Projects

This project draws from the expertise of a fully collaborative educator-scientist team to create learning progressions, curricular units and assessment instruments towards large scale research on the teaching and learning of climate change and impacts by 7-12^th graders in primarily under-resourced schools. Products include eight week curricular units, IPCC-compliant simplified future scenarios, an online interface with guided predictive distribution modeling, and research results.

This project involves a longitudinal, ethnographic study of children's mathematical performances from preschool to first grade in both formal classroom settings and informal settings at school and home. The study seeks to identify opportunities for mathematical learning, to map varied performances of mathematical competence, to chart changes in mathematical performance over time, and to design and assess the impact of case studies for teacher education.

This project will define and synthesize effective feedback strategies that can be linked to specific features of daily classroom assessment practices. It will develop a framework, including a conceptual strand (will conceptualize feedback practice considering intrinsic and contextual dimensions) and a methodological strand (used to describe and evaluate the feedback studies and findings to be synthesized). The framework will provide a shared language within and across multiple forms of research in various disciplines.

Geometry Assessments for Secondary Teachers (GAST) represents a collaborative partnership among faculty and staff at the University of Louisville, the University of Kentucky, Florida State University, Alpine Testing Solutions, and Horizon Research, Inc. to develop a knowledge framework and assessments for secondary mathematics teachers' geometry knowledge for teaching. The framework for the assessments will be designed to collect validity evidence for predicting effective geometry teaching and improving student achievement.

A principled framework is created for the development of learning progressions in science that can demonstrate how their use can transform the way researchers, educators and curriculum developers conceptualize important scientific constructs. Using the construct of transformation of matter, which requires understanding of both discrete learning goals and also the connections between them, a hypothetical learning progression is constructed for grades 5-12.

The Conference Board for the Mathematical Sciences (CBMS) is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Education to host a forum in Washington, DC designed to launch action for change in mathematics education based on the recommendations of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. This forum will focus specifically on the following four areas: teachers and teacher education, learning processes, instructional material, and standards of evidence—research policies and mechanisms.

Several small-scale experimental classroom studies Star and Rittle-Johnson demonstrate the value of comparison in mathematics learning: Students who learned by comparing and contrasting alternative solution methods made greater gains in conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and flexibility than those who studied the same solution methods one at a time. This study will extend that prior work by developing, piloting, and then evaluating the impact of comparison on students' learning of mathematics in a full-year algebra course.

This project anticipates the needs of learners in 10 years by developing and testing two learning simulations that are immersive, interactive, and participatory and use augmented reality in the outdoors. Students work in teams to investigate phenomena and solve problems in a gaming environment using wireless handheld GPS units. Using a design-based, mixed-methods approach, the researchers examine the relationships among augmented reality, learning in science, socio-emotional outcomes, and the demographic characteristics of rural, underserved students.

This project focuses on the challenge of using assessment of relevant STEM content to improve K-12 teaching and learning. CLEAR takes advantage of new technologies and research findings to investigate ways that science assessments can both capture and contribute to cumulative, integrated learning of standards-based concepts in middle school courses. The project will research new forms of assessment that document students' accumulation of knowledge and also serve as learning events.

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.

In its first five years, this project established a durable and vibrant learning community of high school teachers, high school students, university students, scientists, faculty, and associated stake-holders that continues to attract science and math students, using the project’s cutting-edge science and advanced cyberinfrastructure as compelling elements of study. This project continues by providing an education and research partnership derived from basic research in particle physics, grid computing, and advanced networking.

This project is exploring the introduction of a nanoscience curriculum into high schools. It is creating and studying a professional development model based on two products, the NanoTeach Teacher's Guide and the NanoTeach Facilitator's Guide. The NanoTeach Teacher's guide is being designed for self study by teachers (low treatment group) and for use in a facilitated development model (high treatment group). The NanoTeach Facilitator's Guide outlines the professional development experiences and provides guidance for facilitators.

In this project, a video and audio network links elementary school teachers with researchers and educators at Purdue to form a community of practice dedicated to implementing engineering education at the elementary grades. The research plan includes identifying the attributes of face-to-face and cyber-enabled teacher professional development and community building that can transform teachers into master users and designers of engineering education for elementary learners.

We are analyzing the intended algebra curriculum as represented in a variety of high-school mathematics textbooks – Core Plus Mathematics Project (CPMP), Discovering Mathematics (Key Curriculum Press), EDC's Center for Mathematics Education, Glencoe, Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP), and University of Chicago School Mathematics Project (UCSMP). The textbook analysis is based on two dimensions frequently used for curriculum analysis: a content dimension and a cognitive dimension.

This project seeks to improve the science achievement and the academic English language proficiency of middle school Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs). This project will conduct a randomized trial longitudinal evaluation of an enhanced standards-based science curriculum model, consisting of five major components: (a) English language acquisition strategies integrated into the science curriculum, (b) technology-assisted instruction, (c) bi-weekly teacher professional development, (d) family involvement, and (e) paraprofessionals in working with individual ELLs.

This project investigated the potential opportunities and challenges for educators to incorporate explorations of a variety of large data sets into science, math and, to a lesser extent, social science classes at the secondary level.

The SAVE Science project is creating an innovative system using immersive virtual environments for evaluating learning in science, consistent with research- and policy-based recommendations for science learning focused around the big ideas of science content and inquiry for middle school years. Motivation for this comes not only from best practices as outlined in the National Science Education Standards and AAAS' Project 2061, but also from the declining interest and confidence of today's student in science.

SRI International developed a formative assessment intervention that integrates classroom network technologies and contingent curriculum activities to help middle school teachers adjust instruction to improve student learning of Earth science concepts. The intervention was tested as part of a quasi-experimental study within an urban school district in Colorado that includes ethnically and economically diverse student populations. Findings indicate significant student learning gains for students in implementation classes as compared to students in comparison classes.

This project uses computer-based models of interacting organisms and their environments to support a learning progression leading to an appreciation of the theory of evolution and evidence that supports it. The project has created a research-based curriculum centered on progressively complex models that exhibit emergent behavior. The project will help improve the teaching of complex scientific topics and provide a reliable means of directly assessing students' conceptual understanding and inquiry skills.

This exploratory project seeks to understand the role that a network of tablet computers may play in elementary and middle school math and science classrooms. The project uses classroom observations, student interviews, teacher interviews, and student artifacts to identify the advantages and disadvantages of these resources, to understand what challenges and benefits they offer to teachers, and to offer recommendations for future hardware, software, and curriculum development.

This project aims to develop, pilot, and evaluate a model of instruction that advances the scientific literacy of high school students by involving them in science journalism, and to develop research tools for assessing scientific literacy and engagement. We view scientific literacy as public understanding of and engagement with science and technology, better enabling people to make informed science-related decisions in their personal lives, and participate in science-related democratic debates in public life.

Effective Science Teaching for English Language Learners (ESTELL): A Pre-Service Teacher Professional Development Research Project project is funded by the National Science Foundation DR-K-12 Discovery Research Program. The ESTELL project focuses on improving the science teaching and learning of K-6 linguistic minority students who are currently underserved in K-6 education through improving the pre-service education of elementary school teachers.

This project is (1) conducting a qualitative study on the way facilitators use Math for All (MFA), an NSF-supported set of professional development materials for teachers who teach elementary school students with disabilities; (2) developing resources based on that study for teacher leaders and other facilitators of professional development; and (3) conducting fieldtests of the resources to examine their usefulness and impact.

This project is developing a week-long unit of activities focused on the cryosphere, implementing the activities with students, and studying the activities’ effectiveness. The overarching goals of this project are to build a sequence of scaffolded investigations that will help students more fully understand the cryosphere; and investigate the effectiveness of the sequence of and investigations at helping students understand how and why a component of the Earth system varies over time.