Designing and Revising Instructional Resources and Professional Learning to Support Culture-Based 3D Project-Based Physics Education

Although all students are talented and bring a wealth of cultural resources to the classroom, they often do not recognize these assets as relevant to engaging in science, which can influence their learning and interest in STEM careers. This presentation shares how high school physics teachers can use culturally grounded, three-dimensional (3D) project-based learning (PBL) approaches to make science instruction more meaningful, engaging, and rigorous. This study is part of the Crafting Engaging Science Environments (CR-CESE) project funded by the U.S. Department of Education, focuses high school physics and chemistry in rural Southern U.S. schools.

The enrichment program integrates instructional resources with sustained professional learning (PL) to help teachers create environments where students engage in disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts while building on cultural resources including lived experiences. Instructional resources include detailed teacher guides, student handouts anchored in phenomena, and assessment tasks. PL involves in-person and online sessions forming a professional learning community (PLC).

This talk presents the systematic approach used to develop the enrichment program and teachers’ reflections on adopting culture-based 3D PBL in their classrooms. Data include PL video recordings, teacher reflections, surveys, and artifacts based in field test. Pliminary findings highlight shifts in teachers’ instructional thinking and practice: teachers valued anchoring units in relevant phenomena, engaging students through relevant investigations, using scientific models and explanations, and maintaining coherent lesson sequences. Challenges included time constraints for beginning with students’ experiences rather than content. Overall, the program modeled reform-oriented strategies, fostered collaboration, and guided teachers to leverage students’ cultural resources, supporting rigorous, meaningful science learning. Teacher feedback informs iterative revisions to enhance the enrichment program. This study demonstrates how sustained, collaborative PL combined with thoughtfully designed resources can support culture-based 3D PBL.