Projects

This project will develop curricula for environmental/geoscience disciplines for high-school classrooms. The Model My Watershed (MMW) v2 app will bring new environmental datasets and geospatial capabilities into the classroom, to provide a cloud-based learning and analysis platform accessible from a web browser on any computer or mobile device, thus overcoming the cost and technical obstacles to integrating Geographic Information System technology in secondary education.

This project will develop curricula for environmental/geoscience disciplines for high-school classrooms. The Model My Watershed (MMW) v2 app will bring new environmental datasets and geospatial capabilities into the classroom, to provide a cloud-based learning and analysis platform accessible from a web browser on any computer or mobile device, thus overcoming the cost and technical obstacles to integrating Geographic Information System technology in secondary education.

This project will develop curricula for environmental/geoscience disciplines for high-school classrooms. The Model My Watershed (MMW) v2 app will bring new environmental datasets and geospatial capabilities into the classroom, to provide a cloud-based learning and analysis platform accessible from a web browser on any computer or mobile device, thus overcoming the cost and technical obstacles to integrating Geographic Information System technology in secondary education.

This three-year exploratory research and development project is assessing how the use of resource activities and teaching strategies focused on human evolution will affect the understanding, teaching and learning of evolution by high school AP biology teachers and students. The project will develop resource activities and teaching strategies with and for high school biology teachers. Professional development will also provide teachers with guidance on how to incorporate the activities and strategies into the classroom.  

Socio-environmental issues are both a key to secondary student interest in science and a difficult terrain for teachers to navigate. Problems like climate change have not only scientific but also social, political, and ethical aspects. In order to prepare students for fully understanding such issues, attention needs to be given to how teachers can be supported and learn for effective instruction. This four-year project enacts and researches a teacher professional development program, “Teaching for the Anthropocene,” with middle and high school science teachers that brings a concept of "critical systems thinking." The project investigates how critical systems thinking may enhance teachers’ understanding of socio-environmental issues and support them to integrate those understandings into their curriculum and teaching. The project also identifies potential challenges educators may face as well as what local conditions and program supports help them practically apply critical systems thinking in their classrooms.

Socio-environmental issues are both a key to secondary student interest in science and a difficult terrain for teachers to navigate. Problems like climate change have not only scientific but also social, political, and ethical aspects. In order to prepare students for fully understanding such issues, attention needs to be given to how teachers can be supported and learn for effective instruction. This four-year project enacts and researches a teacher professional development program, “Teaching for the Anthropocene,” with middle and high school science teachers that brings a concept of "critical systems thinking." The project investigates how critical systems thinking may enhance teachers’ understanding of socio-environmental issues and support them to integrate those understandings into their curriculum and teaching. The project also identifies potential challenges educators may face as well as what local conditions and program supports help them practically apply critical systems thinking in their classrooms.

The purpose of this project is to gather, analyze, and synthesize mathematics and science education research studies published from 1988 to the present that have investigated different approaches to supporting students in grades 6-14 in learning to analyze, interpret, and reason about data.

This project is developing, testing, and evaluating a diversity-enhanced, STEM-based, professional development workshop for high school teachers and career guidance counselors. The project team is developing educational materials and running workshops that focus on pedagogical methods for incorporating hands-on activities into STEM classrooms in order to expose all students to technology and engineering. The long-term goal is to broaden and increase the diversity of students entering engineering-based college degree programs.

This project studies the impact of emphasizing formative assessment strategies in concurrent undergraduate methods courses and STEM content courses on the subsequent teaching practices of these pre-service teachers and their students. The study focuses on future middle school STEM teachers. The mixed methods research design will examine the impact of the treatment on teachers' practices during their practicum and induction years and on the STEM achievement of their middle school students.

This project tests the efficacy of an intensive, three year professional development program, the BSCS National Academy for Curriculum Leadership (NACL) on student science achievement in the state of Washington. The goal of the NACL is to develop the capacity of district-based secondary science leadership teams to sustain the implementation of research-based science instructional materials that promote improvement in teaching and learning.

Exemplary teaching in STEM fields encourages students from diverse backgrounds to pursue further education and careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Improving teaching, however, first requires an understanding of the current landscape of STEM instruction. The 2027 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education (NSSME+), the seventh iteration of the study, will continue monitoring the status of science, mathematics, and computer science education in the U.S. The study will examine policies and practices related to STEM education, including the extent to which instruction currently models effective, evidence-based teaching practices, and factors that influence teachers’ decisions about content and pedagogy. It will also attend to factors that contribute to the underrepresentation of some groups in STEM, further adding to general knowledge about ways to broaden participation.

This project will develop 15 modules for high school students that connect biology, computation, and mathematics with corresponding teacher materials and professional development activities. The modules will draw on an approach to biological phenomena as involving information processing, in three illustrative areas conducive to learning at the high school level: Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Mathematical Methods in Epidemiology, and Mathematical Methods in Ecology.

This project continues research and development work on high school instructional materials that integrate biology, computing, and mathematics. The project goal is to develop and test a one-semester high school course. The course consists of some modules developed under a previous NSF grant as well as some new material. Intended deliverables include up to five new instructional modules and a coherent one-semester course suitable for the increasing state requirements for a fourth year of mathematics.

This project is developing and conducting research on the Cohort Model for addressing the mathematics education of students that perform in the bottom quartile on state and district tests. The predicted outcome is that most students will remain in the cohort for all four years and that almost all of those who do will perform well enough on college entrance exams to be admitted and will test out of remedial mathematics courses.

This conference showcases and analyzes progressive ideas about curriculum, teaching, assessment, and technology in high school and early college mathematics. The conference brings together leaders of state and local school system mathematics programs, mathematicians, curriculum developers, educational researchers, and education policy makers for in-depth discussion of the challenges and opportunities for innovation in high school mathematics.

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 study will build upon the team's prior research from early in the pandemic. Researchers will continue to collect data from families and aims to understand parents’ perspectives on the educational impacts of COVID-19 by leveraging a nationally representative, longitudinal study, the Understanding America Study (UAS). The study will track educational experiences during the Spring and Summer of 2021 and into the 2021-22 school year.

Building on the team's prior research from early in the pandemic, this project team will continue to collect data from families and aims to understand parents’ perspectives on the educational impacts of COVID-19 by leveraging a nationally representative, longitudinal study, the Understanding America Study (UAS). The study will track educational experiences during the spring and summer of 2022 and into the 2022-23 school year. The team will analyze student and family overall and for key demographic groups of interest as schooling during the pandemic continues. This RAPID project allows critically important data to continue to be collected and contribute to continued understanding of the impacts of and responses to the pandemic by American families.

This project is designed to enhance understanding of how online professional development environments contribute to teach learning, changes in classroom practice and changes in student learning in comparison to face-to-face professional development. Using secondary school teachers learning to use a reformed-oriented environmental science curriculum, groups of teachers will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) traditional face-to-face workshop, (2)self-guided online professional development, or (3)online “short course” professional development guided by a facilitator.

The Math, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) outreach programs are partnerships between K-12 schools and higher education that for over forty years introduce science, mathematics and engineering to students traditionally underrepresented in the discipline. This project examines the influences MESA activities (field trips, guest lecturers, design competitions, hands-on activities and student career and academic advisement) have on students' perception of engineering, their self-efficacy and interest in engineering, and their subsequent decisions to pursue careers in engineering.

This project is designing, developing, and testing a model that delivers effective teacher PD to in-service and preservice teachers to enable the successful implementation of engineering curricula. Research is performed to evaluate the impacts of the curricular materials and the teacher PD framework on classroom instructional practices and student learning, interests, and attitudes and to evaluate which curriculum components are most effective in promoting student learning and interest as a function of gender and ethnicity.

This project will develop a Professional Learning Community (PLC) model for engaging science and education researchers from a university with science and mathematics faculty at community colleges to increase the number, quality and diversity of middle school and high school mathematics and science teachers; apply design-based research to assess the effectiveness and replicability of the PLC model; and disseminate replicable project and research findings.

This research project is an investigation of the role that examples play in helping learners become proficient in proving mathematical conjectures. Researchers are building a framework that characterizes the development of example use as students advance from middle school into post secondary school. Using this developmental information, the researchers are creating instructional strategies that help students think about the nature and value of proof as well as how to construct a mathematical proof.

This project proposes to design, implement, and investigate the impact on students of an innovative curriculum supplement called the Spectrum Laboratory. The Spectrum Lab will be an online, interactive learning environment that enables students to make use of the database of publicly available spectra from research scientists, as well as from students.

This project is developing and testing a set of 12 curriculum modules designed to engage high school students and their teachers in the process of applying computational concepts and methods to problem solving in a variety of scientific contexts. The project perspective is that computational thinking can be usefully thought of as a specialized form of mathematical modeling.