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Endeavor STEM Teaching Certificate Project
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Endeavor STEM Courses

Endeavor STEM graduate-level courses emphasize integrated STEM teaching and learning practices with standards-based content. Educators learn to apply practices that engage students in authentic real-world problem-solving scenarios. Each course integrates across disciplinary areas and focuses on authentic data connections from collaborating partner organizations. Through a Space Act Agreement with NASA Office of STEM Engagement, NASA personnel collaborate with educators in live, online, interactive sessions.

We highly recommended beginning the STEM Certificate and Master's degree tracks with the Methods of STEM Education course. The final course is either the STEM Leadership Seminar (5-course and Master's degree track) or the Practicum in STEM Leadership (3-course track).

All sessions are Eastern time.

Click on the course titles for more information.

Target Grade(s): PK-12

Socioscientific issues are important avenues through which to teach scientific literacy and to create the next generation of critical thinkers and sustainable solution engineers. Anthropogenic climate change is one of the most complex and critical issues the global community faces today. Understanding climate change and the scientific, social, and economic ramifications is crucial for science pedagogues. This course examines the ideas of socioscientific issues and critical thinking in science education and how they can be taught through NGSS-aligned global change pedagogies that highlight climate and energy literacy. Pedagogues will learn to utilize authentic data resources that elucidate the story of our changing climate and think critically about how to implement data into their teaching. The philosophical, ethical, and scientific basis of these problems and their solutions will be discussed.

Upon completion of this course, educators will be able to:

  • Develop climate literacy to encourage an intrinsic understanding of anthropogenic climate change issues and solutions.
  • Plan and teach with data, simulations and models to increase opportunities for students to learn through inquiry and build data literacy.
  • Apply a socioscientific issue (SSI) approach to facilitate student learning while valuing students' ideas, attitudes and pre-held beliefs, and present strategies to successfully negotiate these topics.
  • Recognize authentic data connections for integrating climate science into grade level appropriate lessons.

Target Grade(s): K-12

Students can excel with STEM content when teachers implement innovative student-centered classroom practices. In this course, educators learn to apply research-based practices valued in NGSS-based classrooms. Educators gain resources for selecting and integrating authentic data, planning student-centered lessons, making learning culturally and community based, and developing meaningful assessments for STEM activities. In a collaborative environment, participants learn to integrate engineering design into their STEM classroom and appropriately represent the Nature of STEM, recognizing that each discipline is essential to authentic learning opportunities. Teacher educators share many resources and model STEM teaching to engage students in the active process of STEM learning and applying critical thinking skills to real-world scenarios. This foundations course is the basis for the Endeavor STEM program electives where concepts and practices are explored further.

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

  • Describe, compare, and implement a variety of pedagogical strategies, including assessment strategies that will enable aged students to learn science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
  • Understand the Nature of STEM and the value of each component for authentic instruction.
  • Identify a variety of resources to meet NGSS performance expectations in STEM education.
  • Conduct investigations and use data to contextualize understanding through applied practices.
  • Develop integrated STEM lessons based on reform-based recommendations, i.e., NGSS and CCSS

Target Grade(s): PK-12

Educators excel at creating and managing classroom environments that allow students opportunities to make sense of new ideas and deepen their understanding of the world around them. Through facilitating student interactions and carefully implementing meaningful activities to provide all learners opportunities to engage in the learning process, teachers encourage “sense-making” of new ideas, a skill set that is understood as central to the craft of teaching. Sense-making is a social and collaborative process of active engagement with new information, and requires that learners have opportunities to discuss, debate, reason, and reflect so that they can deconstruct and reconstruct their understanding. Participants in the is course will learn specific skills and practices for facilitating student interactions that lead students to make sense of new ideas.

Upon completion of this course, educators will be able to:

  • Identify strategies that give all students opportunities for sense-making.
  • Think critically about modeling instruction as an equity practice.
  • Develop instructional models appropriate for use in teaching STEM content.
  • Purposeful select, plan for, and implement practices that support student to student engagement.
  • Plan and implement opportunities for critical thinking and reasoning through use of selected tools.
  • Engage with colleagues in the course in a respectful and productive learning environment, modeling equity pedagogy.

Target Grade(s): K-12

The Advanced Coding, Robotics, and 1:1 Devices (ACRD) extends students’ knowledge of programming and robotics that began in part one of this course. The ACRD class begins with a foundational understanding of the types of programming and integrated development environments to implement the various platforms with students in the hybrid classroom. ACRD students will gain fundamental understanding of data and methods of visualization which is crucial to the success at every level of programming and robotics. The programming platforms selected for this course will incorporate data as practiced in workplace settings. The platforms support mobile application development, data entry & manufacturing, augmented and virtual reality, 3D printing, and virtual robotics. The sessions present each topic within three paradigms: the mindset, the beginner’s sandbox, and the intermediate immersion (referred to as Level 1,2, and 3 respectively in the course artifacts). This layered prepares teachers to guide students, including our youngest scholars, on a journey to establish computational thinking on levels aligned with readiness. ACRD students will collaborate about lesson planning ideas through online Flipgrid, office hours, and a culminating hackathon to showcase projects.

Target Grade(s): PK-12

This course introduces a wealth of applied mathematics exercises and activities relevant to integrated STEM and applied science activities. Some are in the realm of topics seen in Earth and Space science and physics. Live presenters break down authentic examples and projects, and demonstrate to educators how problems incorporate Common Core State Standards-based mathematics with applications that meet Next Generation Science Standards performance expectations. Educators survey math and science examples and tools as the course promotes the use of applied mathematics in science, or science in mathematics, to meet content goals in the classroom.

Upon completion of this course, educators will be able to:

  • Use science problems and integrated-STEM examples which apply mathematics to meet math learning goals.
  • Adopt a curriculum unit or sequence to incorporate applied math learning in a science, mathematics, or other classroom(s).
  • Integrate math and science content in authentic contexts to motivate learners.
  • Scaffold mathematics content with science concepts for effective instructional materials.


NASA
This material is based upon work supported by NASA under grant or cooperative agreement award number NNX08BA63A. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
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