Skip to content

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.

National Science Foundation

Case Studies of a Suite of Next Generation Science Instructional, Assessment and Professional Development Materials Implemented in Diverse Middle School Settings

Award #1907944

Sponsor: National Science Foundation

Partners: Gooru Navigator; Colorado State University

Students develop solutions to real-world life science problems by engineering solutions:

Lanternfly poster

Student solution for stink bugsTrap design for stink bugs

Last Updated: 11/28/23