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This study examined different approaches to integrating engineering practices in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum units. These various approaches were correlated with student outcomes on engineering assessment items. There are numerous reform documents in the USA and around the world that emphasize the need to incorporate engineering into science education. The authors of this study contend that different approaches to integrating engineering in STEM units correlate to larger student achievement gains in engineering, based on assessment items developed from the Framework for Quality K-12 Engineering Education (Moore, Glancy, Tank, Kersten, & Smith, 2014). The goal of this work is not to establish one singular working definition for how to integrate the disciplines of STEM but rather to focus on characteristics of integrating engineering within STEM curricular units that are associated with higher student achievement gains in engineering for the students involved in this study. The results indicate that when engineering is introduced at the beginning of the unit to provide context for the learning, and revisited throughout the duration of the unit, student achievement gains with engineering assessment items are greater than when engineering is incorporated only at the end of the unit as a design challenge in the form of a culminating project.

The unique circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic required that instruction be shifted online through asynchronous, synchronous, or hybrid models of instruction. This created a need for many K-12 teachers to dramatically rethink how teaching and learning occurred in their classrooms. In this study, we investigate the experiences of early-career science teachers who were in their first year of teaching when the pandemic struck. Using a comparative case study and an analytical framework focused on technology-related leader practices, we explore the unique opportunities for technology-based leadership that emerged for early-career teachers during the pandemic. We posit that the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic presented novel opportunities for early-career teachers to assume leadership roles that were embedded within the classroom teaching experience, which created unique opportunities for innovation and leadership in teaching.