Blogs
The rate at which women enroll in four-year colleges and complete bachelor’s degrees continues to outpace the rate for men. In fact, by 2025 women will represent nearly 60 percent of all university students. Yet despite their growing numbers on college campuses, women remain a small minority among students majoring in physical, engineering, mathematics, and computer (PEMC) sciences. It seems […]
Contrary to popular assumption – mathematics is not culture-free. This Harvard Family Research Practice post, created in partnership with TODOS: Mathematics for ALL (TODOS), an international organization that advocates for equity and high-quality mathematics education for all students, particularly those who are Latino or Latina, delves into how mathematics teachers can establish equitable, rigorous, and coherent mathematics programs in their classrooms.
In the past 20 years, parents have taken to heart public-awareness campaigns urging them to read to their children every night. But math initiatives have not gained as much traction—even as emerging evidence suggests early math may be one of the most critical school-readiness skills.
Schools that engage families find that their students have higher grades, show faster rates of literacy acquisition, attend school more regularly and are more likely to graduate. Since 1994, when the United States Department of Education released the Strong Families, Strong Schools report, a growing body of research has continued to support the conclusion that family engagement is a key factor in […]
Opportunity is knocking for the next champion of the world’s longest-running, largest, most prestigious and most inclusive high school STEM competition to step forward: International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) is up for grabs.
KC STEM Alliance, one of the lead partners of ecosySTEM KC, calls on its network of industry and nonprofit partners to enrich student and teacher experiences with Project Lead The Way, a national project-based in-school curriculum. The approach is working: Student enrollment increased 92 percent from 2014-15 to 2015-16, reaching more than 37,000 students in 33 school districts. To kick […]
A recent STELAR blog post details the scale-up of CompuGirls, Phoenix-based program that uses social justice-based multimedia projects to engage young women in activities that increase knowledge, understanding, and awareness of careers in STEM and information and communications technology (ICT). PI Kimberly Scott of Arizona State noted, “probably the most important learning surrounds the role of teachers in the program. […]
A recent blog post at informalscience.org focused on the progress made thus far through Equity Pathways in Informal STEM Learning a Science Learning+ Phase 1 project exploring equity issues for 11-14 year olds from underserved, non-dominant backgrounds in informal STEM learning. So far the project has found that equity concerns represent an urgent and significant challenge for informal STEM learning […]
Allen Grossman and Ann Lombard of the Harvard Business School have released a new report: Business Aligning for Students: The Promise of Collective Impact, which is rich with lessons and ideas for STEM learning ecosystems seeking to expand business involvement. The report contains data from a survey of business leaders and collective impact initiatives and details the roles that business […]
Ellen Lettvin, the Robert Noyce Senior Fellow in Informal STEM Learning in the Office Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, wrote this post describing the collaborations among multiple federal agencies and 21st Century Learning Centers across the country to enhance STEM learning in OST. The agencies include NASA, the National Park Service (NPS) and the Institute of Museum and […]
