Advancing learning by cultivating human intelligence
Research-informed design for learning, assessment, and educational systems.
STAC partners with educators and organizations to strengthen learning, assessment, and educational systems. Our work is grounded in research on learning and human development. We help learners develop the knowledge, thinking, judgment, and agency they need to navigate an increasingly complex world.
From science curriculum and assessment to accessible learning design and responsible uses of AI, we help organizations turn ambitious ideas about learning into experiences that work for educators and students.
Science education • Learning design • Assessment • Professional learning • AI in education
Our focus
Education is ultimately about the development of people.
New technologies are changing what students can produce, how they access information, and how quickly they can receive assistance. Those changes bring renewed urgency to longstanding questions about learning. STAC helps educators and organizations address those questions through research-informed design, assessment, professional learning, accessibility, and science education.
Questions that guide our work
- What human capabilities are we trying to develop?
- What intellectual work should learners do?
- What counts as evidence that learning has occurred?
- How should tools and supports contribute without displacing the thinking learners need to develop?
Thinking Literacy™
Cultivating human intelligence across learning and life.
Thinking Literacy™ is STAC’s research-informed framework for helping educators intentionally cultivate human intelligence. It connects the purposes of education with the thinking learners need to develop across disciplines and throughout their lives. Human learning and development provide its foundation, with AI serving as an important context for examining how that development occurs.
The framework integrates cognitive processes with intellectual dispositions and metacognition. Curiosity, openness to competing ideas, and willingness to revise help learners deepen their understanding. Educators can use the framework to examine how curriculum, assessment, supports, and technology contribute to increasingly sophisticated and self-directed thinking.
What we do
From learning experiences to educational systems.
STAC brings expertise in science education, learning design, assessment, accessibility, professional learning, and AI in education to projects of many sizes and scopes.
Curriculum & Learning Design
Design learning experiences that engage students in meaningful disciplinary thinking, build understanding over time, and create opportunities to apply learning in new contexts.
Assessment & Evidence of Learning
Develop assessments, performance tasks, rubrics, proficiency descriptions, and systems that provide meaningful evidence of what students know, understand, and can do.
Professional Learning
Help educators translate research, standards, and emerging challenges into practical approaches they can use in classrooms, schools, and educational systems.
AI & Learning
Help organizations make intentional decisions about learning design, student use of AI, evidence of learning, and the role technology should play in cognitive work.
Accessible Learning by Design
Expand access and participation while considering the intellectual responsibility learners retain as supports, scaffolds, and technologies are introduced.
Research & Educational Strategy
Connect research with educational practice, policy, product development, and organizational decision-making through evidence synthesis, analysis, and strategic design.
Our partnership with NSTA
Supporting science educators in the age of AI.
STAC and the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) have partnered to bring research-informed professional learning about AI to science educators. Our work together focuses on student sensemaking, critical thinking, and intentional decisions about AI in science classrooms. The science and engineering practices provide a foundation for designing experiences that make student reasoning visible.
Sensemaking in the Age of AI: Empowering Critical Thinkers in Science Classrooms
The workshop helps educators build AI literacy, examine implications for teaching and learning, and develop practical strategies for student sensemaking. Participants consider how students ask questions, analyze evidence, and construct explanations when AI is available. Schools and districts can explore the workshop through NSTA’s professional learning offerings.
Continue the conversation at NSTA Indianapolis
Explore our three-part pathway, Designing AI-Resilient Science Learning Experiences, and connect with STAC at the STEM Showcase.
Deep roots in science education
Science gives us a powerful starting point.
Science asks learners to investigate phenomena, analyze and interpret data, develop and use models, construct explanations, and argue from evidence. Learners question assumptions and revise ideas as evidence changes. Those practices provide rich opportunities to cultivate human capabilities that extend beyond the science classroom.
STAC brings deep expertise in science education to its work with partners. We examine how disciplinary thinking, evidence, judgment, and metacognition contribute to learning across contexts. Our designs help educators see how learners connect observations with knowledge, consider alternatives, and justify their conclusions.
Designing for development
From ideas about learning to evidence of growth.
Strong educational design begins with clarity about the human capabilities we are trying to develop. Curriculum, instruction, assessment, supports, and technology shape the opportunities learners have to develop those capabilities. STAC helps partners bring these elements into alignment so learning builds over time.
Clarify the purpose
Identify what learners are developing, why it is important, and what increasingly sophisticated performance should involve.
Create opportunities to grow
Provide repeated and varied opportunities for learners to engage in consequential cognitive and disciplinary work.
Gather evidence of development
Examine evidence of increasing understanding, sophistication, independence, transfer, and judgment over time.
Current work & resources
Research-informed ideas for a changing educational landscape.
STAC develops frameworks, resources, professional learning, curriculum, and assessment tools grounded in how people learn. Our work explores Thinking Literacy™, AI-resilient science learning, accessible learning design, and evidence of student understanding. Explore ideas and practical approaches for your classroom, organization, or educational system.
Partner with STAC
Bring us a question, a challenge, or an idea.
STAC works with schools, districts, state agencies, nonprofit organizations, education companies, research organizations, and professional associations. Partnerships can range from focused consultation to curriculum, assessment, professional learning, research, and design projects. We help you examine the learning you want to cultivate and design the conditions that help educators and learners get there.