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The inclusion of engineering in the Next Generation Science Standards as a key component of K-12 science learning has provided both opportunities and challenges for elementary teachers. One challenge is integrating the design thinking processes that undergird engineering with core science concepts and current issues facing scientists and the broader world. The study of oceans, waves, and shorelines allows children to explore factors that impact both humans and the environment and provides a context for authentic engineering challenges that are accessible to elementary students. Here, Sisk-Hilton and Ferner present engineering challenges that were integrated into a larger unit on living shorelines.

The inclusion of engineering in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) as a key component of K-12 science learning has provided both opportunities and challenges for elementary teachers. One challenge is integrating the design thinking processes that undergird engineering with core science concepts and current issues facing scientists and the broader world (NRC 2007). The study of oceans, waves, and shorelines allows children to explore factors that impact both humans and the environment and provides a context for authentic engineering challenges that are accessible to elementary students. The engineering challenges the authors present here were integrated into a larger unit on living shorelines. The ideas were originally developed as part of a teacher professional development institute in which K-5 teachers explored the local shorelines of the San Francisco Bay Area and engaged in engineering challenges to better understand the role of engineering in the NGSS. The engineering challenges were then piloted with children at a science camp for grade 3-7 students and then taught as part of the science curriculum in a fourth-grade classroom. In each of these settings, the driving question was: How do we engage with the coastline in ways that benefit nature and humankind through engineering design?

The \"Next Generation Science Standards\" (\"NGSS\") challenge prevalent beliefs that young children are \"not ready\" to understand natural selection, introducing core aspects in grades 1, 2, and 3 (NGSS Lead States 2013). The authors' research and teaching team engaged in a multiyear project to understand how early grades instruction can support a learning progression toward full understanding of natural selection. To do this, the authors drew upon several key aspects of how children (and adults!) learn science. First, understanding the process of natural selection requires significant \"content knowledge\" of organisms' structures and functions and their interaction with the environment (Gelman and Brenneman 2004). Second, learning experiences need to focus on the \"explanatory utility\" of ideas (NRC 2007). Finally, throughout the unit they drew on the power of narrative as an aid in building and understanding scientific explanations. The unit described in this article uses the context of crickets to explore the concept of natural selection in ways that capitalize on these three principles. The sequence of lessons described herein is part of a much longer unit on animal behavior and natural selection. However, the section described here has also been taught independently in second- through fourth-grade classrooms in both the United States and China. In all settings, children showed increased understanding of the process of natural selection by unit's end. The authors have correlated these lessons to third-grade \"NGSS\" goals, but they can be easily adjusted to address either second- or fourth-grade standards as well.

This study examines the two way relationship between an inquiry-based professional development model and teacher enactors. The two year study follows a group of teachers enacting the emergent Supporting Knowledge Integration for Inquiry Practice (SKIIP) professional development model. This study seeks to: (a) identify activity structures in the model that interact with teachers' underlying assumptions regarding professional development and inquiry learning; (b) explain key decision points during implementation in terms of these underlying assumptions; and (c) examine the impact of key activity structures on individual teachers' stated belief structures regarding inquiry learning. Linn's knowledge integration framework facilitates description and analysis of teacher development. Three sets of tensions emerge as themes that describe and constrain participants' interaction with and learning through the model. These are: learning from the group vs. learning on one's own; choosing and evaluating evidence based on impressions vs. specific criteria; and acquiring new knowledge vs. maintaining feelings of autonomy and efficacy. In each of these tensions, existing group goals and operating assumptions initially fell at one end of the tension, while the professional development goals and forms fell at the other. Changes to the model occurred as participants reacted to and negotiated these points of tension. As the group engaged in and modified the SKIIP model, they had repeated opportunities to articulate goals and to make connections between goals and model activity structures. Over time, decisions to modify the model took into consideration an increasingly complex set of underlying assumptions and goals. Teachers identified and sought to balance these tensions. This led to more complex and nuanced decision making, which reflected growing capacity to consider multiple goals in choosing activity structures to enact. The study identifies key activity structures that scaffolded this process for teachers, and which ultimately promoted knowledge integration at both the group and individual levels. This study is an “extreme case” which examines implementation of the SKIIP model under very favorable conditions. Lessons learned regarding appropriate levels of model responsiveness, likely areas of conflict between model form and teacher underlying assumptions, and activity structures that scaffold knowledge integration provide a starting point for future, larger scale implementation.