Creating Project-Based STEM Environments: The REAL Way

This book models project-based environments that are intentionally designed around the United States Common Core State Standards (CCSS, 2010) for Mathematics, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) for Science, and the National Educational Technology Standards (ISTE, 2008).  The primary purpose of this book is to reveal how middle school STEM classrooms can be purposefully designed for 21st Century learners and provide evidence regarding how situated learning experiences will result in more advanced learning. This Project-Based Instruction (PBI) resource illustrates how to design and implement interdisciplinary project-based units based on the REAL (Realistic Explorations in Astronomical Learning – Unit 1) and CREATES (Chemical Reactions Engineered to Address Thermal Energy Situations – Unit 2). The content of the book details these two PBI units with authentic student work, explanations and research behind each lesson (including misconceptions students might hold regarding STEM content), pre/post research results of unit implementation with over 40 teachers and thousands of students. In addition to these two units, there are chapters describing how to design one’s own research-based PBI units incorporating teacher commentaries regarding strategies, obstacles overcome, and successes as they designed and implemented their PBI units for the first time after learning how to create PBI STEM Environments the “REAL” way.

Ronald Wilhelm is currently a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kentucky. He obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from Michigan State University.