- using comic books to convey science information. This study focuses on viruses as scientific content. First we review why knowledge of viruses is important content to disseminate, and provide evidence that the general public's knowledge of viruses is limited. After discussing the relationship between interest and achievement in science, we describe the rationale for using comics as an educational format. We next summarize key concepts in identity theory and a model of interest development that justify comparing comic and essay formats for disseminating scientific information. We describe the study, results, and implications of our findings for efforts to engage a broad spectrum of youth with science.