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Research has shown that spatial ability plays a key role in understanding STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) content, including chemistry. Conservation of Matter (CoM) is an essential but challenging topic for chemistry students of all ages to grasp, it is often taught in a way where students memorize it but do not learn what it means conceptually. This research explored the relationship between understanding spatial ability and conceptual understanding of CoM in middle school students. CoM was examined in two ways using the Conservation of Matter Assessment (CoMA): through questions on conservation of atoms and the conservation of mass. Spatial ability was measured using the Purdue Spatial Visual Test: Rotations (PSVT). Significant, moderate correlations were found between spatial ability and understanding of CoM prior to and after a chemistry unit including instruction on CoM, the correlation was stronger after instruction. Scores on the PSVT and CoMA significantly increased pre to post instruction. The data show spatial ability may impact students&rsquo, understanding of CoM, which contributes to the literature on factors that impact students&rsquo, understanding of chemistry. Additionally, it provides evidence that teachers should consider including spatially rich experiences in their chemistry classroom, such as making explicit connections between the areas of Johnstone&rsquo, s Triad.

The idea of projects emerged with John Dewey and the progressive movement (1876–1957). Dewey and other progressives looked at redefining education via seeing the child at the center, emphasizing learning by doing, including diverse real-world contacts, making curriculum relevant and meaningful to the learner, and making the teacher more than a “taskmaster” (Ruopp, Gal, Drayton, & Pfister, 1993, p. 52). Progressives like John Dewey, E. L. Thorndike, and William Heard Kilpatrick promoted “vocational training, curriculum differentiation based upon student desire, intelligence testing, project learning, and other devices that were divorced from the traditional liberal arts curriculum” to fit the industrial era in which they were living as opposed to the traditional liberal arts curriculum of the past (Null, 2007, p. 1015). This shift away from the traditional curriculum sets up a division between the traditionalists who favored the liberal arts curriculum and the progressives who were focused on student-centered, practical curricula for all students (Null, 2007). The first use of the term “project” can be traced to the year 1908 when project-based agricultural work was established at Smith’s Agricultural school in Massachusetts (Alberty, 1927). The agricultural student projects were focused on community and/or home improvements, such as planting trees, building walks, and increasing crop yield.

Since the initial launch of REAL, we have implemented and researched its effectiveness with dozens of studies in over 20 middle schools in two states. We conducted professional development with 70 middle level science and/or mathematics teachers reaching more than 8000 students. These studies not only researched how students learned in a project-based instruction (PBI) environment but also compared gender differences in Earth/Space understandings. Control groups were also incorporated into our research design, and we examined differences in students’ learning by comparing the effects of business as usual (BAU) Earth/Space instruction with our PBI REAL unit. More recently we studied, at length, differences in teacher implementation (concerning the fidelity with which the curriculum was taught) and its effect on student learning outcomes (Lamar, Wilhelm, & Cole, 2018). One study examined how different gender groups and racial/ethnic groups performed on lunar content and spatial assessments within BAU and REAL classrooms (Wilhelm, Toland, & Cole, 2017).

Research literature provides a wealth of information on a variety of topics in education. You can often find best practices for teaching topics, common misconceptions, learning progressions, assessments, lessons, and case studies. Each of these may provide information that are useful for classroom teachers. One of the challenges is finding the articles for free, and another challenge is translating the literature to the classroom.

Research on how people learn has shown that the types of settings most conducive for learning are those that are student-, knowledge-, and community-centered and use formative assessment to support learning (NRC, 2000). A project-based environment incorporates all these features, which when implemented with effective design and instruction could create an ideal space for creativity, understanding, and scholarship. But how does a project-based milieu allow all students the opportunity to learn specific content goals required of a course or a district curriculum? This book provides insight into innovative ways to design a project-based educational setting within a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) classroom that ensures opportunity for students to learn specific content goals of the course, while simultaneously becoming “experts” of their own research topics.

This chapter contains three middle-level (grades 6–7) units developed by teachers who participated for 2 years in our professional development: Project-based Instruction Spanning Astronomical and Atomic Spaces (Project SAAS). During this 2-year period, teachers participated as learners with our REAL and CREATES units and then developed their own PBI units specific for their students. The first teacher-designed unit in this chapter was developed for 6th grade students and concerns interactions within an ecosystem. The second and third units were designed for 7th graders; one unit has students exploring gravitational, electrical, and magnetic forces, while the other has students examining what happens to the food they eat. We thank the teachers for sharing their units for our book. The real names of the teacher-authors of each of the units in this chapter are included at the teachers’ request.

When implementing project-based instruction (PBI) in a STEM classroom, we need to consider what it is that we want students to learn. What students should learn is determined by national, state, and local curricular standards in terms of content. In addition, the PBI designer needs to be aware of classic student misconceptions that students may have with concepts within the discipline content (see Chap. 4). This is where the driving question emerges. The driving question (DQ) drives the learning within the unit of study. Krajcik et al. (2014) claimed the DQ should be meaningful, sustainable, worthwhile, feasible, ethical, and contextual (see Table 3.1 from Krajcik et al. 2014).

In CREATES, students explore chemistry concepts related to chemical reactions and the thermal energy of chemical reactions through the driving question, “How can I use chemical reactions to keep me comfortable?” An emphasis is placed on considering both the macroscopic (i.e., what we can observe) and the particulate views (i.e., atoms, molecules, ions, etc.) of matter and the changes it undergoes. Students will design, test, and refine a chemical hot or cold pack using the engineering design process. This unit includes two fundamental ideas in chemistry, the Law of Conservation of Mass and the particulate nature of matter, on which later chemistry instruction builds. This particular set of lessons is focused on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) performance expectations MS-PS1–2 (analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred), MS-PS1–5 (develop and use a model to describe how the total number of atoms does not change in a chemical reaction, and therefore the mass is conserved), and MS-PS1–6 (undertake a design project to construct, test, and modify a device that either releases or absorbs thermal energy by chemical processes). These three performance expectations build on earlier ideas that introduce the particulate nature of matter, including the structure and function of matter. In the NGSS, middle school chemistry is focused on providing particulate explanations for the macroscopic phenomena we can easily observe. The CREATES lessons focus on identifying chemical reactions, differentiating them from physical changes, exploring the energy changes associated with chemical reactions, and understanding the Law of Conservation of Mass.

The authors compare three teachers' adaptations and implementation of a lunar modeling lesson to explain marked differences in student learning outcomes on a spatial-scientific lunar assessment. They used a modified version of the Practices of Science Observation Protocol (P-SOP; Forbes, Biggers, & Zangori, 2013) to identify ways in which features of inquiry were emphasized in each classroom. Additionally, classroom communities of practice were categorized as task-based or practice-based (Riel & Polin, 2004). The authors found that student learning outcomes were related to the fidelity with which the teachers implemented the lesson. Teachers with higher P-SOP scores fostered more of a practice-based learning community than task-based one, which also paralleled greater student learning gains. Although the students' scores did not differ by teacher on the preassessment, they did differ significantly on the postassessment, indicating that the curricular choices and learning communities developed by t...

This study investigated sixth-grade middle-level students' geometric spatial development by gender and race within and between control and experimental groups at two middle schools as they participated in an Earth/Space unit. The control group utilized a regular Earth/Space curriculum and the experimental group used a National Aeronautics and Space Administration-based curriculum. The quantitative data sources included the Lunar Phases Concept Inventory, Geometric Spatial Assessment, and the Purdue Spatial Visualization–Rotation Test. The results indicated the experimental males and females, and the students of color and white students in the experimental group showed significant gains in their understanding of geometric spatial visualization from pre- to post-implementation. However, for the control group, the significant gains were limited to the males and the white students. The findings reveal that support is needed for males, females, and all racial groups to have the opportunity to develop their spatial reasoning, which in turn, increases students' scientific understanding.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Astronomy Education Research.] Multiple studies show that spatial thinking skills contribute to students’ performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. The study of astronomy is no different with the understanding of many astronomical phenomena requiring spatial thinking skills. This paper describes traditional and contemporary approaches to characterizing and measuring spatial thinking skills and suggests how they inform research in astronomy education. It summarizes previous literature in astronomy education research and categorizes the research approaches of astronomy education peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings that explicitly consider the role of spatial thinking. Additionally, it recommends directions and curricular approaches for astronomy education research informed by current research in spatial thinking.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Astronomy Education Research.] We examined teachers’ spatial-scientific reasoning and the alternative conceptions they held regarding Earth-space content. While participating in a professional development (PD) workshop, teachers engaged in an integrated mathematics and science project-based unit designed to foster spatial reasoning and improve lunar-related conceptual understanding. The Purdue Spatial Visualization Test-Rotation (PSVT-Rot) and the Lunar Phases Concept Inventory (LPCI) were used to assess understanding. We found the teachers held similar alternative conceptions as their students. Moreover, we discovered that teachers had limited understanding of the Earth-Moon-Sun scale, motions, and geometric configurations. To determine how teachers’ spatial-scientific confidence and ability translated to their classroom practice, we videotaped and analyzed instruction conducted by 6 teachers on an Earth-space lesson. Two teachers with the highest spatial-scientific confidence and ability had students achieving significant learning outcomes on both the PSVT-Rot and the LPCI.

Relationships between sixth grade students' moon journaling and students' spatial-scientific reasoning after implementation of an Earth/Space unit were examined. Teachers used the project-based Realistic Explorations in Astronomical Learning curriculum. We used a regression model to analyze the relationship between the students' Lunar Phases Concept Inventory (LPCI) post-test score variables and several predictors, including moon journal score, number of moon journal entries, student gender, teacher experience, and pre-test score. The model shows that students who performed better on moon journals, both in terms of overall score and number of entries, tended to score higher on the LPCI. For every 1 point increase in the overall moon journal score, participants scored 0.18 points (out of 20) or nearly 1% point higher on the LPCI post-test when holding constant the effects of the other two predictors. Similarly, students who increased their scores by 1 point in the overall moon journal score scored approxim...

Differences were examined between groups of sixth grade students’ spatial-scientific development pre/post implementation of an Earth/Space unit. Treatment teachers employed a spatially-integrated Earth/Space curriculum, while control teachers implemented their Business as Usual (BAU) Earth/Space units. A multi-level modeling approach was used in a hierarchical manner to evaluate student performance on the Purdue Spatial Visualization: Rotation test (PSVT-Rot) and on the Lunar Phases Concept Inventory (which included four spatial domains), while controlling for two variables (gender and race/ethnicity) at the student level and one variable (teaching experience) at the teacher level. Results showed Treatment girls achieved higher LPCI Periodic Patterns (PP) spatial domain post-scores than girls in the BAU group. A gender gap was also observed (in favor of boys) within the BAU group for PP domain post-scores, while no gap was shown within the Treatment group. In addition, results for PP suggest Students of Color tended to have lower PP scores than White students (Effect Size = .29), and that higher pretest PP scores tended to lead to higher posttest PP scores, after adjusting for other student and teacher characteristics. The only statistically significant predictor of the PSVT-Rot posttest scores were scores on the respective pretest.