Life Right Here & Everywhere
A National Science Foundation Project
Solutioning: An Approach to Learning Life Science through Science and Engineering Practices
The global pandemic and climate change have led to unprecedented environmental, social, and economic challenges with interdisciplinary STEM foundations. Even as STEM learning has never been more critical, few instructional programs prepare students to apply classroom learning to the engineering design of solutions.
This project focuses on designing and evaluating a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) curricular unit where middle school student learning is used in the generation of solutions to local problems, such as increasing indigenous populations of insects within local urban neighborhoods. The learning approach, solutioning, emphasizes learning life science content through the NGSS science and engineering practices.
The materials are designed for middle school students and teachers in a range of culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse schools in urban areas including Philadelphia, New York City, and Northern Utah. Case study research provides results on students’ and teachers’ learning, the benefits provided by the Gooru Learning Navigator platform, and changes in classroom practice.
Award #1907944
Sponsor: National Science Foundation
Partners: Gooru Navigator; Colorado State University
Students develop solutions to real-world life science problems by engineering solutions:
Who We Are
Resources & Media
Conference Papers and Journal Articles
Partner School
Girard College - Philadelphia, PA