High School

Extending and Investigating the Impact of the High School Model-based Educational Resource (Collaborative Research: Wilson)

Principal Investigator:

This project examines the efficacy of the Model-Based Educational Resource (MBER) for high-school biology teachers and students. Previous work on MBER has found that the materials support teachers in providing opportunities for engaging student sensemaking and modeling, are feasible to implement in diverse classroom contexts, and show promise of efficacy in increasing student achievement. With this project we are generating causal evidence investigating how this approach to teaching and learning supports Next Generation Science learning.

Click image to preview:
Discipline/Topic:
Target Audience:

Extending and Investigating the Impact of the High School Model-based Educational Resource (Collaborative Research: Passmore)

Principal Investigator:

This project examines the efficacy of the Model-Based Educational Resource (MBER) for high-school biology teachers and students. Previous work on MBER has found that the materials support teachers in providing opportunities for engaging student sensemaking and modeling, are feasible to implement in diverse classroom contexts, and show promise of efficacy in increasing student achievement. With this project we are generating causal evidence investigating how this approach to teaching and learning supports Next Generation Science learning.

Click image to preview:
Discipline/Topic:
Target Audience:

Examining an On-line, International Exchange Professional Development Program for High School Teachers

Principal Investigator:

This project explores the potential of lesson-centered collaboration on lessons for supporting teachers’ professional growth. Specifically, the project examines how the exchange between both domestic and international teams of teachers centered on teacher-generated lesson artifacts—in the form of storyboarded lessons and annotations of those lessons—can serve as a powerful tool for supporting teachers’ ongoing professional learning and growth through collaboration.

Click image to preview:
Discipline/Topic:
Target Audience:

Evaluating Effects of Automatic Feedback Aligned to a Learning Progression to Promote Knowledge-In-Use

Principal Investigator:

This project builds on existing work on three-dimensional learning progressions in high school physical sciences to develop an artificial intelligence supported scoring system for student text and models. These tools will be used to support learning of electrical forces in an integrated curriculum with real-time feedback on formative assessment items. We report on early attempts to design coding rubrics for automatic scoring of explanations and modeling responses and outcomes of developing text classification models.

Click image to preview:
Discipline/Topic:
Target Audience:

Empowering Teachers to See and Support Student Use of Crosscutting Concepts in the Life Sciences

Principal Investigator:

In this project, we are developing strengths-based formative assessment tools to support students’ use of the crosscutting concepts (CCCs) in phenomenon-based science learning. We have used the practice of Developing and Using Models as a window into student use of the CCCs, co-developing instructional supports with participating teachers. We are now connecting these supports to aspects of the formative assessment process (e.g., visualizing success, eliciting evidence of student thinking, providing feedback, and cultivating student self-assessment).

Click image to preview:
Discipline/Topic:
Target Audience:

Developing the Pedagogical Skills and Science Expertise of Teachers in Underserved Rural Settings

Principal Investigator:

We are utilizing a novel form of professional learning--Technology-Mediated Lesson Study--to support rural science teachers' professional networks and capacity for 3D science teaching. We are studying changes in teacher practice, and changes in their professional social networks. The teachers are producing 3D lesson plans responsive to rural students' cultures, interests, and needs.

Click image to preview:
Discipline/Topic:
Target Audience:

Developing Learning Environments that Support Molecular-Level Sensemaking

Principal Investigator:

Most STEM education reforms aim to prepare learners to use science in their post-school daily lives. This goal is not about content – reproducing correct science facts is not sufficient to solve practical problems of real people. However, even in classes structured by reformed curricula, students are often permitted to construct knowledge only insofar as it aligns with canon. Here, we argue that the tension between reproducing “correct” ideas and constructing one’s own ideas is exacerbated by - and partially arises from - our approach to designing and refining curricula.

Click image to preview:
Discipline/Topic:
Target Audience:

Developing and Investigating Unscripted Mathematics Videos

Principal Investigator:

Our project has two main components. First, we are creating instructional videos that feature the unscripted dialogue of pairs of students as they engage with mathematically rich problems over time, thereby providing a model of how authentic student voices and conceptions can be included in videos. Second, we are conducting studies that investigate students’ learning processes as they engage with our videos and explore how our videos might be used in classroom instruction.

Click image to preview:
Discipline/Topic:
Target Audience:

Developing an Online Game to Teach Middle School Students Science Research Practices in the Life Sciences (Collaborative Research: Gagnon)

Principal Investigator:

Wake is a new grade 6-9 educational video game designed to teach the scientific practices of experimentations, modeling and arguing from evidence in the context of life sciences content. The game has been deployed at scale and we are using data from tens-of-thousands of players to develop new learning progressions theory and new educational data mining methods.

Click image to preview:
Discipline/Topic:
Target Audience: