This workshop developed a new, comprehensive, research-based framework for assessing environmental literacy. By bringing together, for the first time, experts in research, assessment, and evaluation from the fields of science education, environmental education, and related social science fields, this project accessed and built its work on the literature and the insights of many disciplines. The North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) worked with the leaders of the only two large-scale assessments of environmental literacy used in the U.S. to date (Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] and the National Environmental Literacy Assessment [NELA]) to conduct the workshop. The project leaders analyzed PISA and NELA and used a multi-disciplinary search and review of the literature to prepare a draft framework. At the workshop and thereafter, a diverse array of invited experts critiqued that draft and provided suggestions for revision. Then, the leaders/organizers produced a final Environmental Literacy Framework and disseminated it both electronically and at a nationally advertised event to a wide audience of assessment specialists, funding and policy-making agencies, and organizations working to develop assessments and achieve environmental literacy. Many institutions and agencies have noted the need to create an environmentally literate population, and government and private entities are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in projects aimed at enhancing environmental literacy. Given the scope and scale of these investments and the interest in this arena on the part of federal agencies, professional organizations, and corporations, assessments for gauging our progress in transforming our preK-12 education system to achieve that end are needed. The new Framework for assessing environmental literacy provides a foundation for measuring the extent to which we are enabling all learners to acquire the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and behaviors vital for competently making decisions about local, regional, national and global issues.

Research in biology has become increasingly mathematical, but high school courses in biology use little mathematics. To address this concern, this project will develop three replacement units for biology and refine them through classroom testing. The units will be models of STEM integration by using the important concepts of proportional reasoning and algebraic thinking and engineering re-design to address big ideas in science while also promoting the learning of 21st century skills. The materials build on existing work on the use of model eliciting activities and focus science and technology instruction on high-stakes weaknesses in mathematics and science. They address the scaling issue as part of the core design work by developing small units of curriculum that can be applied by early adopters in each context. The materials will undergo many rounds of testing and revision in the early design process with at least ten teachers each time. The materials will be educative for teachers, and the teacher materials and professional development methods will work at scale and distance.

Learning of science content will be measured through the use of existing instruments in wide use. Existing scales of task values, achievement goals and interest are used to measure student motivation. The work performed is guided by a content team; a scaling materials team; a scaling research team; the PI team of a cognitive scientist, a robotics educator, and a mathematics educator specializing in educational reform at scale; and the summative evaluation team lead by an external evaluator.

There is great interest in understanding whether integrated STEM education can interest more students in STEM disciplines. The focus on mathematics integrated with engineering in the context of a science topic is interesting and novel and could contribute to our understanding of integrating mathematics, engineering and science. The development team includes a cognitive scientist, a mathematics educator, teachers and scientists. The issues and challenges of interdisciplinary instruction will be investigated.

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.

The ScratchEd project, led by faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and professionals at the Education Development Center, is designing, developing, and studying an innovative model for professional development (PD) of teachers who use the Scratch computer programming environment to help their students learn computational thinking. The fundamental hypothesis of the project is that engagement in workshops and on-line activities of the ScratchEd professional development community will enhance teacher knowledge about computational thinking, their practice of design-based instruction, and their students' learning of key computational thinking concepts and habits of mind.

The effectiveness of the ScratchEd project is being evaluated by research addressing four specific questions: (1) What are the levels of teacher participation in the various ScratchEd PD offerings and what do teachers think of these experiences? (2) Do teachers who participate in ScratchEd PD activities change their use of Scratch in classroom instruction to create design-based learning opportunities? (3) Do the students of teachers who participate in the ScratchEd PD activities show evidence of developing an understanding of computational thinking concepts and processes? (4) When the research instruments developed for the evaluation are made available for teachers in the Scratch community to use for self-evaluation, how do teachers make use of them? Because both computational thinking and design-based instruction are complex activities, the project research is using a combination of survey, interview, and artifact analysis methods to answer the questions.

The ScratchEd professional development and research work will provide important insight into the challenge of helping teachers create productive learning environments for development of computational thinking. Those efforts will also yield a set of evaluation tools that can be integrated into the ScratchEd resources and used by others to study development of computational thinking and design-based instruction.

Events

2012 Conference - http://events.scratch.mit.edu/conference/

Regular Workshops, Webinars, and Meetups - http://scratched.eventbrite.com/

Social Media

Twitter - http://twitter.com/ScratchEdTeam

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/ScratchEdTeam

Vimeo - http://vimeo.com/scratchedteam/

Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/38090850@N08/

This project conducts interdisciplinary research to advance understanding of embodied learning as it applies to STEM topics across a range of current technology-based learning environments (e.g., desktop simulations, interactive whiteboards, and 3D interactive environments). The project builds on extensive research, including prior work of the PIs, regarding both embodied learning and statistical learning. The PIs describe embodied learning as engaging the neuromuscular systems of learners as they interact with the world around them visually, aurally, and kinesthetically in order to construct new knowledge structures. Statistical learning is described as the ability to learn, often without intent, which sequences of stimuli are consistent with a set of rules. An example of statistical learning is pattern recognition, which is central to mastery of complex topics in many STEM disciplines including physics and mathematics.

The project has two central research questions: How are student knowledge gains impacted by the degree of embodied learning and to what extent do the affordances of different technology-based learning environments constrain or support embodied learning for STEM topics? To investigate these questions, the PIs are conducting three series of experiments in five phases using two physics topics. The first four phases are developmental and the final phase implements and assesses the two modules in schools (20 plus teachers, 700 plus K-12 students) in Arizona and New York (15 total sites, 10 plus public schools, minimum one Title I school).

The aim of this project is to meld these two research trajectories to yield two key outcomes: 1) basic research regarding embodiment and statistical learning that can be applied to create powerful STEM learning experiences, and 2) the realization of exemplary models and principles to aid curriculum and technology designers in creating learning scenarios that take into account the level of embodiment that a given learning environment affords. 

 

Ten fifth and sixth grade science teacher specialists and their students in a high needs district in Ohio are engaged in a design-based research project within a three-year professional development effort with faculty in several departments at the University of Cincinnati to study how the engineering design process can be used effectively as a pedagogical strategy in science instruction to improve student interest, learning and skill development. Stage 1 of the exploratory project is articulation of engineering design, science content, and scientific inquiry using teacher learning teams to identify effective curriculum structures and instructional strategies, including the development of instructional materials. Stage 2 focuses on student outcomes on standardized tests and authentic assessments and improved student problem solving skills. The project is embedded in a revision of the Ohio Science Standards in which science content is juxtaposed with 21st century skills and other content areas. Dissemination is through the Cincinnati STEM Network, the Ohio State STEM Learning Network and through professional organizations and publications. The University of Cincinnati Evaluation Services Center evaluates the processes and outcomes.

The research seeks to define STEM education and develop needed resources to support the teaching and learning of STEM. The operationalization of STEM education requires teachers to infuse engineering into the usual school subjects of mathematics and science. The research seeks to understand how STEM can be operationalized in the elementary classroom and focuses on investigating how a real-world, authentic approach articulating science and eventually mathematics with engineering does indeed increase student engagement and motivation for learning all three subjects. The research issues address what articulation of engineering design and science inquiry looks like in the classroom and the challenges to articulating them. The research also investigates the skills and habits of mind that can be taught this way and the impact on student achievement. The evaluation determines how well the research adheres to the processes and timeline developed and monitors impacts on teacher and students.

Articulating engineering design with science content and scientific inquiry emphasizes the authentic investigation and real world problem solving that increases student interest in STEM content and improves student learning and achievement in science and mathematics. The research will contribute to understanding of how this STEM education can be operationalized in the elementary classroom. This study takes into account the complexity of the classroom and provides a situated context that could be used to inform other school contexts.

Doing science requires that students learn to create evidence-based arguments (EBAs), defined as claims connected to supporting evidence via premises. The question chosen for study by a new researcher at Utah State University is: How can argumentation ability be enhanced among middle school students? This study involves 325 middle school students in 12 class sections from 3 school districts in Utah and Idaho. First, students in middle school science classrooms will be introduced to problem-based learning (PBL) units that allow them to investigate ill-structured science problems. These activities provide students with something about which to argue: something that they have explored personally and with which they have grappled. Next, they will construct arguments using a powerful computer technology, the Connection Log, developed by the PI. The Connection Log provides a scaffold for building arguments, allowing each student to write about his/her reasoning and compare it to arguments built by peers. The study investigates how the Connection Log improves the quality of students' arguments. It also explores whether students are able to transfer what they have learned to new situations that call for argumentation.

This study is set in 6th and 7th grade science classrooms with students of diverse SES, ethnicity, and achievement levels. The Connection Log software supports middle school students with written prompts on a computer screen that take students through the construction of an argument. The system allows students to share their arguments with other members of their PBL group. The first generation version of the Connection Log asks students to:

1. define the problem, or state the problem in their own words

2. determine needed information, or decide on evidence they need to find to solve the problem

3. find and organize needed information

4. develop a claim, or make an assertion stating a possible problem solution

5. link evidence to claim, linking specific, relevant data to assertions

The model will be optimized through a process of design-based research. The study uses a mixed methods research design employing argument evaluation tests, video, interviews, database information, debate ratings, and a mental models measure, to evaluate student progress.

This study is important because research has shown that students do not automatically come to school prepared to create evidence-based arguments. Middle school students face three major challenges in argumentation: adequately representing the central problem of the unit; determining and obtaining the most relevant evidence; and synthesizing gathered information to construct a sound argument. Argumentation ability is crucial to STEM performance and to access to STEM careers. Without the ability to formulate arguments based upon evidence, middle school students are likely to be left out of the STEM pipeline, avoid STEM careers, and have less ability to critically evaluate and understand scientific findings as citizens. By testing and refining the Connection Log, the project has the potential for scaling up for use in science classrooms (and beyond) throughout the United States.

The University of Georgia will carry out a two-year Synthesis Project that aims to provide a comprehensive review of the research and practices for modeling-based instruction (MBI) in K-12 science education. The project will synthesize existing literature on MBI in K-12 science education over the last three decades. It will rigorously code and examine the literature to conceptualize the landscape of the theoretical frameworks of MBI approaches, identify the effective design features of modeling-based learning environments with an emphasis on technology-enhanced ones, and identify the most effective MBI practices that are associated with successful student learning through a meta-analysis.

The project will build a systematic and analytic framework to conceptualize MBI, recommend best design strategies of technology-based modeling environments, evaluate MBI teacher professional development strategies associated with improved student learning, and propose appropriate assessment strategies created to evaluate and inform MBI. In addition to the comprehensive analysis of the theory and design of MBI, a meta-analysis will study the four components of student learning: theory, design, implementation, and assessment. Based on qualified quantitative studies, an examination of the four components will be made to evaluate how different empirical studies have established their effectiveness, examine the correlations among key components, and chart the impact of associated factors on student learning.

The National Research Council's (NRC) Board on Testing and Assessment proposes a two-day workshop on assessing 21st century skills building on two previous workshops. The first workshop explored employer demand for employees who possess these broad transferable skills, which were defined as adaptability, complex communication, non-routine problem solving, self-management/self-development and systems thinking. The second workshop considered the intersection between science education reform goals and the 21st century skills, examined models of high quality science instruction that may develop the skills and discussed teacher readiness to integrate the skills in instruction. Both workshops expressed the need for assessments that can measure the attainment of 21st century skills. This workshop is to describe research on assessment of 21st century skills to inform policies and practices. The workshop is lead by an expert in assessment and convenes an expert committee of educational measurement specialists, cognitive psychologists and experts in job analysis and employment testing along with practitioners in schools. The committee investigates the types of assessments available and associated technical reports and designs the workshop to review them. Knowledgeable experts are commissioned to write papers and speak at the workshop. An individual author writes a summary report to be disseminated by the NRC. In the second year the NRC reconvenes the leadership of all three workshops to identify the next steps to provide research-based guidance to educational leaders seeking to infuse 21st century skills into instruction.