This study aims to explore the middle schoolers' common naive conceptions of AI and the evolution of these conceptions during an AI summer camp. Data were collected from 14 middle school students (12 boys and 2 girls) from video observations and learning artifacts. The findings revealed 6 naive conceptions about AI concepts: (1) AI was the same as…

In conjunction with local middle schools, the Make to Learn Lab in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia offered a two-week Summer Engineering Academy for students who completed an introductory engineering course during the previous school year. In that course, students worked with circuits and advanced…

A learning experience designed for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) should integrate the Science & Engineering Practices and Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs) with science content. Such "three-dimensional learning" engages students in the epistemic components of the scientific process. Whether the Practices and CCCs are used…

DesignYOU! Code Camp is a grant-funded summer outreach camp designed to increase interest in coding and STEM careers among middle school students (6th - 8th graders) through an innovative, immersive summer camp experience. To make the concepts of coding more palpable, researchers incorporated fashion and retail allowing students to learn through…

The STEM-based sports sectors supply vital careers in clinical, athletic, and educational settings. Long-term planning is necessary to foster student interest in STEM based sports disciplines and for this purpose, educational institutions must provide learners with information about STEM careers before starting high school and encourage them to…

The purpose of this study was to pilot the DREAMS (Desire, Readiness, Empowerment, Action, and Mastery for Success) program, a community-collaborative, after-school intervention program designed specifically to address the holistic developmental needs of students at school. The author originally developed and implemented the program in Kerala,…

We report on a case study of eight grade 5 to 6 students (ages 12-14) involved in a three-day "digital-making summer camp" focused on mathematical problem-solving through block-based programming combined with programmable electronics. Data analysis focused on the computational thinking (CT), mathematics, and problem-solving challenges…

Locally and nationally, English Learners (ELs) struggle to achieve parity with their monolingual peers in reading. In addition to second language-related considerations, ELs' efforts to succeed in reading may be thwarted by poverty, trauma, interrupted education, barriers to effective instruction and parental engagement, limited parental…

Rehearsals have become an increasingly popular pedagogy to support preservice teachers in developing competency in enacting challenging instructional practices and communicating associated pedagogical commitments. To understand how best to support learners participating in rehearsals, researchers have begun to analyse the facilitation of teacher…

This article addresses tensions between how researchers have conceptualized and operationalized adolescent reading motivation and how a group of Black girl readers perceive and enact reading motivation. Through a grounded theory approach, this qualitative study offers an initial exploration into mapping a race-reimaged reading motivation construct…

This multi-methods study explores changes in engineering interest and identity of middle and high school students (n = 79) attending introductory-level engineering summer camps at a large western land grant university. Middle school is a critical time when student interest, identity, and subsequently career choice begin to emerge and hence it is…

This paper articulates an approach to incorporating instructor feedback in design-based research. Throughout the process of designing and implementing curriculum to support middle school students' debugging practices in a summer computer science workshop, our research and practice team utilized instructor-generated conjecture maps as boundary…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore the impact of informal STEM education on underrepresented middle school girls. The study took place within the context of the EUREKA! summer program, a collaboration between Drexel University's Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering and Girls Inc. of Philadelphia and…

In this component mixed methods study, we analyzed two STEM teacher candidates' constructivist practices during their alternative route to licensure summer teacher education program. The findings suggest that the STEM teacher candidates incorporated all six components of constructivism in their instruction, although each candidate focused on…

Mathematics educators and researchers have increasingly integrated social justice-oriented tasks into their classrooms. Teaching mathematics for social justice (TMfSJ) aims to help students develop mathematical knowledge in ways that promote students' abilities to critique the communities of which they are members (Ellis & Malloy, 2007;…