The Center for Technology and School Change (CTSC) at Teachers College, Columbia University and the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) at Columbia University's Earth Institute are working in partnership with three STEM focused New York City schools (K-8) to develop a systemic, transformative approach for interdisciplinary STEM teaching and learning. The planned model prepares teachers to design innovative, authentic STEM projects, and supports administrators in leading such efforts.

CTSC has identified key elements of a robust design process to help teachers move from business- as-usual pedagogy to dramatically new practices in content, pedagogy, and technology use. The program also identifies an interdisciplinary STEM perspective, supported with experts from CERC who provide STEM fieldwork expertise as part of the overall design. Moreover, the project creates research and educational collaborations with diverse, community-based groups (e.g., urban nature centers). The project uses a mobile learning platform to leverage social networking among schools, teachers, students, STEM experts, parents and the community.

The goal of the grant is to establish a culture of inquiry with all partners in order to develop interdiciplinary, authentic STEM learning environments. Design-based research provides iterative cycles of implementation to explore and refine the approach as a transformative model for STEM programs. The model supports a sustainable approach by building the capacity of schools to focus on design issues related to content, pedagogy, and leadership.

The goal of Spatial Mathematics, Engineering, and Science: Toward an Integrated STEM Education is to develop a provisional learning progression spanning grades K-5 that articulates and tests the potential of experiencing, describing, and representing space as the core of an integrated STEM education. The science of space has an extensive scope within and across disciplinary boundaries of science, mathematics and engineering, the project will create a coherent approach to elementary instruction in which mathematical reasoning about space is systematically cultivated. Simultaneously, researchers are exploring the potential of spatial mathematics as a resource for engineering design of kinematic machines and for the development of mechanistic reasoning about the behavior of these machines. Work across these disciplines situates and motivates the mathematical work and also provides opportunities to investigate the intersections and contrasts among signature disciplinary practices, such as definition and proof in mathematics, design in engineering, and modeling in science. The research and development is being conducted in a middle school which is a full partner in the project.

In partnership, researchers and participating teachers are designing and implementing curricular approaches intended to support spatial knowledge and reasoning. Professional development will enhance and capitalize on teachers' roles as specialists in student thinking. The research consists of design studies conducted in 12 participating classrooms, K-5, and small-scale teaching experiments conducted with children across the same grade span. The research will establish provisional pathways and landmarks in learning about space, as well as the curricular activities and teacher practices necessary to support integrated STEM learning.

The project is novel in three ways. First, it provides children with early and systematic access to multiple geometries (e.g., plane, cylinder, sphere) to develop sophisticated understandings of powerful, yet experientally accessible concepts, such as straight, and STEM-related practices, such as model, definition and proof. Second, both the National Research Council Science/Engineering and the Common Core State Standards Mathematics highlight the role of practices in the development of disciplinary knowledge, and this project is providing a practical avenue for coordinating the co-development of disciplinary practices and knowledge. Third, the unifying theme of space is threaded through problems and contexts in mathematics, science and engineering, which provide a sound basis for generative STEM integration-integration that does not lose sight of the distinctive practices in different disciplines, but, instead, leverages these distinctions to produce multiple ways of knowing about space. Research and development is being conducted with underrepresented populations of students who are typically underserved in STEM education. Although the numbers of students reached in this phase of the work are relatively modest, the longer-term potential is great, because instruction anchored in space may be more accessible to students who struggle with traditional forms of mathematics education. The increased attention to integrated STEM education at the national level also ensures that this effort is likely to contribute to the knowledge base required to advance interdisciplinary forms of schooling.

As part of a SAVI, researchers from the U.S. and from Finland will collaborate on investigating the relationships between engagement and learning in STEM transmedia games. The members of U.S. Team for this project come from TERC, WGBH and Northern Illinois University. The project involves two intensive, 5 day workshops to identify new measurement instruments to be integrated into each other's research and development work. The major research question is to what degree learners in the two cultures respond similarly or differently to the STEM learning games.

This workshop, hosted by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts and the Social Sciences (I-CHASS), convenes leading practitioners and scholars of innovation to collectively consider how education in the US might be reconfigured to both support and teach innovation as a core curriculum mission, with a focus on STEM education. Workshop participants identify and articulate strategies for creating and sustaining learning environments that promise the development of innovative thinking skills, behaviors and dispositions and that reward students, faculty and administrator for practicing and tuning these skills. A wiki or other private online space will be created where participants will be encouraged to continue discussions or comment further on ideas generated over the course of the workshop. Mapping social networks of and among participants provides insights into how innovation practices are shared and spread across relationships and networks. Findings from the workshop will be made available to others through a public web site.

This project supports the development of technological fluency and understanding of STEM concepts through the implementation of design collaboratives that use eCrafting Collabs as the medium within which to work with middle and high school students, parents and the community. The researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Franklin Institute combine expertise in learning sciences, digital media design, computer science and informal science education to examine how youth at ages 10-16 and families in schools, clubs, museums and community groups learn together how to create e-textile artifacts that incorporate embedded computers, sensors and actuators. The project investigates the feasibility of implementing these collaboratives using eCrafting via three models of participation, individual, structured group and cross-generational community groups. They are designing a portal through which the collaborative can engage in critique and sharing of their designs as part of their efforts to build a model process by which scientific and engineered product design and analysis can be made available to multiple audiences.

The project engages participants through middle and high school elective classes and through the workshops conducted by a number of different organizations including the Franklin Institute, Techgirlz, the Hacktory and schools in Philadelphia. Participants can engage in the eCrafting Collabs through individual, collective and community design challenges that are established by the project. Participants learn about e-textile design and about circuitry and programming using either ModKit or the text-based Arduino. The designs are shared through the eCrafting Collab portal and participants are required to provide feedback and critique. Researchers are collecting data on learner identity in relation to STEM and computing, individual and collective participation in design and student understanding of circuitry and programming. The project is an example of a scalable intervention to engage students, families and communities in developing technological flexibility.

This research and development project provides a resource that engages students in middle and high schools in technology rich collaborative environments that are alternatives to other sorts of science fairs and robotic competitions. The resources developed during the project will inform how such an informal/formal blend of student engagement might be scaled to expand the experiences of populations of underserved groups, including girls. The study is conducting an examination of the new types of learning activities that are multiplying across the country with a special focus on cross-generational learning.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to conduct in-depth ethnographic studies in Latino neighborhoods, documenting the funds of knowledge, social networks, and linguistic and representational repertoires that are available in the adolescents' online and offline communities. This study is based on a theoretical model that embeds engineering design within social, cultural, and linguistic activity, seeking to understand (a) how adolescent English learners draw from various linguistic, representational, and social resources as they work toward solving community-based engineering design challenges; (b) the problems they face in working on the challenges and how they seek to overcome those problems; and (c) adolescents' willingness to conceptualize themselves as future engineers before and after participating in the project.

The ethnographic research is being conducted over the course of three years. The first year includes a pilot study in which approximately four Latino adolescents from the same community identify an engineering design project and work toward implementing it. Upon completion of the pilot project, the advisory committee reviews the data collection instruments, the observation and interview techniques, and the data analysis methods. Year two includes a scaled-up version of the ethnography, in which two groups of five to seven adolescents identify a need in their respective communities and spend the remainder of the school year addressing that need through an engineering design. Student participants are members of both the MESA and Upward Bound programs which target ethnically diverse adolescents. In all, up to 18 participants (4 in the first year and 14 in the second year) are selected through a combination of direct recruitment and peer recommendations.

This study will generate frameworks for understanding the types of social resources and the types of literacy practices that are relevant to engineering processes. The knowledge generated in this study is essential for creating future curricular materials and professional development models that will enhance engineering education for culturally diverse students.

The desire to better empower high-ability STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) students has contributed in the last two decades to a jump in the creation of selective STEM specialty high schools. These schools devote all of their attention to a student body comprised only of the most talented students, ones who are most likely to be able to learn the most demanding STEM content, reach their STEM learning potential, and pursue postsecondary STEM study and careers. However, there are mixed views on the role that selective STEM specialty schools play in achieving their mission. While commenting on what is known regarding education in the STEM disciplines, a recent National Research Council report entitled "Successful K-12 STEM Education" notes that "there are no systematic data that show whether the highly capable students who attend those schools would have been just as likely to pursue a STEM major or related career or make significant contributions to technology or science if they had attended another type of school." To address the research gap, this impact study addresses the question: Does gaining admission to a selective STEM specialty school improve students' academic success on the SAT, SAT II (Math Level 2), and Advanced Placement exams (Calculus AB, Chemistry, and Physics B)? Other portions of the investigation follow additional student outcomes, including: participation and success in STEM competitions; STEM publications; National Merit scholarships; intentions for postsecondary STEM education and STEM careers; and initial postsecondary STEM education.

This study is based on the most rigorous possible design for the focal topic: a true experimental investigation of outcomes for students from many selective STEM specialty schools. The study is being accomplished through random assignment of equivalent treatment and control groups, and based on enough students to yield statistical power that can produce the most clear causal result possible. Researchers are recruiting all qualified students who apply for admission to 20 selective STEM specialty schools among the approximately 100 such schools currently in the United States. For the class entering in fall 2013, study schools are revising their routine selection process to one of assigning students for acceptance (treatment condition) or not (control condition) through random assignment of qualified applicants. Researchers, then, are following treatment students via their STEM schools and also intensively tracking all control students wherever they continue their secondary education. The study also investigates relative cost-effectiveness for educating high-achieving students in selective STEM schools versus educating them at other schools.

Since there is an acute and growing U.S. shortage of STEM professionals and technicians, it is imperative for the nation's education system to ensure that talented STEM students are reaching their maximum potential and pursuing postsecondary STEM degree programs and careers. As one strategy increasingly being used to address this need is to educate talented STEM students in selective STEM specialty schools, this study is informing considerations of the cost/benefit of directing resources to support such schools.

The RISE project is creating curriculum resources for dual language learners (DLLs) in science, technology and engineering (STE). Participants include teachers in pre-K programs in the Boston area selected to target Hispanic and Chinese students and their families. University partners include Tufts, Rutgers, Miami, and Northern Iowa, who will work with ABCD Head Start. An innovative feature is the incorporation of family funds of knowledge as a basis for the curriculum development. There are two research questions. 1. What are the most productive procedures for appropriate application of the full integrated RISE curriculum in Head Start classrooms serving DLL children? 2. What is the impact of the fully integrated RISE curriculum versus the comparison condition on teacher attitudes, classroom instruction, and quality, home-school relationships, and DLL children's STE knowledge and approaches to learning? In years 1 and two, 5 teachers are being supported, with 10 teachers in year 3. Participating parents are 40, 105, and 180 for years 1, 2 and 3. Professional development and mentoring is being provided for the teachers, and parent-teacher discussion groups are facilitating communication.

The research data is based on extensive classroom observations as well as interviews and surveys. For question 2, the project plans a quasi-experimental study of 10 RISE and 8 randomly selected comparison classrooms sampling 10 students in each classroom. Data will be analyzed with ANCOVA. The curriculum will be based on the Massachusetts framework, one of only a few states with pre-K standards. The evaluation will monitor both the progress of the research and development and the dissemination to the target audiences.

The curriculum materials are to be posted on the Tufts University website and a commercial publisher is being sought. Units are to be 6-12 weeks in duration, with a typical classroom engaging approximately four units. With the growing population of DLL students and the recognition that early childhood education in STE makes significant contributions to children's education, this project has the potential for national impacts.

This project is developing evidence about the efficacy of the Engineering is Elementary curriculum under ideal conditions by studying the student and teacher-level effects of implementation. The rigorous level of evidence that is developed in this study has significant utility as a support for the kinds of elementary engineering curricula that are needed as the Next Generation Science Standards come online and emphasize engineering design. The study is a randomized control trial where the assignment of teachers will be to the EiE curricular materials or to a counterfactual condition, the use of more standard design engineering curricular materials. The project studies the impact of the use of the curriculum on student learning and on teachers' use of the curriculum in a fidelity of implementation study to determine the core elements of the curriculum that support successful use. The study examines the implementation of the curricular materials in a number of contexts to more fully understand the conditions under which they work best and to explicate what aspects of such project-based inquiry materials most support student learning.

This study uses a randomized cluster trial to examine the efficacy of the EiE curriculum across 75 schools in the treatment and 75 schools in the control group samples. Two teachers per school are included in one treatment/control condition per school. Outcome measures for students include performances on project-specific measures that have been examined for technical quality of validity and reliability. A set of additional research-based survey instruments validated for use in the EiE context are also used to collect data about students' attitudes, perceptions, interest and motivation toward science and engineering. A robust fidelity of implementation research plan is being implemented that will include teachers surveys, pre and post assessments, teacher logs, as well as student engineering journals and student work from classroom implementation. The fidelity of implementation is further studied with forty treatment and ten control teachers through classroom observations and interviews.

The findings from this study have broad implications for how engineering design curricular can be developed and implemented at the elementary level. Engineering design has not been emphasized in the elementary classroom, lagging behind instruction in science with which teachers are more familiar. The results of this study inform practitioners and policy makers about what works, for whom and under what conditions. Information about the different contexts in which the curriculum has been implemented supports the dissemination of evidence-based research and development practices to strengthen STEM learning for all students.