When Congress approved the $787 billion economic stimulus package last February, it included a huge chunk of research money: $21.5 billion. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) got a major share of those funds, and now it’s announced it is spending around $18.3 million of its pile to bolster STEM education, “starting at the earliest stages,” Eurekalert.org reports.

The NIH says it is backing research that can strengthen and enhance efforts to attract kids to the biomedical and behavioral sciences, as well as improving the scientific literacy of both adults and children. The money was spent on 22 projects. Three examples: researchers at North Carolina State University will study whether engineering curricula in elementary schools improves science and math learning, a University of Delaware project will look at whether an ability to understand basic geometric shapes at age three is a predictor of math skills, and researchers at the University of Virginia will develop ways to enhance children’s fine motor skills in hopes of improving their math scores.

Filed under: K-12 Education News

Tags: College, Grades K-5, Mathematics, Research, Research on Learning