DRK-12 Research and Products

Publication | School-based science inquiry tends to focus on already answered questions. We describe how we used the COVID-19 pandemic in a high school citizen science unit for students to witness and engage in real-time science. High school students…
Publication | In this article, it is argued that processes of co-production can support teachers and students in organizing resources for justice through science learning. Drawing upon a critical justice conceptual framework, critical ethnographic data from…
Publication | This paper focuses on three simulation-based scientific argumentation tasks called Trap, Aquifer, and Supply. These tasks were part of an online science curriculum module addressing groundwater systems for secondary school students.
Tool | The research team developed the Student Argument and Reasoning Assessment (SARA) to measure students’ abilities to construct viable arguments and critique others’ arguments. The SARA was originally developed and validated in the LAMP pilot study (NSF…
Publication | We present findings from an online course designed to support teachers to frame video discussions as making sense of student thinking. In an engineering pedagogy course designed to emphasize responsiveness to students’ thinking, we documented…
Tool | This web-based portal offers free, technology-enhanced science assessment tasks for Grades 3-5. Designed for use by educators, researchers, and the public, the tasks are aligned to the NGSS performance expectations and have been developed with…
Presentation | The author describes an innovative approach to assessment that aims to blend the productive characteristics of both summative and formative assessment. The resulting assessment system is accountable to students and teachers by providing…
Publication | The global pandemic and climate change have led to unprecedented environmental, social, and economic challenges with interdisciplinary STEM foundations. Even as STEM learning has never been more important, very few pre-college programs prepare…
Publication | This article presents lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence about classroom argumentation as it happens.
Publication | This article focuses on discussion and preliminary findings from classroom testing of the prototype learning module: Investigating Income Inequality in the U.S.
Publication | In this study, we explored second and fifth graders’ noticing of negative signs and incorporation of them into their strategies when solving integer addition problems. For both grade levels, the order of the numerals, the location of the…
Publication | This study used an easy-to-implement prompting intervention in the context of collaborative (pair) programming with upper elementary students to demonstrate the potential of Epistemic Network Analysis to understand the impact of the intervention…
Publication | This study explores disciplinary literacy instruction integrated within an elementary engineering unit in an urban classroom.
Publication | The purpose of this study was to adapt and validate an instrument for assessing immersive 360 video use in an undergraduate preservice teacher university training program.
Publication | Examining a lesson in a high school biology unit that utilized noisy sensor data, we sought to understand the ways students engaged in active reasoning about the data and the factors that influenced this process. Video analysis centers on one…
Publication | In this study, our team developed and is studying the use of an Online Practice Suite (OPS) composed of a coordinated and scaffolded collection of three practice-based online simulations designed to support the development of preservice teachers…
Publication | This study explores design strategies used by experienced designers in Energy3D, a computer-aided design (CAD) simulation environment designed for learning settings, to provide insight into supporting students' use of CAD simulation environments…
Publication | This article offers six suggestions for middle school principals to implement or strengthen mathematics intervention classes at their schools, based off the findings of the authors' NSF-funded research.
Publication | Diagnostic classification models (DCMs) are restricted latent class models with a set of cross-class equality constraints and additional monotonicity constraints on their item parameters, both of which are needed to ensure the meaning of classes…
Product for Educators | The Fraction Activities and Assessments for Conceptual Teaching (FAACT) instructional program is designed to support teachers’ insights into students’ conceptual understandings of fractions. The overall program goal is to…
Publication | The Responsive Math Teaching project has been developing and refining a model for the development of mathematics instructional leadership in a network of 13 urban under-resourced elementary schools. This report summarizes the core elements of…
Publication | COVID-19 has thrust educators into a period of uncertainty, complicating conventional ways of teaching and learning. We suspect that the pandemic has magnified the challenges that some high school teachers already experience, particularly when…
Publication | The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Development Team is working with the Northwest Arctic Borough School District to develop STEM lessons utilizing Iñupiaq knowledge systems and university research for middle school-age students in three…
Publication | The Visual Access to Mathematics (VAM) project developed and studied teacher professional development (PD) focused on linguistically-responsive teaching to facilitate ELs’ mathematical problem solving and discourse. This study examines whether…
Presentation | Slides from a pre-conference workshop at the 2021 National Association for Research in Science Teaching Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL.