2025 DRK-12 PI Meeting Call for Session Proposals

Call for Session Proposals
Submissions due February 26, 2025

The Community for Advancing Discovery Research in Education (CADRE), the resource network for NSF DRK–12 awardees, is pleased to host the 2025 DRK–12 PI Meeting on June 9–11 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington VA. Programming will begin midday on June 9, continue for a full day on June 10, and end midday on June 11. The meeting will provide opportunities for learning, networking, and substantive conversations for approximately 300 DRK–12 project leaders, NSF program directors, and CADRE Fellows. Invited projects (Password protected XLS download. Password: pimeeting) are initially allowed one registrant. If space allows, CADRE will invite second project members to register.

The purpose of the meeting is to engage the DRK–12 community in:

Addressing the critical needs and opportunities in preK–12 STEM education and research
Building and sharing new knowledge, best practices, and tools critical to increasing the impact and sustainability of our collective work over time
Developing and maintaining professional connections that may result in future collaborations and innovations
Supporting attendees at different stages of their careers and projects at different stages in their cycle of research

CADRE, NSF, and the DRK–12 PI Meeting Planning Committee are pleased to announce a Call for Session Proposals. The Call for Session Proposals is informed by the input of the DRK–12 PIs through survey responses, past DRK–12 PI meeting evaluations, NSF, and the PI Meeting Planning Committee.

Please read the following sections carefully:

Posters & Opportunities to Present about Individual Projects
Poster sessions and other topical networking opportunities (e.g., roundtables) do not require submission of a session proposal. Registrants will receive separate invitations to present a project poster, which will be the primary mechanism to share information and products related to individual projects. Please do not submit an individual poster proposal through this Call for Session Proposals. Group poster sessions that address a focal area and are structured in an acceptable form of meeting session as described below are allowable.

Session Content

CADRE invites proposals for highly interactive, concurrent sessions that are responsive to the purpose of the meeting, the focal areas as outlined below, and the potential interests of DRK–12 project members and meeting guests.

All concurrent sessions must go beyond a simple showcase of project work; poster presentations are reserved for this purpose. If you need support identifying potential session collaborators, want feedback about a session idea, or have any questions about the Call for Session Proposals, please contact cadre@edc.org.

While proposed session topics may fit into multiple focal areas, we ask that you select the one that is most central in the information you plan to address. Additional programming will occur during the in-person meeting to support networking with colleagues and meetings with program officers. More information about those opportunities will follow.

Focal Areas

Advancing Innovations in STEM Education Teaching and Learning

We invite session proposals focused on STEM education innovations, particularly those that explore novel instructional designs, professional development models, and assessment approaches to support K–12 educators and learners.

Proposals may address a range of questions, including but not limited to:

Instructional Innovations: What new strategies or technologies are enhancing STEM teaching and learning?
Professional Development Models: How are professional learning opportunities being designed to help educators deepen their content knowledge and pedagogical skills in STEM? What are effective methods for supporting teachers in implementing STEM curricula?
Assessment Approaches: What innovative assessment tools or frameworks are being developed to measure student learning and engagement in STEM? How are formative and summative assessments being used to inform instructional design and improve learning outcomes?

We encourage proposals that foster dialogue about the challenges, successes, and future directions in STEM education. Sessions should inspire attendees with ideas and insights, actionable ideas, and/or tools and techniques to advance the quality and reach of STEM education.

Responding to the Changing Education and Research Environment

The DRK–12 community shares long-standing commitments to partnership-building, engagement with teachers and other school-based stakeholders, and impacting K–12 classrooms. Honoring these commitments is an ongoing challenge for education researchers where circumstances outside of the classroom are ever changing and can have a significant impact on project work. The global pandemic amplified challenges with student attendance and access to technology, teacher recruitment and retention, conducting research and brokering access to schools, and teachers’ willingness to innovate around STEM. As a result, it is arguably more challenging to collaborate and work with (and in) K–12 settings. Now, AI is further impacting education. We invite contributions that help illuminate these unique challenges as well as strategies employed by DRK–12 project teams to address them. The goal of these sessions is to share both challenges and successes to enhance the DRK–12 community’s resilience to present and future challenges to STEM education innovation and research.

Building Partnerships and Collaborating

Collaboration and partnerships are integral components of every DRK–12 project. We often form multi-member, multi-disciplinary, and even multi-institution project teams. We work with districts, schools, teachers, and other stakeholders as we develop, engage in, and build on our studies. We invite session proposals that explore the role of partnerships before, during, and after a grant, lessons learned, and findings about successful collaborations. Proposals may have the goal of sharing expertise and/or bringing together groups to discuss approaches for addressing common challenges that can hamper successful collaboration within a broad team, especially when there are competing perspectives and priorities; recruiting districts/schools and school personnel/community organizations and members/youth and caregivers for educational research, putting together convincing research proposal to win district research approval, and developing memoranda of understanding; effectively engaging practice partners in all aspects of a project from conception to dissemination; reducing the burden on participating practice partners; or managing logistics and budgets across partnerships.

Making an Impact and Disseminating Our Research and Products to Various Audiences

Dissemination and promoting knowledge use is a key component to any successful research and development project. To ensure that project results shape the field, project teams might consider:

Do you have a creative plan that moves beyond traditional means of disseminating research findings and products?
Do you have strategies for broadening the reach and impact of research? Or instruments for measuring that impact?
How are you supporting knowledge use as it relates to the outcomes of your work?
What approaches have enabled you to focus on dissemination while collecting data?
Have you found effective strategies for continuing dissemination after your project funding ends?
Do you have experience and expertise to share about writing editorials, e-books, or other resources for practitioners or policymakers?
How have you effectively communicated about the findings and products of your project to the public?
How are you satisfying the broader impacts criteria of the merit review? Is research only as valuable as its impact?

If you have experience or ideas related to any of these questions, we invite proposals for sharing experience and expertise, that provide skill building in engagement strategies and communications, or sessions that otherwise address issues of outreach, dissemination, engagement, knowledge use, and impact.

Building on Our Work

As researchers and developers, we often build on our work to expand funding on existing projects, leverage a current project for the next NSF project, or move beyond the limits of NSF funding to create a sustainable or scalable intervention model or materials. Sometimes, we seek to build upon outcomes, models, and products developed through other NSF-funded projects. The NSF’s Common Guidelines for Education Research and Development points out that building knowledge (and related outputs) is complex, is not necessarily linear, and doesn’t flow in only one direction (i.e., from basic research to studies of effectiveness). So what are the range of ways in which we can effectively plan for building on our work, especially after the current funding period is over? How do we plan for sustainability and/or scale-up early, perhaps before we even know if project outcomes warrant it? How do we preserve and share resources and products created through NSF projects after our active funding period?

For this focal area, we invite session proposals that provide meeting participants with the opportunity to discuss and learn about strategies and successful approaches to address these challenges and advance research and development that has garnered investment (e.g., NSF's investment in the form of funding, project team and participants’ investment in the form of time and effort) and shown evidence of effectiveness in contributing to the understanding and improvement of preK–12 STEM education.

Innovations in Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Subjects

Multidisciplinary and convergent research is increasingly important in the scientific enterprise of our nation as envisioned by NSF. Educational research on integrated STEM education will help build interdisciplinary competence among K–12 students for addressing complex problems in the real world and foster collaboration among STEM teachers from different subjects to broaden their teaching perspectives. Climate change provides an example of how a complex challenge can be tackled using only holistic views based on a multitude of interdisciplinary efforts, including natural sciences and social sciences. As another example, the pervasiveness of data science across all disciplines may provide a new connective tissue to integrate STEM in K–12 education. Research and development focused on data literacy and data science education have the opportunity to bring together multidisciplinary perspectives and approaches.

Session proposals submitted to this focal area should share innovative ideas and stories of successful multidisciplinary and convergent research and integrated preK–12 education or bring together different perspectives that can build toward better interdisciplinary approaches in preK–12 research and development projects.

Designing and Conducting Research Projects

Whether you are a veteran PI or a first-time awardee, you have likely considered or sought information on new, innovative, and effective research methods, design processes, evaluation approaches, project management strategies, and other aspects of successfully implementing a DRK–12 award. Even after receiving the exciting news that a proposal has been funded, awardees have shared that there are many opportunities, challenges, and realities involved in implementing the proposed scope of work that can be challenging to navigate and affect the course of the project. There is a breadth of knowledge and experience in designing and conducting research projects within the DRK–12 community, especially early stage design and development projects.

We invite awardees to share their collective knowledge about research design and methodologies, data collection and analysis, managing project activities and budgets, effective approaches for external review, and/or other aspects of successfully implementing DRK–12 awards. Sample topics include design-based research approaches, developing quasi-experimental designs, conducting instructional observations, managing scope creep, and responding to local contexts.

Other

We also invite sessions outside of the focal areas that address problems of practice or reflect other areas of interest to the DRK–12 community and that will advance the knowledge and impact of our research and development efforts.

Session Structures

Awardees are invited to submit proposals of the following session types and formats:

Thematic Sessions: Sessions involve collaboration—preferably among two to five projects—to develop a topic, lead the session, and facilitate discussion. Sessions must provide multiple perspectives on specific aspects of the focal topics, approaches to common challenges in DRK–12 work and research, and/or responses to a question that might inform other projects. Sessions must be designed to promote interaction. One possible structure is a panel. Multiple presenters representing multiple DRK–12 projects may form a panel to discuss and provide perspectives on a topic that spans their work, but must include time for participant interactions (e.g., small-group discussion).
Technical Assistance Sessions: One or more presenters provide knowledge and skill building (e.g., approaches to dissemination to various audiences) to session participants. They may share technical and/or methodological innovations and expertise. The knowledge or skills shared during this session must be applicable outside of the presenters’ own projects, and participants should have the opportunity to apply the knowledge or practice the skill under the guidance of the presenters during or following the session.
Working Sessions: Sessions are focused on engaging small groups of participants in producing a concrete deliverable. As an example, a working session might summarize a group of adaptive innovations that have been developed in response to recent changes in education or produce recommendations for future research in an area.
Structured Poster Sessions: Sessions bring together multiple projects under a unifying theme to foster collaboration, dialogue, and knowledge exchange. In this format, each poster represents a unique project, contributing to a shared topic or addressing a common challenge in DRK–12 work. The session begins with brief presentations from poster presenters, offering an overview of their projects and highlighting key insights related to the session theme. Following the introductions, participants engage in interactive poster walks. (Rounds of rotating poster presenters allow everyone to view posters.) Presenters stand by their posters to facilitate discussions, answer questions, and explore connections between projects. The session concludes with a whole-group discussion to synthesize insights, identify patterns or gaps in current work, and consider implications for advancing STEM education research and practice.

Identifying Potential Session Collaborators

CADRE encourages awardees to coordinate sessions with colleagues across institutions and projects. For those interested in finding colleagues engaged in work that may collectively create the basis for a compelling session, we encourage you to review the list of invited projects to the meeting (Password protected XLS download. Password: pimeeting) and to visit CADREK12.org to learn more about their awards. For help identifying possible collaborating projects, please email cadre@edc.org with a description of your session idea.

Proposal Submission Instructions

Please submit your proposal online no later than 11:59 pm ET February 26, 2025. Since you will not be able to return to the site and edit your submission, we suggest that you collect the required information ahead of time—using this template (Word) as a guide—and transfer the information to the submission form when ready.

Proposals should include the following. More detailed information is available in the session submission template (linked above).

Session title, format, length (if longer or shorter than the standard 1 hour and 15 minutes), capacity
Session focal area
Keywords (e.g., research participants, content area, grade band)
Question or issue that is the primary focus of the session
Session summary (limited to 25 words) and description (limited up to 1000 words, no graphics): Include how the session will address the focal area and the session objectives, structure/format, plan for interaction with the participants, and expected outcomes. If your proposed session will not address one of the focal topics, please include an argument for the importance of the topic and discussion you are proposing. To be considered, proposals must define a specific plan for significant and meaningful participant engagement.
Presenter(s) information (i.e., name, organization, contact information, DRK–12 project): Proposed presenters must be associated with a project included on the invitation list and registered for the 2025 DRK–12 PI Meeting. See the invitee list. (Password protected XLS download. Password: pimeeting) Registration invitations have been sent to NSF-recognized PIs of DRK-12 projects expected to be actively funded in June 2025. Registration will be opened for additional project members if and when space is available. Each presenter is allowed to lead only one session but may be a co-presenter on more than one session.

Review Process

Proposals will be reviewed by the PI Meeting Planning Committee and CADRE staff. The final agenda will combine sessions and interactions that are varied in structure and content. If a session is chosen for inclusion in the meeting, the session contact person will be notified in March 2025. Those whose session proposals are accepted will be expected to engage in additional conversations with the meeting organizers to discuss the session plan to ensure quality and coherence across the agenda as well as technical preparedness.

Criteria for selection:

Complete proposal (i.e., containing all relevant elements outlined in proposal submission instructions above)
Effective plan to engage session participants in discourse and/or activity that has the potential to benefit the participants, such as when a product is developed, new ideas are generated and documented, and materials are shared
Potential to generate new insights or research directions for the DRK–12 community as well as the field at large
Makes connections across projects to a theme rather than simply showcasing project work
Evidence that the presenting team includes technical planning and staffing to ensure the success of the session
All presenters must upload their presentation materials prior to their session. More information about presenter responsibilities, presenter guidelines, subsequent deadlines, and session logistics will be sent to those whose proposals are accepted.

The deadline has now passed.

QUESTIONS? Email cadre@edc.org