DRK-12 Research and Products
Product for Educators | A digital tool that offers compelling student middle grades math problems and provides students with assessment tools and a dynamic learning map.
Tool | What ideas do students have about small particles of matter? The Two Cups of Liquid task is intended to elicit preservice teachers’ CKT related to students’ ideas about the small particle model (SPM) for matter.
Publication | This study is a case of using second-order models of students’ mathematical thinking to differentiate instruction, and it reveals that inquiring into research-based knowledge and inquiring responsively into students’ thinking are at the heart of…
Publication | This comprehensive volume advances a vision of teacher preparation programs focused on core practices supporting ambitious science instruction. The book advocates for collaborative learning and building a community of teacher educators that can…
Publication | This research focuses on ways in which balance scales mediate students’ relational understandings of the equal sign.
Product for Educators | Transforming Engineering Education for Middle Schools (TEEMS) is a free engineering curriculum for gr. 6-8 learners with units on the engineering design process and materials and tools that connect engineering to NGSS science topics of…
Product for Educators | The CHALK tool is a progressive web application that guides educators to improve instructional quality in early education settings. CHALK provides targeted observation tools that allow instructional coaches to easily track key…
Publication | Formative assessment is an important component of teaching as it enables teachers to foster student learning by uncovering, interpreting, and advancing student thinking. In this work, we sought to characterize how experienced chemistry teachers…
Publication | In this paper, authors offer a framework for teacher monitoring routines—a consequential yet understudied aspect of instruction when teachers oversee students’ working together.
Publication | This article introduces a new online curriculum module called “What will Earth look like in 500 million years?” Using two web-based tools, middle and high school students develop understandings of (1) how collective movements associated with a…
Publication | This Research in Science Education article focuses on characterizing classroom discourse in science.
Publication | This study compares web usage data with interviews from 41 participants, who are members of an online professional development site called the Everyday Mathematics Virtual Learning Community (VLC), to explore how elementary school teachers learn…
Tool | Includes eight separate lesson plans to help integrate the primary literature into the classroom.
Publication | The effective use of formative assessment (FA) has been demonstrated to confer positive impacts on student learning. To understand why and how FA works, it is necessary to characterize teachers’ FA practices, but because both teaching practice…
Publication | This article investigates whether teachers’ subject matter knowledge (SMK) and knowledge of students’ misconceptions (KOSM) in high school life science are associated with students’ posttest performance on multiple-choice test items designed to…
Publication | In this manuscript, we propose that educators’ perspectives may serve as an independent source of evidence that can be integrated with traditional evidence sources (e.g., cognitive interviews with students, psychometric data). This manuscript…
Publication | This article examines the teacher learning that results from participating in a two-year professional development intervention that combined lesson study, video clubs, and animation discussions.
| 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.
Presentation | Critique and evaluation are considered essential to deeper science learning. Furthermore, critical evaluation may influence plausibility judgments about explanations through re-appraisal. We developed the YIS-activity (blinded for peer review)…
Publication | This qualitative study examines the processes by which science faculty reshape their pedagogical practices through facilitating professional development for K–12 teachers, and how individual characteristics, social interactions, and…
Exploring Prospective Teachers’ Ability to Generate and Analyze Evidence-based Explanatory Arguments
Publication | In this paper, using written responses of 37 PSTs preparing to teach grades 1-8 mathematics, authors examined explanations they constructed to support their problem solutions and explanations they provided in support of their critiques of…
Publication | In this article, authors propose a framework that centers the investigation as a key locus for constructing alignments among phenomena, data, and explanatory models and makes visible the work that scientists engage in as they develop and…
Publication | Drawing upon a social practice theory analytical lens with a focus on power and using critical participatory ethnography methods, this study investigated the ways middle school students restructured power hierarchies as they worked to complete…
Publication | The purpose of this study is to develop a statistical framework and tools for the effective and efficient design of multisite randomized trials (MRTs) probing moderated treatment effects.
Presentation, Publication | Strategies and strategic processing within science education are designed to help students learn not only what scientists have come to understand about the world but also how they learn it. Although many domain-general strategies…