Projects

The primary purpose of this international conference was for participants in the US to exchange views and discuss the latest research findings on (primary) science assessment. The conference focused on research around building assessment systems that help teachers diagnose student learning in the classroom but also link meaningfully to large-scale accountability systems (in districts or national levels). The project resulted in a report, proceedings, journal publications.

This study is aimed at exploring the components and impact of a teacher professional development model on teacher performance and student achievement and motivation in STEM disciplines at schools serving large numbers of minority students. It also aims to research and evaluate the impact of teachers who provide students with school experiences that are geared toward fostering high academic achievement.

Researchers are developing a practice-based curriculum for the professional education of preservice and practicing secondary mathematics teachers that focuses on reasoning and proving; has narrative cases as a central component; and supports the development of knowledge of mathematics needed for teaching. This curriculum is comprised of eight constellations of activities that focus on key aspects of reasoning and proving such as identifying patterns; making conjectures; providing proofs; and providing non-proof arguments.

This project addresses two grand challenges—cutting-edge STEM content and K-12 science assessments. Using DNA Sequencing Analysis Program (DSAP), which will be modified, high school students and teachers will learn molecular biology and modern genetics by working with authentic genomic sequences, and submit their findings for review by scientists. The objective is to develop state-of-the-art Web-based tools and resources that will make it possible for high school students to conduct authentic research in bioinformatics.

This project partners high school science teachers and students with particle physicists working in experiments at the scientific frontier. These experiments are searching for answers to fundamental questions about the origin of mass, the dimensionality of spacetime and the nature of symmetries that govern physical processes. Among the experimental projects at the energy frontier with which the project is affiliated is the Large Hadron Collider, which is poised at the horizon of discovery.

This project researches the use of cyberinfrastructure to implement a strategy for using online telescopes as a laboratory to engage middle and high school students in cutting edge science research while providing them with significant new opportunities to apply STEM concepts, practice inquiry, and design and learn about the nature of scientific discovery.  

This project has two goals:

1) to discover methods that can efficiently obtain information about the effects of high school programs on eventual college success. Methods we are considering include obtaining transcripts from post-secondary institutions, surveying high school graduates, and obtaining information from the National Student Clearinghouse.

2) to explore how students who studied Contemporary Mathematics in Context (Core Plus) or the Integrated Mathematics Program (IMP) fare in post secondary institutions.

This project uses Antarctic pack-ice penguins to hook students into exploring how science investigates changes in Earths biota and climate. The project builds on a pilot effort, called Penguin Science, and will develop PowerPoint presentations, short video \"webisodes,\" background reading material, and live and interactive website components to engage students in ongoing field research. Students, K-14, will be involved in climate-change research that will include ecology, sedimentology, paleontology, glaciology and oceanography.

This project develops resources to facilitate the involvement of college and university physics departments in the professional development of K-12 teachers of physics and physical science. Research investigates how students and teachers learn content and reasoning skills for applying concepts to real world situations; how teachers can learn content in a way that helps them promote student learning; and how teachers can learn to assess student understanding in a way that promotes student learning.

This project augmenting the traditional professional development model with an online professional development platform—the Active Physics Teacher Community—that provides just-in-time support for teachers as they are enacting targeted units of the Active Physics curriculum. Teachers are helped in preparing lessons by providing them with formal instruction related to the lessons they are teaching in the classroom. In addition, teachers can participate in a moderated forum where they can share experiences.

SPRINTT uses an innovative, live, online training format to train hundreds of teachers in how to teach life, Earth, and physical science content in a polar context. Polar scientists directly inform the content and participate in the training. SPRINTT provides teachers with existing and adapted, high-quality, standards-based curriculum materials and collaborates with science and education partners to simplify research data and create a user-friendly interface from which students perform their own authentic polar research projects.

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 implementing a program of professional development for teachers and web interface that links scientists with urban classrooms. Scientist mentors work with students and teachers through the web to carry out an original "authentic" inquiry project in plant science. The classroom intervention involves high school biology students working in assigned teams to generate their own research questions in plant science centered on core biology concepts from the National Science Education Standards.

This project is developing and testing a website, software application, and supplemental instructional materials that use publicly accessible genomics data to foster scientific inquiry among high schools students. Outcomes for students and teachers include developing knowledge, skills, and understandings related to genetic inheritance; data investigation and analysis; the process of scientific inquiry; and collaboration.

This project implemented a facets-of-thinking perspective to design tools and practices to improve high school chemistry teachers' formative assessment practices. Goals are to identify and develop clusters of facets related to key chemistry concepts; develop assessment items; enhance the assessment system for administering items, reporting results, and providing teacher resource materials; develop teacher professional development and resource materials; and examine whether student learning in chemistry improves in classes that incorporate a facet-based assessment system.

A collaboration among educators, engineers, and mathematicians in three universities, this project is creating, implementing, and evaluating a one-year curriculum for teaching a non-calculus, fourth-year high school mathematics course and accompanied assessment instruments. The curriculum will draw on decision-making tools that include but go well beyond linear programming, to enhance student mathematical competence (particularly solving multi-step problems), improve students' attitudes toward mathematics, and promote states' adoption of the curriculum (initially NC and MI).

This project is assessing the potential value and feasibility of developing and implementing content standards for K-12 engineering education. The project is reviewing existing efforts to define what students should know; identifying elements of existing standards for related content areas that could link to engineering; considering how purposes for engineering education might affect content and implementation of standards; and suggesting changes to policies, programs, and practices necessary to develop and implement engineering standards.

EDC is developing a high school capstone course in linear algebra. Student resources contain a core semester that develops two- and three-dimensional geometry using vectors and that treats matrix algebra and its applications to geometry; a semester of material that completes a typical undergraduate course (exploring bases, determinants and eigentheory); and 5 stand-alone modules that develop applications of this core to mathematics, engineering, science, and other STEM fields.

This grant explores the timely issue of how to conduct a feasibility study on the question of whether youths who participate in after-school IT-oriented science-engagement programs are more likely to eventually choose a STEM-related career. This project examines programs such as Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) along with other similar programs to determine innovative approaches to conducting such a long-term study so that it is methodologically sound and as economical as possible.

The goal of these two linked conferences was to build more effective connections between research and practice. Specifically, the conferences brought together researchers, practitioners. and policy makers around improving students' mathematics proficiency by ensuring that researchers were investigating the most urgent problems of practice and that practitioners were connected to the research in ways that makes the knowledge useful to instruction.

This exploratory project aims to develop a community of individuals and organizations working together to address critical issues in K-12 computer science education by broadening the awareness of the need for curriculum computer science standards, providing multiple levels of professional development, conducting and disseminating research in computer science education, and promoting this subject as a unique field of study in schools.

This project supports five graduate students with backgrounds in the natural and learning sciences as they achieve masters-level expertise in a science discipline and pursue coursework and complete dissertations in science education research. The program prepares them to 1) collaborate with educational and developmental psychologists and discipline-based science education researchers, and 2) to develop and teach courses that break down the traditional barriers between science teaching methods courses and science content courses for teachers.

The goal of this workshop is to advance the construction of new knowledge through international cooperation with Chinese counterparts in the teaching and learning of math and science at the elementary level in four areas: curriculum design and assessment; teacher preparation and professional development; effective use of the former; and reaching gifted and underserved populations. Approximately 120 people will attend, including 50 senior U.S. researchers, 25 early career researchers, 15 graduate students and 5 undergraduates.

This bilateral workshop examines the preparation of mathematics teachers in the United States and China. It will initiate knowledge exchanges among teacher educators in both countries and forge a joint research agenda. Objectives include increasing the comparative knowledge base in both nations about promising practices in and existing challenges to mathematics teacher preparation and mathematics instruction, and promoting the exchange of ideas and exploration of questions and points for possible collaborative research in mathematics education.

The purposes of this conference include bringing together 150 participants from all aspects of STEM education to exchange ideas about research, curriculum, and assessment; to help teachers integrate research-based instructional strategies in their teaching; and to build sustainable collaborations between participants. It includes three days of parallel presentations and discussion followed by a two-day summer academy. A focus on research-based strategies that advance the successful participation of underrepresented groups is embedded in all activities.