Elementary School

Developing Organizational Capacity to Improve K-8 Mathematics Teaching and Learning

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CASPIR is a 5-year NSF-funded project aimed at co-developing and implementing the Elementary Math Leadership (EML) model in four K-8 school districts to improve K-8 math teaching and learning. This is done by: (1) gathering information about problems of practice collaboratively identified by districts/research team; (2) co-designing and co-implementing coherent PD; and (3) engaging in iterative cycles of co-development, implementation, and revision to productively adapt the PD model over a series of years.

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Designing for Science Learning in Schools by Leveraging Participation and the Power of Place through Community and Citizen Science (Collaborative Research: Ballard and Henson)

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This study focuses on youth community action and science in our forests. We address questions about when and where youth cultivate their agency and create change relevant to their lives through environmental science. We explore these questions through a place-based and community-lead, forest monitoring program looking at forest health and fire risk in the wildfire prone Sierra Nevada foothills. This school-based program brings together 3rd through 5th grade teachers, students, local scientists and land managers.

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Design and Implementation of Immersive Representations of Practice

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The project examines how representations of practice facilitate preservice teachers' professional knowledge for teaching fractions and multiplication/division. The project focuses specifically on: how single and multi-perspective 360 video affects PSTs' professional knowledge; how PSTs use technological scaffolds to engage in 360 video, and its effect on their professional knowledge; and the design of a platform for teacher educators to create their own 360 video immersive experiences

Co-PI(s): Richard E. Ferdig and C. C. Lu, Kent State University

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CAREER: Cultivating Teachers' Epistemic Empathy to Promote Responsive Teaching

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This project aims to study and cultivate science and mathematics teachers' "epistemic empathy" the capacity for tuning into and valuing someone's cognitive and emotional experience in the process of constructing, communicating, and critiquing knowledge. The project's goals are to examine how such epistemic can be cultivated in teacher education, how it may function to promote responsive teaching, and how it may shape learners' engagement in the classroom.
 
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CAREER: Black and Latinx Parents Leading Reform and Advancing Racial Justice in Elementary Mathematics

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CAREER: Black and Latinx Parents Leading ChANge & Advancing Racial Justice in Elementary Mathematics aims to increase Black and Latinx parents' engagement in solidarity with community organizations and teachers to advance racial justice in PreK-5 mathematics through two educational programs, one for families and one for teachers. Reasearch goals include understanding the lived experiences of Black and Latinx parents as they build capacity to lead change and the development, nature, and impact of parent-teacher-community partnerships.
 
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Translating a Video-based Model of Teacher Professional Development to an Online Environment

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In prior work, BSCS studied STeLLA, a video-based analysis-of-practice professional learning (PL) model and found that it enhanced elementary science teacher and student outcomes. But the face-to-face model is difficult to scale. We present the results of a two-year design-based research study to translate the face-to-face PL into a facilitated online experience. The purpose is to create an effective, flexible, and cost-efficient PL model that will reach a broader audience of teachers.

Co-PI(s): Gillian Roehrig, University of Minnesota

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Streams of Data: Nurturing Data Literacy in Young Science Learners (Collaborative Research: Kochevar)

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Streams of Data is pursuing early stage research to address: How can the use of professionally collected, scientific data support the development of data literacy skills in elementary students, and what types of scaffolds are necessary to realize this potential? In the first year, baseline research examined the analytical thinking approaches children intuitively use when making meaning from different types of data with minimal scaffolding? We explored commonplace scenarios of data and conventional data representations.

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Science Coordinators Advancing a Framework for Outstanding Leadership Development

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Science Coordinators Advancing a Framework For Outstanding Leadership Development (SCAFFOLD) develops and studies a PD program for District Science Coordinators (DSCs) in one Southeastern state. DSCs can have partial or full responsibility for supporting science teachers in their districts, but little is known about their training and impact on teachers. The goal is to determine the impact of DSCs on teachers and if they are in need of PD to enhance their work with teachers.

Co-PI(s): Brooke A. Whitworth, Clemson University

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Place-based Learning for Elementary Science at Scale (PeBLES2)

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To support equitable access to place-based science learning, the PeBLES2 team is developing and testing a model to support elementary teachers in incorporating locally relevant phenomena into instructional materials intentional designed to be locally-adapted. We are developing two units that could be used in any region across the country with built-in opportunities and embedded supports for teachers to purposefully adapt curriculum to include local phenomena. Professional learning experiences will further help teachers incorporate place-based approaches.

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Modest Supports for Sustaining Professional Development Outcomes over the Long-Term

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This project investigated whether a two-year intervention of modest follow-up support influenced the sustainability of outcomes for elementary teachers who had previously participated in professional development programs designed to improve science education. In this poster, we discuss the supports offered to teachers and the extent to which they used these supports. We also describe the impact of the follow-up supports on teachers' self-efficacy related to science teaching and on their instructional practices.

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