In a world increasingly shaped by complex environmental challenges, the ability to integrate knowledge across disciplines is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. However, too often, mathematics, science, and computer science content remains siloed in the classroom, leaving educators and students struggling to make meaningful connections.
Recognizing this critical gap, the California Mathematics, Science, and Computer Science Partnership (CAL-MSCS) Science Steering Team created a Cross-Content Priority Work Group. The members of this team, Chelsea Cochrane, San Diego County Office of Education; Lesley Gates, Fresno County Superintendent of Schools; Dr. Vanessa Lujan, The Lawrence Hall of Science; and Sarah Whiting, Ten Strands, spearheaded the development of a Cross-Content Collaboration Design Team professional learning (PL) prototype. This PL model is an innovative structure that brings educators (e.g., teachers, leaders, and educational partners) together across disciplines to engage with STEM experts and explore environmentally focused phenomena and real-world problems. Grounded in the guiding principles of using mathematics, science, and computer science to make sense of our world and ensuring mathematics for all, science for all, and computer science for all, this model promotes equitable access to STEM learning experiences that connect classroom instruction to meaningful, community-based contexts.
The prototype was launched with teams of cross-content educational leaders in both San Diego and Fresno.
San Diego educators learning about Argo floats (robotic instruments that measure water properties across the world’s oceans) with STEM experts Dr. Sarah Gille and Dr. Cheryl Peach, from Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UCSD.
Fresno educators learning about agricultural spray application engineering from STEM expert Dr. Peter Ako Larbi from the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.
The Prototype: A Model for Cross-Content Professional Learning and Instructional Resource Codesign
The PL prototype is an immersive experience adapted from the successful structure of the California Regional Environmental Education Community (CREEC) Network Phenomena Summits. The resulting prototype is built around one central objective: to change the way educators experience professional learning.
To meet this objective, the prototype fostered a new level of collaboration by bringing together math, science, and computer science educators from grades 4–12 to learn directly with a STEM expert about their current research. Together, they explored a complex, local environmental issue that reflected the unique challenges and strengths of their communities. This focus on locally relevant, real-world contexts ensured that the learning was both culturally responsive and inclusive—providing opportunities for educators to consider diverse student perspectives, community knowledge, and equity-centered teaching practices. Through this process, participating educators designed instructional resources grounded in the work of the STEM expert, ensuring that student learning is connected to local phenomena and environmental challenges.
Key components of the PL model include the following:
- Listen to a keynote from a STEM expert to immerse participating educators in learning about a local phenomenon that is the focus of the STEM expert’s work.
- Participate in a Q&A with the STEM expert to allow educators to have their authentic wonderings answered in real time.
- Develop an idea flow to highlight the skills and knowledge needed to explore and explain the phenomenon.
- Add specific math, science, and computer science connections to the idea flow to make interdisciplinary connections visible.
- Enhance the idea flow with additional cross-content connections (e.g., ELA).
- Identify environmental principles and concepts and central themes of environmental literacy.
- Collaboratively design high-quality instructional resources to anchor the local environmental phenomenon/problem the STEM expert is working to address.
- Examples of this work can be seen in the prototype materials: CAL-MSCS Cross-Content Design Team DRAFT Instructional Resource Sample #1 and Sample #2 illustrate how educators connected classroom learning to authentic, community-based environmental challenges.
Fresno educators working on their idea flow development and identifying cross-content connections.
Impact and Expansion: Growing Across the State
While the prototype began as a small-scale Design Team professional learning implemented in both San Diego and Fresno counties, the potential for impact and expansion is great. Participating educators overwhelmingly valued the chance to deepen their own learning alongside experts. They also enjoyed working together with disciplinary counterparts from local areas and across the state. The immediate feedback from these initial participants validated the new PL design, showing it profoundly impacted their content knowledge and collaboration skills. A snapshot of their feedback is represented in the following statements:
- “Getting to learn from the STEM expert ‘filled my cup’ since educators often don’t get to continue their content learning in this way.”
- “The big ‘ah-ha’ moment really came toward the end of the idea flow when I could see entry points to math, science, and computer science across multiple grade levels.”
- “It’s about making the science more real world and possibly localized, which all curricula are lacking!”
This positive feedback demonstrated the immense value of the collaborative model, but it also raised a crucial question for the members of the Cross-Content Priority Work Group: How could this powerful process be scaled beyond the initial groups? The goal became transforming the successful prototype into an adaptable, scalable professional learning opportunity.
To support the expansion of this PL model across California, a series of supporting documents was developed. These documents distill the essential steps, strategies, and facilitator notes from the prototype, providing a roadmap for others to successfully lead their own cross-content design experiences. All supporting documents can be found on the CAL-MSCS Science webpage.
Examples of early scaling efforts include two professional learning opportunities led by the San Joaquin County Office of Education and the Santa Clara County Office of Education.
An unexpected positive outcome was hearing that the STEM experts found value in sharing the real-world context of their work with the educational community and view educators as the bridge to the next generation, fostering both relevance and career awareness. Read more about this perspective in the article written by Dr. Peter Ako Larbi, STEM expert from the Fresno County prototype: “UC ANR Agricultural Application Engineering Program Supports local STEM Educators to Enrich K-12 classroom STEM Instruction.”
Looking Ahead
The CAL-MSCS Science Steering Team is dedicated to continuing this work and scaling this innovative PL design structure statewide. County-level teams are now leveraging CAL-MSCS funding to use the Cross-Content Design Team PL structure in their counties, and the Science Steering Team will further support statewide awareness at the CAL-MSCS Science Community of Practice in spring 2026.
The Cross-Content Design Team professional learning model demonstrates the transformative potential of collaborative, interdisciplinary professional learning. By bringing together educators from mathematics, science, and computer science to engage with STEM experts and explore locally relevant environmental phenomena, this approach not only strengthens disciplinary content knowledge but also fosters culturally responsive, equity-centered teaching practices. The success of the prototype in San Diego and Fresno counties, and its subsequent expansion to larger design symposia in San Joaquin and Santa Clara counties, illustrates that when educators are empowered to codesign meaningful, real-world instructional resources, the impact on teaching and learning can be profound.
