According to the National Research Council, while teacher capabilities and preparation are a huge influence on STEM success, the school’s culture and conditions might matter more. They identified culture and conditions through the following metrics: school leadership, professional capacity, parent community ties, and student-centered learning. In terms of successful schools, STEM was best implemented and most effective in schools that were safe, welcoming, stimulating and nurturing (NRC 2011 p. 24). The practice of STEM in the classroom serves as a vehicle for instruction, differentiation, and motivation. All students arrive with a background in problem solving, in asking questions, and in creating. Channeling those past experiences and using them as a rack to hang new understanding on is the basic practice of STEM. In order to do this well, teachers must plan with the end in mind (Krajcik et al 2008) and provide many scaffolds for students as they embark on a project together (Larmer, Mergendoller, & Boss 2015). These scaffolds fill in gaps, allow students to move from one set of understandings and connect them to the next. But students need different things; part of what they need is dependent on age, prior experience, and motivation. Another part of what they need depends on their choices. In STEM, there are often many ways to answer a question or solve a problem. While the practices may be similar, allowing teachers to develop units and lessons based on content and practice standards is only part of the solution. The other lens that must be employed is that of the students, and engaging the students in making choices for themselves empowers them as learners and problem solvers.
Project-Based Learning embraces the idea of student "voice and choice" (Larmer, Mergendoller, & Boss 2015). Students make choices that suit their interests and learning styles while the teacher provides scaffolding for their content and direction. The direction of the project is determined by the students, and as they assess their needs, the teacher provides resources to support them. There are many examples of this in the literature, incluing Pagano & Grateful (2014). They found that students developing a research project as part of a PBL with a biological emphasis ended up studying pedagogical effects, microbiology, and everything in between. While the librarian and science teacher could help scaffolding quality research, they also had to find content experts to mentor students. This attention to specific learners is beyond differentiation for students that we see in beginning teachers' lesson plans. Following the iterative process, the students receive and give each other feedback, reinforcing their positive choices and enriching their learning. This level of diversification is rich and authentic.