Photo by Jay Kimball

Science Education

Making Sense of Science

Eve Manz and TJ McKenna are leading a revolution in science education

TJ McKenna suggests asking students—who often struggle to see STEM in their everyday lives—“How far away from your TV will a remote control still work?” Sometimes, their investigation sends them backing out of the house and down the street to find an answer. Eve Manz recommends melting chocolate chips to spark conversations about the state of matter. Watching the chips soften into something that’s not clearly liquid or solid helps kids to reconsider their understanding of matter. This type of science learning is called sensemaking—and it’s increasingly used in US K–12 classrooms.

Sensemaking is actively engaging with scientific concepts and questions rather than learning exclusively from textbooks and lectures. “It’s how humans make sense of the world around them when things don’t add up,” says McKenna, a clinical assistant professor of science education. But sensemaking hasn’t always been how science was taught.

“So often, young people do experiments that are developed like a recipe—they can follow a series of steps and, at the end, they see what they’re supposed to,” says Manz, an associate professor of science education. “The problem with that is that science is fundamentally about managing uncertainty.”

She and McKenna credit A Framework for K–12 Science Education, published by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in 2012, with reinventing the way science is taught. The framework, which has been translated into standards in a majority of US states, emphasized using the practice of science to build knowledge, rather than relying on teaching scientific facts. Manz and McKenna are among the educators who have been helping teachers make that transition.

Manz has spent close to a decade working with teachers in Somerville, Mass., to redesign science investigations. Her new book, Productive Uncertainty in Science Education: Engaging Students in Meaningful Science Practice (Teachers College Press, 2025), details that project. “We developed these questions: When is uncertainty productive for children and teachers? And how can you design tools so that it can be productive?” she says.

McKenna’s book, Making Sense of Sensemaking: Designing Authentic K–12 STEM Learning Experiences (Teachers College Press, 2025), lays out a plan for science teachers to integrate sensemaking into their classes. “It breaks down what sensemaking is, what it looks like, and then how you build the classroom culture to support it,” he says.

Whether that leads to kids asking how a remote control works or considering a gooey mass of chocolate, the goal is the same, McKenna says: “helping students realize that science isn’t confined to textbooks but is theirs to discover, and there’s real joy and wonder waiting in every question they ask and experiment they do.”