Scientist-led K-12 outreach offers many benefits to scientists, teachers, and students; however, many of these programs are top down rather than collaborative. Our team facilitated a museum-based scientist-teacher partnership to co-design a lesson on shark biology for middle school students. Following the implementation of the lesson, we conducted…

In response to the demand to produce highly qualified teachers to fill teacher vacancies in high-need middle school areas while simultaneously strengthening the teacher preparation process, this article highlights how an innovative partnership with a very large school district and multiple colleges within a metropolitan university resulted in a…

In this article, the authors explain the need for clinically rich middle school STEM teacher preparation. They describe how one university and school district with an established partnership collaborated to meet this need. The result was the formation of a residency program that aims to prepare high quality middle school STEM teachers who can fill…

Many K-12 teachers struggle to meet the needs of diverse learners as school reforms promote new disciplinary literacy requirements. In response, language education scholars have argued that teachers must develop "disciplinary linguistic knowledge" (DLK), or an understanding of language in their content area and an ability to design…

Girls in Engineering, Mathematics and Science (GEMS) is a science and math outreach program for middle-school female students. The program was developed to encourage interest in math and science in female students at an early age. Increased scientific familiarity may encourage girls to consider careers in science and mathematics and will also help…

Middle school teachers' use of digital curricula incorporating dynamic technology has been found to support student learning of complex algebraic concepts. This article reports on pilot research involving collaboration among faculty from a public university's college of education, educational researchers from a nonprofit research organization, and…