ABSTRACT
Rationale The most common teaching style used in science and engineering at the K-16 level is traditional instruction, which does not foster interdisciplinary thinking. Many efforts have been done to promote conceptual learning [1-8]. However, within each discipline, limited efforts have been focused on encouraging students to think across disciplines [9,10]. Science instruction at all levels is done typically in the following way: (1) The material presented illustrates the topics in the curriculum in an outdated fashion. (2) The curriculum was planned to be taught discipline specific, thus promoting learning of concepts in a fragmented fashion with no links to other disciplines. (3) Lack of relevance to current research findings detracts
students to pursue advanced degrees in STEM fields. (4) Resistance from faculty that are not familiar with interdiscipli-nary learning often hinders the implementation of innovative and interdisciplinary educational modules and laboratories.Nanoscience and technology is an intrinsic interdisciplinary science that brings together chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, mathematics, and ethics [5,11-14]. Incorporating nanoscience
concepts into the curriculum creates the perfect scenario to mode-rnize the curriculum, promote interdisciplinary thinking, bring current research finding to the classroom, and encourage societal and ethical implications in the classroom. Having identified the need for engaging and relevant educational materials, the leadership of the center has devised a two prong approach to involve researchers and fellows in contributing to the efforts of educating the next-generation workforce by (1) fostering the development of pedago-gical and communication skills of undergraduate and graduate fellows, by disseminating interdisciplinary inquiry based educational material developed by fellows inspired by NASA research and (2) infusing NASA mission in the K-16 curriculum by implementing educational materials developed by fellows.Implementing nanoscience educational materials in the K-16 curriculum present challenges in: the way of inserting the lessons, identifying the level necessary for the students, identifying the nanoscience topics that have relevance in the curriculum, identifying classical topics that must be retained in the curriculum, training educators in the this area, technical language inherent to each discipline, and developing and implementing appropriate activities where students can derive appropriate conclusions from the material presented [9,10,15]. 11.3 Methodology: Conceptualization and
Designing the Appropriate Hands-On ActivitiesThe result of this initiative bridges the gap between innovative, state-of-the art research relevant to NASA and science education by developing interdisciplinary and relevant educational modules to impact the next generation of future scientists. The research scientist, graduate and undergraduate fellows use their research as an inspiration to develop engaging and hands-on activities in STEM for the K-16 classroom. Researchers and educators work as a team in conceptualizing, developing, implementing and evaluating educational modules that bring research into the classroom and that are relevant to the science curriculum, at the appropriate pedagogical level.
