This book provides professional development leaders and teachers with a framework for integrating authentic real-world performance tasks into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms. We incorporate elements of problem-based learning to engage students around grand challenges in energy and environment, place-based leaning to motivate students by relating the problem to their community, and Understanding by Design to ensure that understanding key concepts in STEM is the outcome. Our framework has as a basic tenet interdisciplinary STEM approaches to studying real-world problems. We invited professional learning communities of science and mathematics teachers to bring multiple lenses to the study of these problems, including the sciences of biology, chemistry, earth systems and physics, technology through data collection tools and computational science modeling approaches, engineering design around how to collect data, and mathematics through quantitative reasoning. Our goal was to have teachers create opportunities for their students to engage in real-world problems impacting their place; problems that could be related to STEM grand challenges demonstrating the importance and utility of STEM. We want to broaden the participation of students in STEM, which both increases the future STEM workforce, providing our next generation of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians, as well as producing a STEM literate citizenry that can make informed decisions about grand challenges that will be facing their generation. While we provide a specifi c example of an interdisciplinary STEM module, we hope to do more than provide a single fish. Rather we hope to teach you how to fish so you can create modules that will excite your students.

This open access book is the first major publication on the topic of “Interdisciplinary Mathematics Education” and arose from the work of the first International Topic Study Group of the same name at the ICME-13 conference in Hamburg in 2016. It offers extensive theoretical insights, empirical research, and practitioner accounts of interdisciplinary mathematics work in STEM and beyond (e.g. in music and the arts). Scholars and practitioners from four continents contributed to this comprehensive book, and present studies on: the conceptualizations of interdisciplinarity; implementation cases at schools and tertiary institutions; teacher education; and implications for policy and practice. Each chapter, and the book itself, closes with an assessment of the most significant aspects that those involved in policy and practice, as well as future researchers, should take into account.

This valuable resource provides an overview of recent research and strategies in developing and applying modelling to promote practice-based research in STEM education. In doing so, it bridges barriers across academic disciplines by suggesting activities that promote integration of qualitative science concepts with the tools of mathematics and engineering. The volume’s three parts offer a comprehensive review, by 1) Presenting a conceptual background of how scientific inquiry can be induced in mathematics classes considering recommendations of prior research, 2) Collecting case studies that were designed using scientific inquiry process designed for math classes, and 3) Exploring future possibilities and directions for the research included within. Among the topics discussed: · STEM education: A platform for multidisciplinary learning. · Teaching and learning representations in STEM. · Formulating conceptual framework for multidisciplinary STEM modeling. · Exploring function continuity in context. · Exploring function transformations using a dynamic system. Scientific Inquiry in Mathematics - Theory and Practice delivers hands-on and concrete strategies for effective STEM teaching in practice to educators within the fields of mathematics, science, and technology. It will be of interest to practicing and future mathematics teachers at all levels, as well as teacher educators, mathematics education researchers, and undergraduate and graduate mathematics students interested in research based methods for integrating inquiry-based learning into STEM classrooms.

This book celebrates the 15th anniversary of the bi-annual symposium series Mathematics and its Connections to the Arts and Sciences (MACAS), which was first held in 2005 following the continued collaboration of an international group of researchers from ICME Topic Study Group 21. The MACAS-conferences bring together scientists and educators who are interested in the connection between mathematics, arts and science in educational curriculum, while emphasizing on, as well as researching about, the role of mathematics. By pooling together these different approaches and viewpoints between mathematics, arts and sciences, this book reveals possible synergies and paths for collaborations. In view of the challenges of the 21st century, a modern approach to education with a focus on multi- and interdisciplinarity is more important than ever. The role of mathematics assumes a key role in this approach as it is connected to all other disciplines, such as STEM education, physics, chemistry, biology, aesthetics and language, and can serve as a bridge between them. This book discusses, amongst others, the curricular approaches to integrate mathematics and other disciplines, the importance of mathematical modelling and the interdisciplinarity ways for learning and studying of mathematics, as well as the intercultural dimensions of mathematics and mathematics in the digital era. All topics will be presented from very different perspectives and regarding very different contexts, including digitization, culture and sustainability. This unique collection will serve as a very valuable and compact source for all above mentioned scientists and educators, as well as for use in advanced teacher education courses.

An introductory quantitative math book with an environmental theme. The emphasis of this text is on analyzing real environmental information and problems, using mathematics accessible to students with an intermediate algebra background. Students using this text will develop mathematical (and environmental) literacy as they model natural processes using algebraic, graphical and numerical methods, and analyze data quantitatively to assist in objective decision making. The textbook is comprised of 4 principal sections: (1) basic numeracy; (2) function modeling; (3) difference equation modeling, ∧ (4) elementary statistics. Furthermore, this textbook combines both a reform and traditional approach. Traditional in that each chapter presents introductory material, worked examples, multiple student problems, and solutions to odd exercises. It is reform in that it investigates material through a synthesis of algebraic, graphical, numerical and verbal approaches.