Projects

This project is producing two professional development modules for middle school science teachers, one on Force and Motion (emphasizing teaching English learners) and the second on Energy and Chemical Change (emphasizing the integration of literacy). Guides for staff developers will accompany the resources.

Increased focus on school accountability and teacher performance measures have resulted in STEM instruction that emphasizes content and procedural knowledge over critical thinking and real-world applications. Yet, critical thinking and application are essential in developing functional scientific literacy skills among students. This need is perhaps most pressing in economically depressed urban settings. One strategy to promote STEM engagement and learning is to make clear and meaningful connections between STEM concepts, principles, and STEM-related issues relevant to the learner. Socioscientific issues (SSI) and the Social Justice STEM Pedagogies (SJSP) framework can provide a powerful avenue for promoting the desired kinds of engagement. This collaborative research project is designed to investigate the effectiveness of a professional development (PD) program for STEM teachers to develop their pedagogical content knowledge in teaching SSI and SJSP.

Increased focus on school accountability and teacher performance measures have resulted in STEM instruction that emphasizes content and procedural knowledge over critical thinking and real-world applications. Yet, critical thinking and application are essential in developing functional scientific literacy skills among students. This need is perhaps most pressing in economically depressed urban settings. One strategy to promote STEM engagement and learning is to make clear and meaningful connections between STEM concepts, principles, and STEM-related issues relevant to the learner. Socioscientific issues (SSI) and the Social Justice STEM Pedagogies (SJSP) framework can provide a powerful avenue for promoting the desired kinds of engagement. This collaborative research project is designed to investigate the effectiveness of a professional development (PD) program for STEM teachers to develop their pedagogical content knowledge in teaching SSI and SJSP.

Increased focus on school accountability and teacher performance measures have resulted in STEM instruction that emphasizes content and procedural knowledge over critical thinking and real-world applications. Yet, critical thinking and application are essential in developing functional scientific literacy skills among students. This need is perhaps most pressing in economically depressed urban settings. One strategy to promote STEM engagement and learning is to make clear and meaningful connections between STEM concepts, principles, and STEM-related issues relevant to the learner. Socioscientific issues (SSI) and the Social Justice STEM Pedagogies (SJSP) framework can provide a powerful avenue for promoting the desired kinds of engagement. This collaborative research project is designed to investigate the effectiveness of a professional development (PD) program for STEM teachers to develop their pedagogical content knowledge in teaching SSI and SJSP.

Increased focus on school accountability and teacher performance measures have resulted in STEM instruction that emphasizes content and procedural knowledge over critical thinking and real-world applications. Yet, critical thinking and application are essential in developing functional scientific literacy skills among students. This need is perhaps most pressing in economically depressed urban settings. One strategy to promote STEM engagement and learning is to make clear and meaningful connections between STEM concepts, principles, and STEM-related issues relevant to the learner. Socioscientific issues (SSI) and the Social Justice STEM Pedagogies (SJSP) framework can provide a powerful avenue for promoting the desired kinds of engagement. This collaborative research project is designed to investigate the effectiveness of a professional development (PD) program for STEM teachers to develop their pedagogical content knowledge in teaching SSI and SJSP.

This synthesis project will inform educators and policymakers about the cumulative evidence that exists on the impacts of a variety of contextual factors on a multitude of STEM outcomes (e.g., math and science achievement, self-efficacy, future goals). This project will provide new evidence regarding the significance of youth contexts on STEM outcomes that will assist policy makers and educators in evaluating productive educational environments.

This conference will shed light on how mathematics and science teacher educators are currently using lesson study to prepare pre-service teachers. The project will improve teacher educators' understanding of how lesson study can be optimized to teach pre-service teachers which will help bring this technique to the future teachers in their programs.

This project will develop and implement a working conference for scholars and practitioners to articulate current use cases and theories of action regarding the use of simulations in PreK-12 science and mathematics teacher education. The conference will be structured to provide opportunities for attendees to share their current research, theoretical models, conceptual views, and use cases focused on the design and use of digital and non-digital simulations for building and assessing K-12 science and mathematics teacher competencies.

This 3-year project seeks to develop and test curricular resources built around handheld mobile technology to study how these materials foster urban middle school student engagement with and learning of local biodiversity and the patterns of evolution.

UNCG and NCSU are developing instructional resources for grades-2–5 students that infuse cutting-edge content from the emerging field of biomusic into standards-based elementary science and music curricula. The approach uses the musical sounds of nature to help students learn concepts in biology, physical science, and anthropology. Curriculum is undergoing beta-testing across North Carolina in diverse school settings.

This project is developing and testing comprehensive science curricula for the middle school and high school. Project partners are creating heuristics for universally designed materials; building an open source UDL Inquiry Science System (ISS) that enables science curricula to be transformed into digitally supported versions incorporating UDL features; and using the ISS to produce exemplars of units from tested instructional materials and evaluate the benefits of these exemplars for students with and without learning disabilities.

CAST, the University of Michigan, and EDC are collaborating to create heuristics for universally designed middle and high school science materials; to build an open-source UDL Inquiry Science System (ISS) that enables science curricula to be transformed into digitally supported versions that incorporate UDL features, to use the ISS to produce four UDL exemplars from tested instructional materials, and to evaluate the benefits of these exemplars for grades-5–12 students with and without learning disabilities.

This project is developing and testing digital versions of science materials for middle school and high school. Project partners are creating guidelines for universally designed materials; building an open-source authoring tool (Inquiry Science System,ISS) that enables transformation of science curricula into digitally supported versions incorporating UDL features; using the ISS to produce exemplars of units from tested instructional materials, and evaluating the benefits of these exemplars for students with and without learning disabilities.

This project will design and research a professional development (PD) model in which elementary teachers experience integrated, place-based, culturally sustaining STEM curriculum focused on local watersheds and grounded in local Native American cultural values and knowledge. The teachers will then design and implement their own culturally relevant STEM unit, guided by the PD, which is situated within their local watershed and Indigenous community.

This project takes advantage of language to help students form their own ideas and pursue deeper understanding in the science classroom. The project will conduct a comprehensive research program to develop and test technology that will empower students to use their ideas as a starting point for deepening science understanding. Researchers will use a technology that detects student ideas that go beyond a student's general knowledge level to adapt to a student's cultural and linguistic understandings of a science topic.

This project takes advantage of language to help students form their own ideas and pursue deeper understanding in the science classroom. The project will conduct a comprehensive research program to develop and test technology that will empower students to use their ideas as a starting point for deepening science understanding. Researchers will use a technology that detects student ideas that go beyond a student's general knowledge level to adapt to a student's cultural and linguistic understandings of a science topic.

This project focuses on the assessed impact of a teacher professional development (TPD) program around the applied sciences. Specifically, researchers seek to examine the measurable impact of an established teacher professional development program currently offered through the UC Davis Edward Teller Education Center. The Center delivers teacher training and curricula and draws upon an instructor cohort that pairs a regional master teacher and relevant LLNL scientists in curriculum development and delivery.

This project will develop video-case modules for use in pre-service teacher preparation programs. Modules will target specific grade bands (K-3, 4-5, 6-8) and address standards-based content domains, to help future teachers deepen their content knowledge, pedagogic skills and ability to analyze student thinking. The cases will illustrate reform classroom practices and more traditional instruction, include interviews with teachers and students, and incorporate a set of analytic tasks that promote users' critical observations of the cases.

This project develops video-case modules for use in pre-service teacher preparation programs. Modules target specific grade bands (K-3, 4-5, 6-8) and address standards-based content domains, to help future teachers deepen their content knowledge, pedagogic skills and ability to analyze student thinking. The cases illustrate reform classroom practices and more traditional instruction, include interviews with teachers and students, and incorporate a set of analytic tasks that promote users' critical observations of the cases.

Research has shown that educational games can increase student motivation, support critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills. This project will explore what approaches to the design of virtual labs, games, and bridging curriculum can most effectively support middle-school student development of interest and learning of scientific practices and contribute to the development of a science identity.

This project aims to find principles of instruction for developing students' visual models in science, including design principles for curriculum development, technological tools, and new pedagogical principles. The project concentrates on methods teachers use to guide class discussions while using innovative model-based curricula in middle school biology and in high school physical science.

This project is exploring how curricula and assessment using dynamic, interactive scientific visualizations of complex phenomena can ensure that all students learn significant science content. Dynamic visualizations provide an alternative pathway for students to understand science concepts, which can be exploited to increase the accessibility of a range of important science concepts. Computer technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to design curricula and assessments using visual technologies and to explore them in research, teaching, and learning.

This project aims to assist in the development and study of WeInvestigate, an application that will run on a mobile device. The application will help support learners as they engage in artifact construction using multiple media while two or more learners can be synchronously collaborating either face-to-face or at a distance. WeInvestigate is leveraging the research that learning in collaboration with others associated with higher engagement and learning outcomes.

This project is based on the assumption that teachers often make modifications to curriculum; reordering, skipping or adding lessons, changing an "exploration" into a lecture, and so on. This project pursues three related questions: What types of modifications do teachers make (and why), which types of modifications best help students learn, and how do teachers' modifications change in response to professional development activities designed to help them become more attuned to students' thinking?

This project proposes to create two books and a professional development manual about the roles and practice of writing-to-learn strategies in science classrooms. The books will emphasize the importance of purposeful writing as a learning tool. The first book will target K-6 teachers and the second will address the needs of 7-12 teachers.