Legend has it that Isaac Newton was sitting under a tree when an apple fell on his head, sparking a bout of scientific thinking that led to the theory of gravity. It's one of the most famous stories in science, perhaps because it shows the power of simple human experiences to revolutionize our understanding of the world around us. Instead of learning biology with a pen and paper, students become biomedical researchers designing a tissue regeneration therapy. Instead of learning trigonometry in a textbook, students become rural architects designing a new school building. 'We're building a whole new learning platform, methodology, and tech infrastructure that allows students to experience problems in the first person, not through abstractions or 2D screens, and then go from that experience to ascribe meaning, language, and build up to equations, procedures, and other nomenclature,' Ganguly explains. Today PrismsVR has been used by about 300,000 students across 35 states. The company's approach was shown to boost algebra test scores by 11 percent in one study, with larger, multistate studies currently underway through funding from the Gates Foundation....

To graduate with a science major, college students must complete between 40 and 60 credit hours of science coursework. That means spending around 2,500 hours in the classroom throughout their undergraduate career. However, research has shown that despite all that effort, most college science courses give students only a fragmented understanding of fundamental scientific concepts. The teaching method reinforces memorization of isolated facts, proceeding from one textbook chapter to the next without necessarily making connections between them, instead of learning how to use the information and connect those facts meaningfully. The ability to make these connections is important beyond the classroom as well, because it's the basis of science literacy: the ability to use scientific knowledge to accurately evaluate information and make decisions based on evidence. As a chemistry education researcher, I have been working since 2019 with my colleague Sonia Underwood to learn more about how chemistry students integrate and apply their knowledge to other scientific disciplines....

When advocates push for computer science education, usually they're talking about boosting the number of schools offering computer science classes ' with the intent to reach more students. But from our perspective as scholars of computer science education, a key factor is how many teachers are qualified to teach the subject. Data from 2020 indicates that in one of the most advanced high school computer science classes taught around the country, the College Board's Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles course, enrollment grew from nearly 44,000 in 2017 to more than 114,000 in 2020. The growth in enrollment ' for that class and other computer science courses leading up to it ' has been driven by more teachers taking quick classes on how to teach computer science. Expanding the number of computer science courses depends on educating even more teachers to teach them. But almost half of all U.S. states don't have a plan to teach computer science at the K-12 level. There are eight states that lack certification for computer science teachers. And 27 states and the District of Columbia don't offer incentives for higher education institutions to offer computer science teacher education programs, according to data from Code.org....

A Nigerian school is targeting students from poor families to give them a chance to excel at science, maths and engineering for a fee of 100 naira (25 cents) a day, hoping they can hone skills to help their families escape poverty. "I want to become an electrical engineer who works with robots and solar panels and all the connections of all the snap circuits and ... things like that," said Bakare, who lives with her mother and four siblings in a poor neighbourhood in Abuja. Irene Bangwell, founder of Knosk, said the idea of a science-oriented high school for poor children came to her eight years ago when she had to take her child to hospital. When she heard a cleaner there tell another patient that her young daughter was also a cleaner instead of being in school, Bangwell's heart sank. At least 10.5 million children in Nigeria do not attend school, the highest rate in the world, the United Nations said in January. Most affected are girls, children with disability and those from poor households....