This study examines the impact of the newly revised Advanced Placement (AP) Biology and Chemistry courses on students' understanding of and ability to apply scientific inquiry, on students' confidence in successfully engaging in college-level material, and on students enrollment and persistence in college STEM majors. AP Biology and Chemistry courses represent an important educational program that operates at a large scale across the country. The extent to which the AP curricula vary in implementation across the schools in the study is also examined to determine the range of students' opportunity to learn the disciplinary content and the knowledge and skills necessary to engage in inquiry in science. Schools that are newly implementing AP courses are participants in this research and the challenges and successes that they experience are also a component of the research plan. Researchers at the University of Washington, George Washington University and SRI International are conducting the study.

The research design for this study includes both formative components and a randomized control experiment. Formative elements include observations, interviews and surveys of teachers and students in the AP courses studied. The experimental design includes the random assignment of students to the AP offered and follows the performances of the treatment and control students in two cohorts into their matriculation into postsecondary educational experiences. Surveys measure students' experiences in the AP courses, their motivations to study AP science, the level of stress they experience in their high school coursework and their scientific inquiry skills and depth of disciplinary knowledge. The study examines the majors chosen by those students who enter into colleges and universities to ascertain the extent to which they continue in science and engineering.

This project informs educators about the challenges and successes schools encounter when they expand access to AP courses. The experiences of the teachers who will be teaching students with variable preparation inform future needs for professional development and support. The project provides estimates of the impact of students' AP-course taking on their progress into postsecondary educational experiences and their intent to continue to prepare to be future engineers and scientists. It informs policy efforts to improve the access to more rigorous advanced courses in STEM and provides strong experimental evidence of the impact of AP course taking. The project has the potential to demonstrate to educational researchers how to study an educational program that operates at scale.

In this two-year exploratory project, science educators at the University of Massachusetts Boston collaborate with those at the University of Arizona to develop and test a learning progression for the study of chemistry. Likely pathways are investigated for how grade 8-13 student's implicit assumptions develop on five major threads of chemical design - chemical identity, structure-property relationships, chemical causality and mechanism, chemical control and cost-benefit-risks. A focus on chemical design - the identification and synthesis of chemical compounds - facilitates the coherent integration of scientific and engineering practices, cross-cutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. This approach should make chemistry more engaging to a greater variety of students including those in Career and Technical Education.

The project investigates the core implicit assumptions that can be expected to characterize and constrain novice and sophisticated student reasoning about each of the five major threads of chemical design. It also suggests the hypothetical "stepping stones" that characterize the progression from novice to sophisticated reasoning in chemical design. Existing research literature on student ideas and on related developmental psychology and cognitive science research is reviewed. Project staff together with twelve master high school and middle school science teachers in the Boston Public Schools develop a framework that can be used to compare and contrast more or less sophisticated ways of thinking about foundational ideas for the understanding of chemical design and from them derive hypotheses about "stepping stones" in understanding the implication of chemical design. Questionnaires and interview protocols similar to those employed in previous projects are used with students in grades 8, 10, 12 and college freshmen and their teachers to refine and enrich initial hypotheses about the evolution of core implicit assumptions along the five threads. The research is evaluated by an advisory board of science educators and educational researchers using a written protocol. Content is reviewed by practicing chemists.

A concise and clear summary of the learning progression is produced with an intended audience of teachers, curriculum developers and publishers who are implementing or revising curriculum. The dissemination of this summary includes a brief market research survey of teachers, curriculum developers and publishers of high school chemistry materials. Versions of validated open-response instruments that can be easily implemented by teachers as formative assessments of student understanding in the areas targeted by the study are also published. An understanding is gained of some of the challenges associated with implementing the Next Generation Science Standards in a way that meaningfully integrates science and engineering practice, important content and cross cutting themes in the context of learning about chemical design.

In this two-year exploratory project, science educators at the University of Massachusetts Boston collaborate with those at the University of Arizona to develop and test a learning progression for the study of chemistry. Likely pathways are investigated for how grade 8-13 student's implicit assumptions develop on five major threads of chemical design - chemical identity, structure-property relationships, chemical causality and mechanism, chemical control and cost-benefit-risks. A focus on chemical design - the identification and synthesis of chemical compounds - facilitates the coherent integration of scientific and engineering practices, cross-cutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. This approach should make chemistry more engaging to a greater variety of students including those in Career and Technical Education.

The project investigates the core implicit assumptions that can be expected to characterize and constrain novice and sophisticated student reasoning about each of the five major threads of chemical design. It also suggests the hypothetical "stepping stones" that characterize the progression from novice to sophisticated reasoning in chemical design. Existing research literature on student ideas and on related developmental psychology and cognitive science research is reviewed. Project staff together with twelve master high school and middle school science teachers in the Boston Public Schools develop a framework that can be used to compare and contrast more or less sophisticated ways of thinking about foundational ideas for the understanding of chemical design and from them derive hypotheses about "stepping stones" in understanding the implication of chemical design. Questionnaires and interview protocols similar to those employed in previous projects are used with students in grades 8, 10, 12 and college freshmen and their teachers to refine and enrich initial hypotheses about the evolution of core implicit assumptions along the five threads. The research is evaluated by an advisory board of science educators and educational researchers using a written protocol. Content is reviewed by practicing chemists.

A concise and clear summary of the learning progression is produced with an intended audience of teachers, curriculum developers and publishers who are implementing or revising curriculum. The dissemination of this summary includes a brief market research survey of teachers, curriculum developers and publishers of high school chemistry materials. Versions of validated open-response instruments that can be easily implemented by teachers as formative assessments of student understanding in the areas targeted by the study are also published. An understanding is gained of some of the challenges associated with implementing the Next Generation Science Standards in a way that meaningfully integrates science and engineering practice, important content and cross cutting themes in the context of learning about chemical design.

This project scales and further tests the Target Inquiry (TI) professional development model. The TI model involves teachers in three core experiences: 1) a research experience for teachers, 2) materials adaptation, and 3) an action research project. The original program was implemented with high school chemistry teachers at Grand Valley State University (GVSU), and was shown to result in significant increases, with large effect sizes, in teachers' understanding of science inquiry and quality of instruction, and in science achievement of those teachers' students. The scale-up and further testing would involve adding physics, biology and geology at Grand Valley State University, and implementing the program at Miami University (MU) with chemistry teachers. Three research questions will be studied:

1) How do the three TI core experiences influence in-service high school science teachers' (i) understanding of the nature of science; (ii) attitudes and beliefs about inquiry instruction; and (iii) classroom instructional methods in the derivatives of the TI model?

2) How does teacher participation in TI affect students' process skills (scientific reasoning and metacognition) and conceptual understanding of science in the derivatives of the TI model?

3) What are the challenges and solutions related to implementing TI in science disciplines beyond chemistry and in other regions?

The research design is quasi-experimental and longitudinal, incorporating implementation with research, and using quantitative and qualitative methods blended in a design research framework. A total of 54 middle and high school science teachers are being recruited for the study. The TI group is completing the TI program (N = 27; 15 at GVSU; 12 at MU) while the comparison group (same sizes and locations) is not. The comparison group is matched according to individual characteristics and school demographics. All teachers are being studied, along with their students, for 4 years (pre-program, post-RET, post-MA, post-AR/post-program). TI teachers are taking 15 credits of graduate level science courses over three years, including summers. Courses include a graduate seminar focused on preparing for the research experience, the research experience in a faculty member's science lab during the summer, application of research to teaching, action research project development, adaptation and evaluation of inquiry-focused curricula, and interpretation and analysis of classroom data from action research. Consistent feedback from professional development, teachers, and evaluation, including the previous implementation, contributes to a design-based approach. Teacher factors being studied include nature of science, inquiry teaching knowledge and beliefs, and quality of inquiry instruction. Student factors being studied include scientific reasoning; metacognition, self-efficacy, and learning processes in science; and content knowledge and conceptual understanding. Only established quantitative and qualitative instruments are being used. Quantitative analysis includes between-group comparisons by year on post-tests, with pre-tests as covariates, and multi-level models with students nested with teachers, and teachers within sites, with the teacher level as the primary unit of change. Trends over time between the treatment and comparison groups are being examined. The evaluation is using a combination of pre/post causal comparative quantitative measures and relevant qualitative data from project leaders and participants, as well as from the comparison group, to provide formative and summative evaluation input.

Outcomes of the project include documentation and understanding of the impacts on science teachers' instruction and student outcomes of research experiences for teachers when they are supported by materials adaptation and action research, and an understanding of what it takes to scale the model to different science disciplines and a different site. The project is also producing a website of instructional materials for middle and secondary science.

The print version of Foundation Science, a comprehensive high school science curriculum, has been extensively field tested and shown to be effective in increasing student learning and changing teacher practice. Carolina Biological Supply is scheduled to publish a digital version of Biology and Chemistry portions of Foundation Science that goes well beyond the conversion of print text to digital delivery by September 2012. Many digital enhancements have been developed and tested in the biology unit of Foundation Science, which was used as a model to develop a system to incorporate Universal Design for learning features in materials development and in on-line professional development for cross-over teachers. Some of the digital resources include a digital book reader; a notebook in which notes can take various forms such as text, drawing, voice recording; separate unscored assessments; an interactive glossary; graphing capabilities and an online research tool.

Thus this project provides a model of how existing, tested digital enhancements can increase student learning. Increasing the quality of science education requires careful coupling of effective, research-based curricula with innovative digital features that deepen and enhance science learning and teaching. This RAPID is to ensure that the content and pedagogical expertise is present during the development of the digital version of Foundation science.

In this DRK12 project, the PhET Interactive Simulations group at the University of Colorado and the AAALab at Stanford University are working together to produce and study learning from interactive simulations designed for middle school science classrooms. We are developing a suite of 35 high-quality, interactive simulations covering physical science topics. These simulations include innovative technologies that provide teachers with real-time, formative feedback on how their students are using the simulations.  The research investigates how various characteristics of the simulation design influence student engagement and learning, and how this response varies across grade-level and diverse populations. The research also includes an investigation of different ways of using simulations in class, and how these approaches affect student preparation for future learning when they are no longer using a given simulation.

      The original PhET simulations were designed for college use, but overtime, they have migrated to lower grades.  The current suite of free research-based, interactive PhET science simulations are used over 10 million times per year.  To optimize their utility for middle school science, we are conducting interviews with diverse 4-8^th graders using 25 existing PhET simulations to help identify successful design alternatives where needed, and to formulate generalized design guidelines. In parallel, pull-out and classroom-based studies are investigating a variety of lesson plans to identify the most promising approach. These studies include controlled comparisons that collect both qualitative and quantitative data.

      On the basis of our emerging design principles, we are developing 10 new simulations in consultation with teachers, who are helping to identify high need areas for simulations. These new simulations also include a back-end data collection capability that can collect, aggregate, and display student patterns of simulation use for teachers and researchers. The design of the data collection and presentation formats depends on an iterative process done in collaboration with teachers to identify the most useful information and display formats. A final evaluation compares student learning with and without this back-end formative assessment technology.   

This project is working to transform the way science is taught and learned in Grades 4-8 so that it is more effective at promoting scientific thinking and content learning, while also being engaging to diverse populations. The project is expected to impact many, many thousands of teachers and students through its production of a suite of 35 free, interactive science simulations optimized for Grades 4-8 along with “activity templates”, guidance, and real time feedback to teachers to support pedagogically effective integration into classrooms. Finally, the intellectual merit of the project is its significant contributions to understanding when, how, and why interactive simulations can be effective learning and research tools.

Building on the work that "Investigating and Questioning our World through Science and Technology (IQWST)" completed in Phase I, a comprehensive science curriculum for grades 6-8 is developed in Phase II. A learning-goals-driven design is used in which learning performances that drive the design of activities and assessments specify how students should be able to use the scientific ideas and skills outlined in standards. The materials are organized around driving questions that provide a context to motivate students as they use their knowledge and skills in scientific practices -- such as modeling, designing investigations, explanation and argumentation and data gathering, analysis and interpretation -- to acquire understandings of the concepts, principles and habits of mind articulated in national science standards. The materials contain hands-on experiences, technology tools and reading materials that extend students' first-hand experiences of phenomena and support science literacy. All four science disciplines are studied for about one-quarter of each year. The physics topics for grades 6, 7 and 8 are description of motion, conservation and transformation of energy, and laws of motion respectively; in Earth science, the topics are Earth surface processes, climate and weather and objects in space; for biology, organisms and systems, genetics and the environment, and ecosystems and natural selection; and for chemistry, particulate nature of matter, chemical reactions of substances, and chemical reactions all around us. Teacher materials support teacher learning of the science content and pedagogical approaches. The materials include an on-line system that provides video examples of student work and pedagogy in action. The project also includes development of resources for the community so that learning opportunities linked to classroom activities can occur outside of school. Particular attention is paid to developing reading literacy.

A principled framework is created for the development of learning progressions in science that can demonstrate how their use can transform the way researchers, educators and curriculum developers conceptualize important scientific constructs. Using the construct of transformation of matter, which requires understanding of both discrete learning goals and also the connections between them, a hypothetical learning progression is constructed for grades 5-12. Assessments are developed that link to the learning progression and require students to use cognitively challenging activities such as construction of models and scientific explanation to demonstrate their understanding of topics related to transformation of matter. The resultant set of assessment items can be used to place students along the transformation of matter learning progression, regardless of curriculum. The learning progression is empirically tested in grades 6-8 using mainly, but not exclusively, the chemistry units of the IQWST curriculum in a three year longitudinal study that measures the longitudinal progression of students and the cross-sectional development of teachers as they gain experience with the curriculum. The framework developed for creating the tools can inform the learning of other core ideas in science in emergent sciences that are inherently interdisciplinary. Also investigated is the relationship between student and teacher factors and different levels of students' developmental learning.