Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Indiana STEM Education Conference: Resourcing STEM Education

The Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Indiana STEM Education Conference are edited by the Center for Advancing the Teaching and Learning of STEM (CATALYST, https://www.education.purdue.edu/catalyst/) at Purdue University. The theme for the 2024 conference is Resourcing STEM Education. This year’s Indiana STEM Education Conference provides opportunities to learn about effective STEM education strategies, curriculum, and resources to engage students in integrated STEM learning opportunities and address the recently updated Indiana Academic Standards for Science and Computer Science, Indiana Academic Standards for Mathematics, and Indiana Academic Standards for Integrated STEM (https://www.in.gov/doe/students/indiana-academic-standards/)

Critical Mindset as a 21st Century Skill: Challenging Heteronormative Assumptions through Teaching High School Biology

This study focuses on the lived experience of an experienced biology teacher and their desire/ability to develop a gender-inclusive curriculum. Grounding on a narrative inquiry methodology, the narratives of our genderqueer high school biology teacher illustrate their beliefs about biology teaching and advancing students’ knowledge in ways that empower the students. The study highlights a need to teach biology in a way that develops students\u27 critical mindset as part of a 21st-century skill by emphasizing and weaving sociopolitical issues into their curriculum

The effects of nuclear structure on generalized parton distributions of 3He

The effect of the nuclear medium on generalized parton distributions (GPDs) is studied for the 3He nucleus, through a realistic microscopic analysis. In Impulse Approximation, Fermi motion and binding effects, evaluated by modern potentials, are found to be larger than in the forward case and very sensitive to the details of nuclear structure at short distances.Comment: 4 pages, talk given at the Conference "Baryons 2004", October 25-29 2004, Pailaseau (France), to be published by Nuc. Phys.

Frameworks to Develop Integrated STEM Curricula

Research-based frameworks can help K-12 schools develop integrated STEM curricula. Two frameworks are presented that describe the characteristics of effective integrated STEM lessons and effective engineering education. The second framework is a modification of the first. Modifications were made to align the framework to a school that was new to integrated STEM. The frameworks have promise for K-12 schools who wish to develop and implement an integrated STEM curriculum that may have different levels of experience and different types of support

Neutron spin structure with polarized deuterons and spectator proton tagging at EIC

The neutron's deep-inelastic structure functions provide essential information for the flavor separation of the nucleon parton densities, the nucleon spin decomposition, and precision studies of QCD phenomena in the flavor-singlet and nonsinglet sectors. Traditional inclusive measurements on nuclear targets are limited by dilution from scattering on protons, Fermi motion and binding effects, final-state interactions, and nuclear shadowing at x << 0.1. An Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) would enable next-generation measurements of neutron structure with polarized deuteron beams and detection of forward-moving spectator protons over a wide range of recoil momenta (0 < p_R < several 100 MeV in the nucleus rest frame). The free neutron structure functions could be obtained by extrapolating the measured recoil momentum distributions to the on-shell point. The method eliminates nuclear modifications and can be applied to polarized scattering, as well as to semi-inclusive and exclusive final states. We review the prospects for neutron structure measurements with spectator tagging at EIC, the status of R&D efforts, and the accelerator and detector requirements.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. To appear in proceedings of Tensor Polarized Solid Target Workshop, Jefferson Lab, March 10-12, 201

A High-Quality Professional Development for Teachers of Grades 3–6 for Implementing Engineering into Classrooms

With the increasing emphasis on integrating engineering into K-12 classrooms to help meet the needs of our complex and multidisciplinary society, there is an urgent need to investigate teachers\u27 engineering-focused professional development experiences as they relate to teacher learning, implementation, and student achievement. This study addresses this need by examining the effects of a professional development program focused on engineering integration, and how teachers chose to implement engineering in their classrooms as a result of the professional development. 198 teachers in grades 3–6 from 43 schools in 17 districts participated in a yearlong professional development program designed to help integrate the new state science standards, with a focus on engineering, into their teaching. Posters including lesson plans and student artifacts were used to assess teachers\u27 engineering practices and the implementation in their classrooms. Results indicated that the majority of the teachers who participated in the professional development were able to effectively implement engineering design lessons in their classrooms suggesting that the teachers\u27 success in implementing engineering lessons in their classroom was closely related to the structure of the professional development program