This exploratory research and development project engages high-school students as student-tutors who create screen-capture videos that demonstrate step-by-step solutions to mathematical problems and explicate the use of interactive applets. The project has three development goals (a model for creating the media, a model for collaboration with teachers, and enhancements to a Lesson Study model) and three research goals (to test conjectures about student change, to analyze reconfigured roles for teachers and students, and to advance a theory of personalized learning communities.) The project tests whether the mathematical and communication skills of student-tutors improve in the process of making the video materials. It also tests whether teachers and the student users of the videos benefit from them. Further, the project will examine whether the process of creating and disseminating the videos is replicable and scalable.

The project uses design research methods as well as both formative and summative evaluations to achieve the research and development goals. The investigators pose a series of thoughtful research questions and plan to use a variety of research methods to collect and analyze data to answer them.

The project is potentially transformative. The advances in technology present opportunities and challenges for improving student learning. Built on strong theoretical and empirical foundations and prior work, the project takes full advantages of the opportunities of tutoring using 21st-century technologies - marrying screen-capture video with a model of student-delivered tutoring. The project will contribute to an understanding of how teachers and student-tutors change and exercise creativity through participating in digital media production. The findings of the project will have broader impact in at least three dimensions: (1) The videos created by students will be helpful for other students' learning; (2) The research on engaging students in creating videos can not only help us understand the effective use of technology, but also help us understand the mechanism for developing students' generative thinking and creativity; and (3) This project can provide insights about how to integrate 21st-Century technology into regular classrooms.

The Implementing Mathematical Practices Standards (IMPS) is a four-year project that is producing materials designed to help teachers see how the mathematical practices described in the Common Core State Standards for mathematics can be implemented in mathematics instruction. The goal of the improved instruction is to help students adopt and value these critical mathematical practices. Researchers at the Education Development Center are developing videos and print materials that exemplify the mathematical practices and are working with teachers in grades 5-10 to help them use the materials effectively. The research questions of the project are focused on what features of the materials are most helpful to teachers and what professional development characteristics facilitate implementation of the mathematics practices in classroom instruction. The external evaluation of the project is being conducted by evaluators at TERC who are looking the process of developing materials and how the materials are used.

The materials will include professionally-produced videos exemplifying a particular mathematical practice being implemented in a classroom as well as printed dialogues that are designed to help teachers understand the practice and why it is critical for students to acquire that mathematical practice. The exemplars of mathematical practices are being developed based on pilot work and systematic advice from mathematicians, mathematics educators and mathematics teachers in grades 5-10. The design process is iterative and materials are refined based on feedback that is received. Facilitators are being prepared to conduct professional development and materials are being tested by more than 150 teachers in a variety of school districts.

Professional groups such as NCTM and NCSM have called for materials that exemplify the CCSS mathematical practices. They have argued that teachers need to understand how these standards can be achieved in classrooms. IMPS systematic effort to design materials that exemplify the standards and to test not only the materials but also the professional development associated with the materials is responding to the national need. The videos and dialogues will be available through broad dissemination.

This project--led by science educators at Michigan State University, the National Geographic Society, the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL) at Colorado State University, the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) Center, and AAAS Project 2061, and including schools in California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, and Washington--builds on prior efforts with learning progressions, and is focused on key carbon-transforming processes in socio-ecological systems at multiple scales, including cellular and organismal metabolism, ecosystem energetics and carbon cycling, carbon sequestration, and combustion of fossil fuels.

The project uses an iterative design research process to develop and refine a suite of tools for reasoning and test efficacy of those tools in geographically and culturally diverse schools. The project team is:

1. Refining and validating a detailed learning progression framework covering the middle and high school years; ultimately, the framework will describe the development of students' capacity to use fundamental principles such as conservation of matter and energy to reason about carbon-transforming processes at multiple scales.

2. Refining 'Tools for Reasoning' that make hidden scientific principles - matter, energy, and scale - visible to students; the power of these tools lies in their flexible use for different processes, systems, scales, and curricular contexts.

3. Developing and refining flexible teaching strategies that engage students in cognitive apprenticeship in the practices of environmental science literacy: a) inquiry and argumentation, b) explanations and predictions, and c) decision-making about environmental issues.

4. Using and refining existing summative assessments, and developing and testing formative assessment tools; these assessment tools will provide teachers and researchers with immediate information about their students' intellectual resources and will be linked to the learning progression framework.

5. Developing, field testing, and assessing the effectiveness of six middle school and six high school units that use project tools and enact project principles; the units introduce students to fundamental principles, engage them in reasoning about carbon-transforming processes at organismal scale, and at landscape and global scales. Each unit includes a) an online formative assessment and b) activity sequences that use tools for reasoning and teaching strategies.

6. Developing, field testing, and assessing professional development materials in both face-to-face and facilitated online forms; the materials introduce teachers to learning progressions in environmental science literacy, assessment tools, tools for reasoning, teaching strategies, and teaching materials and activities, and also address difficulties that teachers encounter in using learning progressions and enacting teaching strategies.

The primary project outcomes will be coordinated instructional tools that are useful to professionals at all levels in the science education system--classroom teachers, professional developers, and developers of curricula, standards and assessments.

There is an increasing gap between the assumptions governing the use of cyber-enabled resources in schools and the realities of their use by students in out of school settings. The potential of information and communications technologies (ICT) as cognitive tools for engaging students in scientific inquiry and enhancing teacher learning is explored. A comprehensive professional development program of over 240 hours, along with follow-up is used to determine how teachers can be supported to use ICT tools effectively in classroom instruction to create meaningful learning experiences for students, reducing the gap between formal and informal learning and improve student learning outcomes. In the first year, six teachers from school districts - two in Utah and one in New York - are educated to become teacher leaders and advisors. Then three cohorts of 30 teachers matched by characteristics are provided professional development and field test units over two years in a delayed-treatment design. Biologists from Utah State University and New York College of Technology develop four modules that meet the science standards for both states - the first being changes in the environment. Teachers are guided to develop additional modules. The key technological resource to be used in the project is the Opensimulator 3D application Server (OpenSim), an open source, modular, expandable platform used to create simulated 3D spaces with customizable terrain, weather and physics. 

The research methodology includes the use of the classroom observations using RTOP and Technology Use in Science Instruction (TUSI), selected interviews of teachers and students and validated assessments of student learning. Evaluation, by an external evaluator, assesses the quality of the professional development and the quality of the cyber-enabled learning resources, as well as reviews the research design and implementation. An Advisory Board will monitor the project. 

The project is to determine the professional development needed to make teachers comfortable teaching with multi-user simulations and communications that students use everyday. The enactment with OpenSim also provides an opportunity to demonstrate the level of planning and preparation that go into fashioning modules with all selected cyber-enabled cognitive tools framed by constructivism, such as GoogleEarth and Biologica.

Developers and researchers at the University of Wisconsin are creating and studying a professional development model that connects research in counting and early number (CGI), early childhood, and funds of knowledge. The proposed model is targeted at teachers of children in four-year-old kindergarten, and focuses on culturally relevant teaching and learning. The model stresses a specific, circumscribed content domain - counting and basic number operations - with the intention of exploring the domain in depth particularly as it connects to children's experiences in their homes and communities and how it is learned and taught through play.

The project designs, develops, and tests innovative resources and models for teachers to support ongoing professional learning communities. These learning communities are designed to identify and build on the rich mathematical understandings of all pre-K children. The project's specific goals are to instantiate a reciprocal "funds of knowledge" framework for (a) accessing children's out-of-school experiences in order to provide instruction that is equitable and culturally relevant and (b) developing culturally effective ways to support families in understanding how to mathematize their children's out-of-school activities. Teachers are observed weekly during the development and evaluation process and student assessments are used to measure students' progress toward meeting project benchmarks and the program's effectiveness in reducing or eliminating the achievement gap.

The outcome is a complete professional development model that includes written and digital materials. The product includes case studies, classroom video, examples of student work, and strategies for responding to students' understandings.

Developers and researchers at TERC, the Education Development Center, and Mount Holyoke College are participating in the development and systematic investigation of a teaching model to assist teachers in developing ideas about proof in grades 2-5. The teaching model provides both a tool for learning on the part of elementary teachers and a model of practice from which they can learn as they implement it.

The project is a teaching experiment in which the model is iteratively implemented and refined, first with teachers experienced in incorporating ideas about proof into their classroom instruction (Phase 1), then with teachers who are relatively inexperienced, both in their own understanding of proof and in their knowledge of how their students can learn about proof (Phase 2). Research questions focus on developing the components of the model, the learning of teachers as they implement the model, and the learning of students as they engage in the instruction that is guided by the model, with particular attention to students with varied histories of achievement in grade-level work on number and operations.

The expected outcome is a teaching model that can be tested on a larger scale as well as instruments for assessing student learning and teacher understanding of proof. The model includes printed material with descriptions of the routines and instructional sequences, guidelines for implementing each component, and a teaching framework as well as written and video case examples.

Researchers and developers at the University of Chicago are conducting an exploratory project to design, develop, and test a virtual learning community (VLC) to enhance the ability of first- and fourth-grade teachers to provide mathematics education. The project deploys cyberlearning technologies to allow teachers to interact with one another and with experts across the U.S. The goal is to produce a prototype of a VLC for first- and fourth-grade Everyday Mathematics teachers that integrates three primary elements: (a) learning objects rooted in practice, such as lesson video, (b) community-building tools offered by the internet, and (c) focused content that drives teachers' professional learning in mathematics.

This VLC is developed during two engineering cycles in which the project team engages teachers as central partners. The quality and utility of the resultant VLC is tested against the anticipated outcomes of (a) sustained participation by teachers in the VLC and (b) changes in teachers' "professional vision" in mathematics education. Sustained participation is tracked using web analytics and user logs. Changes in professional vision are measured by on-line assessment tools used by approximately 150 teachers.

The VLC develops learning objects; community-building tools; and focused content. The VLC will be launched during the third year of the project by way of the Everyday Mathematics website, which has over 6000 visitors per day, and the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project newsletter, which has a circulation of 40,000. The potential audience is quite large since Everyday Mathematics is used in 185,000 classrooms.

An ongoing partnership between learning scientists and science educators from the University of Washington and school district leaders from Bellevue School District along with curriculum specialists and teachers is conducting research and development on a new science learning environment. Previously researchers in the College of Education and at the LIFE Center at the University of Washington have developed two fifth grade science modules used in the school district. One takes a socio-cognitive approach, leveraging authentic science practices and questions, student choice, and communication of ideas into a challenge-based design. The other takes a socio-cultural perspective, aiming to bridge informal and formal learning environments by leveraging into formal science curricula students' culturally based repertoires of practice to try out and revise their own ideas based on evidence and discussion. This research and development project develops and tests in the classroom two fifth- grade and two second-grade biological science units that combine both perspectives in order to more fully engage both students and teachers in authentic inquiry and tests the units in second- and fifth- grade classrooms.

The research focuses on how the new learning designs affect learners' a) concepts of science and scientific inquiry; b) ability to collaborate productively; c) engagement, interest and science self efficacy; and d) sense of classroom community. The results are compared to matched control groups using FOSS units in the same subject area. The project also studies the extent to which the design principles and outcomes are generalizable across and within branches of science and are developmentally appropriate. The theoretical frameworks, curriculum resources and embedded professional development opportunities needed for sustainability and continuous improvement are investigated. The external evaluator assesses the quality of the research design and instruments as well as the quality of the science modules developed. An Advisory Committee monitors the work.

This project focuses on several ways of creating learning experiences that provide agency for elementary school students and excite them to pursue STEM pathways. Opportunities are provided to more fully explore the importance of connecting formal and informal learning experiences in ways that greatly boost the potencies of each. The project has the potential to create alternative learning designs to the kit-based science materials that are pervasive in elementary science classrooms.

The aim of this CAREER project led by Amy Ellis at the University of Wisconsin is to explore the hypothesis that a curricular focus on quantitative reasoning in middle grades mathematics can enhance development of student skill and understanding about mathematical proof. The project is addressing that hypothesis through a series of studies that include small group teaching experiments with students, professional development work with teachers, and classroom field tests of curricular units that connect quantitative reasoning and proof in algebra.

Work of the project will produce: (a) insights into ways of unifying two previously disconnected lines of research on quantitative reasoning and proof; (b) models describing realistic ways to support development of students' proof competencies through quantitative reasoning; (c) improvement in students' understanding of algebra through engagement in proof practices based on quantitative reasoning; (d) insights into middle-school students' thinking as they negotiate the transition from elementary to more advanced mathematics; and (e) increased understanding of teachers' knowledge about proof and their classroom practices aimed at helping students progress towards understanding and skill in proof.