Complementing the aims of problem‐based inquiry, a pedagogical approach called design thinking (DT) has students grapple with issues that require a creative redefinition and reimagining of solutions akin to professional skills of designers, who consider conflicting priorities and complex negotiations to arrive at a solution to an ill‐defined problem. This article aims to synthesize the limited existing literature on the use of DT in the K–12 classroom, share two exemplars of DT in action in Grades 3–5 so that science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) educators, teacher educators, researchers, and other stakeholders can visualize how it can take shape in the elementary classroom, followed by concluding remarks on DT. The DT framework provides an exciting avenue for teaching more than simply the content areas of STEAM, it provides a vehicle through which a true transdisciplinary learning experience can occur—where students are passionately invested in solving problems as they strive to make the world a better place.

The purpose of this study was to increase the science education community’s understanding of the experiences and needs of girls who cross the traditional categorical boundaries of gender, race and socioeconomic status in a manner that has left their needs and experience largely invisible. A first of several in a series, this study sought to explore how African American girls from low SES communities position themselves in science learning. We followed a mixed-methods sequential explanatory strategy, in which two data collection phases, qualitative following the quantitative, were employed to investigate 89 African-American girls’ personal orientations towards science learning. By using quantitative data from the Modified Attitudes toward Science Inventory to organize students into attitude profiles and then sequentially integrating the profile scores with year-long interview data, we found that the girls’ orientations towards science were best described in terms of definitions of science, importance of science, experiences with science, and success in science. Therefore, our mixed method analysis provided four personality orientations which linked success in school and experiences with science to confidence and importance of science and definitions of science to value/desire. In our efforts to decrease the achievement gap, we concluded there should be more emphasis on conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills, while still being cognizant of the danger of losing the connection between science and society which so often plagues achievement-focused efforts. Our continued efforts with this group of girls will center on these instructional techniques with the goal of addressing the needs of all science learners.

This study examines how a first‐year biology teacher facilitates a series of whole‐class discussions about evolution during the implementation of a problem‐based unit. A communicative theoretical perspective is adopted wherein evolution discussions are viewed as social events that the teacher can frame intellectually (i.e., present or organize as exchanges of an intellectual nature). Furthermore, we characterize teacher framing of evolution discussion in terms of five communicative components: focus, orientation, social structure, mood, and participatory nature. Our video‐based analyses revealed that the teacher paid little attention to the conceptual contents and history of evolutionary theory, framing evolution discussions as moderately playful and partially mandatory events focused mainly on student sharing of ideas (i.e., personal opinions) and polite communication of evolution. Within this framing, the teacher adopted the role of a neutral (though admittedly biased) facilitator with an intermediary expert status (less knowledgeable than evolutionary biologists) and who was legally required (though also inclined) to discuss evolution. The main significance of this study is that it provides new and useful insights into social phenomena such as respect, politeness, and humor in the context of evolution discussion as well as a robust theoretical framework for analyzing evolution discussion from a social perspective. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 257–280, 2011

In this study, we investigated the ways in which university students connected with science through the use of photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1994) as a pedagogical tool. Results indicated that students came to appreciate their connections to the science that operates in their lives as they reflected on and became empowered with regard to the science content behind environmental issues of interest to them on campus. Photovoice allowed students to authentically inquire about local science, as well as the potential to generate change in their own community. This understanding is significant to science educators because first, it empowers learners to connect with science and provides a way to deepen that connection with science; and second, it provides a pedagogical tool for science educators to use with their students to engage them in the science in their community. Finally, it has the potential to improve science teaching by creating students that are more connected to science and th 3 e world around them.

In their work with teachers and community members in Kenya, Cassie Quigley and colleagues seek to localize the 'wicked problems' (Churchman in Manag Sci 14(4): [141][142] 1967) of environmental sustainability through the use of decolonizing methods to challenge top-down approaches to solution-generation in the bountiful yet environmentally compromised Rift Valley. By contextualizing the study of sustainability in this way, science education research can assume the form of community engagement that is ultimately meaningful and maximally impactful to teachers, students, and to the local community. This type of engagement requires re-conceptualizing science knowledge, science practitioners, and science education, as well as moving from a focus on transmission of decontextualized knowledge toward activities embedded in particular places and in matters of local concern. Environmental issues, which at their heart are complex, contentious wicked problems, require a weighing in of multiple perspectives if attempts at resolution are to be sustained by the local community. In concert with Quigley and colleagues' work with Kenyan teachers and community members exploring notions of environmental sustainability, this article frames the decolonizing methodology of photovoice using Jürgen Habermas' theory of communicative action to expand on theoretical underpinnings for inclusive deliberation of wicked environmental problems.