In A Framework for K-12 Science Education, researchers call for teachers to make dramatic shifts in practice – and sustain in these changes in practice – so students can engage in rigorous and equitable three-dimensional science learning. Project-Based Learning (PBL) motivates students from diverse backgrounds to persist in learning. This project presents design features that bring together the assets of the Framework with PBL, and then tests these features to derive design principles that serve as commitments for designing for teacher change and student learning. Close ethnographic study of 10 teachers over 5 years in a design-based research study is triangulated with data collected across 41 districts in multiple states engaged in a PBL elementary science curriculum. The following design principles provide guidance for developing materials that support the depth necessary for promoting changes to teachers’ practice at scale: Adaptive, Responsive, and both Enjoyable and Intellectually Satisfying.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) offer a vision of science teaching and learning that presents both learning opportunities and demands for all students, particularly student groups that have traditionally been underserved in science classrooms. The NGSS have addressed issues of diversity and equity from their inception, and the NGSS Diversity and Equity Team completed four major charges: (1) bias reviews of the NGSS, (2) Appendix D on diversity and equity, (3) inclusion of the topic of diversity and equity across Appendices, and (4) seven case studies of diverse student groups. This article starts with an overview of the NGSS Diversity and Equity charges, followed by a description of each of the four charges. This body of work addresses what science educators can and should do to ensure that the NGSS are accessible to all students, hence the title: “All Standards, All Students.” In the coming years, the nation’s student diversity will continue to grow rapidly while states adopt and implement the NGSS. Therefore, science teaching for non-dominant student groups equates to science teaching for all students.

Project-based learning (PBL) is a long-standing curricular model that has been argued to support equity-based goals in science learning. Yet, little is known about how PBL can be implemented effectively and equitably in the context of virtual instruction. This comparative case study follows two elementary science teachers as they transition to virtual instruction at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing from classroom observations and interview data, we highlight the opportunities and challenges of virtual PBL instruction, with a focus on the features of PBL and the equitable engagement of all students. Findings show that teachers maintained the four features of PBL in virtual instruction, but prioritized different features in response to their own equity goals: Amy, a 5th grade teacher, prioritized collaboration, and Irma, an ELD instructor, prioritized connections to home and community. We draw implications for the development of PBL curriculum, in both in-person and virtual instruction, and highlight the value of teacher agency in supporting the ongoing evolution of the PBL curricular model.

There is an urgent call for science and STEM teachers to incorporate practices for equity-centered environments, social justice-orientations, criticality and other practices that promote system change. Yet this demand occurs against the backdrop marginalization of teachers’ from having a say in the planning, teaching, and assessments in their own classrooms as teachers are stripped of agency, authority, and autonomy. We argue that these two simultaneous trends in science and STEM education—the drive for equity-centered environments and the systemic devaluation of teachers’ expertise—are incompatible. Realizing the goal of science classrooms that support equity-centered and social justice-oriented learning requires that teachers have equal voice in important decisions on matters that impact their day-to-day actions, which includes the power to determine goals and practices. This means dismantling some of the power structures in the educational system that disenfranchise teachers’ from making decisions based on their own knowledge, and their own goals for learning, particularly goals for social-justice and equity. In this article we describe pedagogical frameworks for making transformational change in science classrooms and in wider society and show how each framework is dependent on equity for teachers. We end with implications for this shift—moving toward a system where teachers have equal power—that is an essential part of creating science classrooms as sites of equity, social justice and science learning.