To prepare students to make informed decisions and gain coherent understanding about global climate change, we tested and refined a middle school inquiry unit that featured interactive visualizations. Based on evidence from student pre-test responses, we increased emphasis on energy transfer and transformation. The first iteration improved comprehension of the visualizations resulting in better understanding of energy transfer (n = 67). The second iteration improved understanding of energy transformation (n = 109) by adding pivotal cases, reducing deceptive clarity, and emphasizing distinguishing of ideas. Focusing student investigations in the second version allowed students to make more normative, personally relevant decisions related to their energy use. These iterative refinements reflected knowledge integration principles and offer guidance for designers of inquiry units.

While university change initiatives have become more common in the face of changing learner needs and higher education funding, many fail to produce desired effects, even when guided by organizational change models. The purpose of this study was to document a successful change process in an engineering department at a Hispanic-serving institution in the southwestern United States. The change effort focused on enhancing faculty capacity to support diverse student success. The change process was planned using Kotter’s eight-step change model (1996) and was therefore a prescribed, linear, sequential change process. Qualitative analysis of audio-recorded faculty interviews and meetings, artifacts, field notes, and participant observation highlights how Kotter’s change model was implemented iteratively and emergently. Early steps were revisited and strategies were treated as improvable. This approach enhanced faculty buy-in and project success. Characterization of each step provides insight into ways to apply Kotter’s change model in higher education settings.

While problem solving is a relatively well understood process, problem framing is less well understood, particularly with regard to supporting students to learn as they frame problems. Project-based learning classrooms are an ideal setting to investigate how teachers facilitate this process. Using participant observation, this study investigated how teachers supported students in taking ownership over the framing of problems in a charter school that serves students who have been underserved by traditional schooling. Data include audio/video records, field notes, interviews, and student work from a nineweek project. Interaction analysis was used to examine ownership and learning over time. Analysis suggests that providing a relevant yet revisable design problem, giving instruction about design process as iterative, and problematizing a model of design process supported students in taking ownership over the framing of the problem; students were motivated to pose questions and gathered information purposefully, thereby learning in the process.