Science and Mathematics/STEM

While most practitioners recognize the need to better support students, especially those who have been historically underserved, many struggle in knowing, concretely, how to do so.

Kara Jackson, an assistant professor of education in the University of Washington College of Education, is working to change that and improve middle-grades mathematics teaching and learning at a district-wide scale.

This fall, influential education researcher Bronwyn Bevan joins the University of Washington College of Education as a senior research scientist, bringing her expertise on how institutional settings influence learning opportunities to the Pacific Northwest. For 25 years, Bevan has worked to broaden and improve out-of-school learning opportunities for culturally and linguistically diverse students. In particular, her work has focused on inquiry-based learning, tinkering and making in education, and policy advocacy for out-of-school learning.

The latest edition of Research That Matters, "Passion & Promise," explores how the UW College of Education is approaching the biggest challenges in education with a spirit of possibility. The following story about the College's Partnership for Science & Engineering Practices with the Seattle and Renton school districts also appears in the online version of the magazine.

A University of Washington project that aims to create a STEM career pipeline for low-income and immigrant youth in West Seattle will be featured during the first-ever White House Summit on Next Generation High Schools this week.

The University of Washington College of Education's efforts to strengthen the nation's STEM teaching workforce will be discussed during an Oct. 28 summit at the White House.

New R&D project will develop a novel curriculum to engage diverse middle and high school students in STEM inquiry through computing.

UW Professor Philip Bell is the recipient of the 2015 Washington Science Teachers Association (WSTA) Teacher of the Year Award for Higher Education. Bell, who holds the Shauna C. Larson Chair in Learning Sciences at UW College of Education, is being recognized for the work he and his team have done to help develop and implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) with a focus on equity, in partnership with a network of organizations across the state and country.

In a fifth-grade classroom in south Seattle this May, pairs of students pulled vibrant cardboard cubes from a stack and presented them to four panelists.

The boxes were covered with neon duct tape and filled with tubes, popsicle sticks, batteries and matchboxes. While these materials might sound like the ingredients for a simple fifth-grade craft project, there were big ideas in those popsicle sticks.

A flood of new technologies can change how people learn, live and work nearly overnight. For educators like Elzena McVicar, who teaches elementary English language learners in Seattle Public Schools, it's easy to feel overwhelmed.

"I know that I’m expected to teach 21st century skills to my students, but I only have four computers in my classroom, so I had a big problem of practice," McVicar said.

Encouraging students to ask questions, to conduct thoughtful experiments and even to get a bit messy in the lab are among the many joys Erin Flynn and Gretel von Bargen experience in their biology classes.