Special issue on Pre-college nanoscale science, engineering, and technology learning

1 Introduction

In the year 2000, U.S. President William J. Clinton established the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a federal government research and development initiative involving 20 federal departments and independent agencies, whose overarching vision is “a future in which the ability to understand and control matter at the nanoscale leads to a revolution in technology and industry that benefits society” ([1], p. 5). The NNI would be one of the many nanoscale science, engineering, and technology (NSET) initiatives, centers, collaborations, and networks developed globally, on nearly every continent, during the early years of the new millennium. From university programs to multi-national networks, by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it was clear that nanotechnology was emerging as one of the most promising and rapidly expanding fields of research and development worldwide.

It would not be long before scientists, science educators, engineers, and policy makers began advocating for NSET concepts to be introduced in the K-12 education system. Mihail C. Roco, Senior Advisor for Nanotechnology at the U.S. National Science Foundation, speculated on the emergence of nanoscale concepts in K-12 education (and beyond) and emphasized the urgent need for science and engineering education to focus on the development of interconnected, interdisciplinary knowledge:

It is expected that the foundation of science and engineering education will move from the microscopic to the molecular and supramolecular levels in the next 10–15 years. Nanoscale science and engineering provides a meeting place for disciplines towards the same basic material structures at the building blocks of matter, and same principles and tools of investigation. Systemic changes are envisioned in teaching the new nanoscale concepts beginning with kindergarten to graduate schools and continuing education for retraining. An important corollary activity is the retraining of teachers themselves. Nanotechnology will require that a new domain of knowledge be covered. Unifying science from the nanoscale and converging technologies on this basis should be reflected in education. ([2], p. 274, italics added)

However, integrating new content into existing K-12 curricula is no small feat. In the United States, for example, critics often have characterized the science curriculum as “a mile wide and an inch deep” – trying to “cover” too much content with too little depth [3, 4]. In contrast, recent reform initiatives emphasize covering less content in greater depth with more coherence [5, 6]. Additionally, the nature of K-12 schooling in many countries is characterized by demarcated disciplines, which is in stark contrast to the interdisciplinary nature of NSET. Moreover, it necessitates that teachers who desire to infuse NSET into their instruction engage in learning opportunities to enhance their knowledge and skills for teaching NSET. Thus while NSET offers an opportunity to reform and extend pre-college science into an exciting new scale, a strong case nonetheless must be made for not only why new content is important, but also what content is important to learn at the pre-college level, how NSET will connect to existing curricula, and, most importantly, how students learn NSET given its interdisciplinary nature.

2 Making the case for including NSET into pre-college education

Three popular arguments have emerged for why NSET should be integrated into pre-college education, each with its own merits. First, there are the interdependent issues of workforce “pipeline” needs and technological and economic competitiveness – that is, in order to achieve and/or sustain a nation’s intellectual, scientific, technological, and economic potential of NSET R&D, there exists an urgent and ongoing need to educate the future workforce of nanoscientists, engineers, and technologists. For example, in 2006, Foley and Hersam expressed concern that, without action, Asian countries would surpass the United States “in the global dominance in science, technology, and engineering” ([7], p. 467). Others proffer various estimates about the extent of the pipeline needs to increase or maintain competitiveness as well as participate in the exploding global NSET market, which is estimated to be in the $1T/year range by 2015 and $3T/year by 2020 [8]. For example, in 2004, the European Commission estimated that it would take “1.2 million additional European research personnel (including 700,000 researchers)” to realize the potential of nanotechnology and “ensure that the EU increases its competitiveness in nanosciences and nanotechnology R&D” ([9], pp. 13–14). The next year, in providing an overview of the NNI, Mihail Roco stated that NSET “would require worldwide ∼2 million nanotech workers” and a total of approximately 7 million including “supporting jobs” ([10], p. 5). Thus, we need to prepare a foundation for the next generation of scientists, technologists, and engineers interested in, prepared for, and capable of joining the NSET workforce by introducing foundational NSET content earlier, often, and effectively.

Another reason for introducing NSET into pre- college classrooms is a matter of basic scientific literacy. As Stevens et al. [11] noted, “The ability to understand discoveries, technologies, and information resulting from [nanoscale science and engineering] research requires a high degree of science literacy” (p. xi). In an era of rapid scientific and technological advancement paired with the global socio-economic importance of NSET, it is incumbent upon the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education community to provide a commensurate response by developing and providing the learning opportunities for all students to develop “abilities to communicate about science and technology, negotiate everyday situations involving science and technology, and take an active and critical role in the discourse of science and technology” ([12], p. 1952). To make intelligent, informed, and responsible decisions in an increasingly highly technological society, citizens of all ages must have opportunities to develop the knowledge and skills for understanding contemporary science and technology [11, 13, 14]. Thus, the building of a scientific literate population must begin in the early years of education, starting with some of the most foundational concepts (e.g., structure and states of matter, size and scale) upon which more complex and specialized knowledge and skills may build.

Finally, the third argument for “Why nano?” in pre-college classrooms is framed in terms of student interest and motivation. Based on research that shows that motivation and interest have a substantial influence on learning (e.g., [15–17]), some researchers argue that NSET is a contemporary and intriguing context for fostering students’ interest in and motivation to learn science and technology in general (e.g., [18–21]). This argument is supported by a study of secondary students’ interest in NSET topics and phenomena in which 416 students in grades 7–12 were introduced to several nanoscale topics and phenomena through four manipulative activities and a series of nanoscale driving questions [20]. Findings indicated that students held the greatest interest in NSET topics that related to the “real world” and their daily lives as well as those that they perceived as novel. Further, in a study by Hutchinson [22], secondary teachers reported increased student interest and engagement in science when they taught NSET-related lessons on novel topics such as ferrofluids and gold nanoparticle biosensors. Indeed, with the prevalence of nano in the media and the myriad consumer products that claim to include some aspect of nanotechnology (e.g., tennis racquets, stain-resistant pants, sunscreens, makeup, paints), many students are aware of nano in their everyday life and are part of a generation inundated by “nanomania” ([23], p. 19). Yet, despite prevalence of the media capitalizing on and promoting nano, students’ knowledge of its scientific significance and relevance to daily life still lies in the Pandora’s box of the uncertain. Thus, integrating nano into existing STEM instruction provides a way to tap into students’ natural curiosity for learning about something new that has an impact on their daily lives, but about which they know relatively little.

3 The rise of pre-college NSET education programs

With many eyes now turned toward NSET education, there has been a surge throughout the mid-2000s of new pre-college NSET education programs and initiatives. One major development to facilitate the infusion of NSET into pre-college classrooms was the publication of The Big Ideas of Nanoscale Science and Engineering: A Guidebook for Secondary Teachers [11], which defines nine core ideas of nanoscience and engineering relevant for introducing to grade 7–12 learners. Concomitant with this focus on the development of pre-college NSET programs has been the emergence of new scholarship related to NSET teaching and learning, enough that there already have been a few syntheses devoted to scholarship in this area [24, 25] that review empirical studies, curricula, and educational programs. Indeed, there now exist a number of publications on programs and project descriptions. However, there is much to be done in several areas, including empirical research on pre-college learning related to NSET. Hence, several goals of this special issue are to share some of the current work that is being done, discuss implications for learning research, and suggest recommendations for future scholarship in the field of pre-college NSET education.

4 Nanotechnology Reviews special issue on pre-college NSET education

In this special issue of Nanotechnology Reviews, we invited manuscripts that focus squarely on pre-college teacher and student learning of NSET concepts as well as concepts that are central to understanding nanoscale phenomena but not necessarily unique to NSET. Studies on teachers’ development of pedagogical and pedagogical content knowledge for teaching NSET and studies on tools for learning NSET in pre-college settings were also appropriate for this issue. In all, we included seven articles that spanned a range of research foci, contexts, and methodologies, and were contributed by scholars from several countries, including Israel, Taiwan, and the United States. Studies took place in traditional classroom contexts, teacher professional development contexts, as well as informal education contexts such as a summer science camp and a professional scientific meeting. Moreover, several of the works in this issue report on research that emanated from or involved a major NSET education initiative, including Taiwan’s National Program of Nanotechnology (NPNT), the U.S.-based National Center for Learning and Teaching Nanoscale Science and Engineering (NCLT), the U.S.-based NanoTeach, and Israel National Nanotechnology Initiative’s NanoIsrael conference. Below are the highlights of each article in this issue.

5 Concluding remarks

The rapid discoveries and innovations in science, engineering, and technology at the nanoscale level have significant implications for the future of STEM education at every level. The articles in this special issue highlight the progress being made in pre-college NSET education, while simultaneously illustrating the challenges ahead. It is evident that in the field of pre-college NSET education, we need to continue conducting fundamental and rigorous research on teacher and student learning of not only phenomena uniquely tied to nanoscale dimensions but also the scale-specific scientific principles and concepts upon which they are based. We hope that this special issue will elicit tighter collaborations between educators, scientists, and practitioners and motivate this timely and important work.