DRK-12 Research and Products
Publication | Environmental education is essential for protecting and restoring natural water sources. Integrating education with positive environmental experiences can instill values and stewardship in the public, encouraging proactive steps to preserve and…
Publication | Educative curriculum materials (ECM) have been shown to support K-12 teacher learning, but little is known about teacher educators’ use of ECM. In this study, we report on enactments of ECM designed to support the development of preservice…
Publication | Water scarcity poses a significant global challenge, which is often overlooked, particularly in regions with abundant water resources. This article outlines a curriculum designed for middle school students (grades 6–8) that addresses the…
Publication | Proportional reasoning is an important but challenging skill for students and teachers. This article, presents findings from two studies investigating whether four categories of reasoning identified by Copur-Gencturk et al. apply to a…
Publication | Building on research on teacher noticing, the goal of this study was to understand what and how mathematics teacher educators notice critical events and how they make connections to consider the characteristics of…
Publication | Despite a growing effort to integrate students’ civic action projects into science and engineering curricula that address climate change and environmental justice, there are few frameworks that guide teachers and students to make well-informed…
Publication | Secondary students are increasingly involved in scientific research projects that include authentic disciplinary literacy components such as research proposals, posters, videos, and scientific research papers. More and more, students are also…
Publication | The modern information landscape offers an abundance of options to learn about science topics, but it is also ripe for the spread of mis- and disinformation and science denial. Science education can play a pivotal role in mitigating harm from…
Publication | Participatory science conducted in formal K–12 settings has many benefits, including the potential to engage teachers and students authentically in the scientific enterprise and to make learning more meaningful. Despite these benefits and others…
Publication | This study leverages natural language processing (NLP) to deepen our understanding of how students integrate their ideas about genetic inheritance while engaging in an adaptive dialog.
Publication | In this brief, The Potential of Using AI to Improve Student Learning in STEM: Now and in the Future, the authors examine the promise of AI as learning partner for students that offers personalized support and scaffolding.
Publication | In this CADRE brief, the authors Jeremy Price and Shuchi Grover explore the exciting possibilities and critical challenges of generative AI (GenAI) for STEM teaching. They examine how GenAI may shape STEM classrooms in the near future and…
Publication | This report characterizes forms of dialogic support that a sixth-grade teacher generated during whole-class and small-group conversations to help students develop a practice of statistical modeling.
Publication | The purpose of this study was to explore the problem-solving behaviors of middle-school students with learning disabilities (SLD). Think-aloud interviews were performed with 20 seventh- and eighth-grade students who had learning disabilities to…
Publication | Teachers play a central role in designing structures which encourage the development of students’ individual creative capacity and the classroom’s sense of community. We offer considerations for designing engaging and collaborative experiences…
Publication | Although there has been increasing attention to the importance of teacher agency in professional development, there has been little attention to what it takes to facilitate collaborative work that both centers teachers’ assets and expertise and…
Publication | The general aim of the research was to conduct a rare test of the efficacy of hypothetical learning progressions (HLPs) and a basic assumption of basing instruction on HLPs, namely teaching each successive level is more efficacious than skipping…
Publication | The limited availability of research instruments that reflect the vision of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) restricts the field's understanding of whether and how teachers are making instructional shifts called for by the standards…
Publication | We explored how various contextual resources accumulated over multiple years operated together to facilitate a team of high school teachers' sustained and agentive learning after a 4-year research–practice partnership (RPP) grant concluded.…
Publication | Engineering projects, such as designing a solar farm that converts solar radiation shined on the Earth into electricity, engage students in addressing real-world challenges by learning and applying geoscience knowledge. To improve their designs…
Publication | To better understand integrated STEM education, this work explored scores on the STEM Observation Protocol (STEM-OP), a newly developed observation protocol for use in K-12 science and engineering classrooms. The goals of this work were to…
Publication | This article presents results from a design experiment intended to develop students’ understanding of linear functions and rates of change in a linguistically diverse ninth grade classroom. The intervention focused on fostering classroom…
Publication | Teaching science to elementary school students is complex, and teacher preparation programs must support preservice teachers’ learning to communicate science content and practices with children. Science teachers bring the experiences they have…
Publication | This article presents a tool that teachers can use to support children in planning science investigations. Using an extended example from a second-grade investigation into seed dispersal, we describe strategies for structuring conversations that…
Publication | Studying moths is an excellent way to include students in science practices by introducing them to a ubiquitous but under-appreciated animal group that can be found in their local places, including urban, suburban, agricultural, forested, and…