Our Team
Our Organization
Creating classrooms with inspired educators and motivated learners.
OpenSciEd creates free, high quality, NGSS-aligned science materials and outstanding professional learning support that empowers educators to inspire all students with the beauty and wonder of science. One classroom at a time, OpenSciEd is proving that when given the opportunity to experience high quality curriculum facilitated by teachers who have had the professional learning they deserve, all students can excel in science.
Our Approach
In OpenSciEd classrooms, students learn science through discovery. Developed by leading science researchers and educators, our instructional model is designed to align with how students learn best. Our curriculum is phenomena-based and centers on student-led questioning, investigating, and problem-solving, with teachers supporting students as learning facilitators rather than lecturers. This approach fosters a classroom culture where everyone matters and is heard, building unique skills for educators and students and empowering them in their education journey.
Guided by the belief that high quality educational materials should be available to everyone, all OpenSciEd materials are open-source, also known as open educational resources. They are free for all educators and students to use — and can be shared, redistributed, and freely adapted into customized curricula. We build upon OpenSciEd materials to accommodate students’ needs, cultures, languages, and local contexts.
Our Values
OpenSciEd is a values-driven organization. Our work is rooted in the following core beliefs:
- Every child deserves a high quality science education. Pervasive systemic inequities have created an opportunity gap in our education systems that we can and must close.
- Universal high quality science education is a social imperative that builds the curiosity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills needed to solve our greatest challenges.
- All students can excel in science with high quality science curriculum facilitated by teachers who have experienced the professional learning that unlocks the power of great materials.
- Science is exciting and people learn best through discovery. The beauty and wonder of science inspires students to lead in questioning, investigating, and solving problems.
- An impactful curriculum empowers the expertise and creativity of the teacher and is anchored in students’ interests, educational needs, cultures, languages, and local contexts.
Our Commitment to Antiracist Action
OpenSciEd exists to combat inequities in education by providing high-quality science learning experiences for all students. Part of our work towards equity and justice involves recognizing the insidious ways racism has operated in science and rooting it out of science education. We recognize that the education system has long been a tool of oppression against people of color, specifically Black people, recreating power hierarchies and inequities.
Our work as educators is central to the elimination of racism, Anti-Blackness, and white supremacy in science education and we dedicate our organization to advocate for and work toward a more just society. OpenSciEd is committed to developing and supporting classroom norms that provide a safe learning culture, where everyone matters and is heard, and rooting out inequitable systems, routines, and assumptions that are in place in too many science learning environments and educational institutions.
Equitable instructional practices are central to the design of OpenSciEd instructional materials and professional learning. Our development process seeks to surface and address inequities in the engagement and participation of Black and Brown students in science learning, including those impacted by various forms of systemic discrimination in addition to racism, including ableism, linguistic racism, and more.
We call on all curriculum developers to provide materials that bring forward and value all students’ voices and surface the conversations that will empower students to own their education and futures.
Development Process
Collaboration isn’t just something we want to see students doing, it is something we continuously and consciously practice throughout the development process of our curriculum. OpenSciEd brings together leading science researchers and educators to create a curriculum that is aligned to how students learn best. As a result of these partnerships, our curriculum fosters deep, engaged science learning AND is free for anyone, anywhere — and can be shared, redistributed, and adapted into customized curriculum.
OpenSciEd’s beliefs about science learning and vision of the classroom are embodied in our Design Specifications. Specifications describe what we want science learning to look like for every student, and therefore guide our materials development process and implementation support. The topics addressed range from equitable science instruction and the centrality of asking questions to meeting the practical needs and constraints of a classroom. These specifications are based on A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the resulting Next Generation Science Standards, including the emphasis on three-dimensional learning that integrates science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas.
OpenSciEd Design and Brand Guidelines
These brand guidelines describe the visual and verbal elements that represent OpenSciEd’s identity. This includes our name, logo and other elements such as color, type and graphics.