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NSF Awards $346K Grant for National STEM+C Integration Workshop

NSF will bring together investigators and educators for a 4-day workshop that will drive STEM+C curriculum K-12.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced a more than $346,000 grant through its Division of Research on Learning for a four and a half-day workshop at the Education Development Center (EDC) in Waltham, Mass. The STEM+Computing (STEM+C) seeks to advance integration of computing and computational thinking in elementary, middle and high school science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.

The workshop will bring together educators and education researchers to define the specific characteristics and learning assessments of computational thinking as it occurs within disciplinary learning in K-12.

According to the NSF grant award abstract:

Given the scarcity of research defining computational thinking in the other STEM disciplines, and the equal scarcity of research on how to integrate computational thinking in the early grades through high school, there is an urgent need to bring together education researchers, K-12 practitioners, and disciplinary scientists to collaborate on the development of an evidence-based framework for defining computational thinking from an interdisciplinary perspective.”

The workshop will be part of an 18-month effort guided EDC, a pre-approved, federally qualified vendor through the General Services Administration Federal Supply Schedules. Workshop participants will include education researchers, K-12 practitioners, disciplinary scientists, principal investigators from NSF’s programs and national thought leaders in education and computing.

The structure of the workshop will be organized by grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12 by subject matter as well as in mixed groups. External evaluation of the workshop will present findings on project goals and objectives.

NSF also recently funded EDC’s partnership with WGBH Boston to design interactive programs for children ages three to five that engage them in science and computational thinking skills.