DRK-12 Research and Products
Publication | A middle school mathematics teacher taught native English speakers for the first fifteen years of her career. As immigrants from other countries moved into the community and student demographics began to change, she realized that she was not…
Publication | The concept of criticism as a tool for research, although well established in other educational research traditions, is not well established in the domain of Educational Technology. This book changes all that by substantiating criticism as a way…
Publication | In this paper, we present an overview of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Knowledge for Algebra Teaching for Equity (KATE) Project and experiences from preservice teachers who are preparing for teaching middle grades mathematics. We…
Publication | “Specialized schools still represent a tiny fraction of U.S. public education. However, they may not only produce better results than traditional programs; they also can serve as models for schools seeking to improve.” Read this brief to…
Publication | The purpose of this compendium is to provide an overview on the current status of STEM instrumentation commonly used in the U.S and to provide resources for research and evaluation professionals. Part 1 of a two-part series, the goal to provide…
Publication | Despite evidence that it can help students learn higher-order thinking skills and gain deep content knowledge, problem-based learning (PBL) is not deployed on a large scale in K-12 classrooms. This conceptual chapter explores teacher’s past…
Publication | The nature of energy is not typically an explicit topic of physics instruction. Nonetheless, verbal and graphical representations of energy articulate models in which energy is conceptualized as a quasimaterial substance, a stimulus, or a…
STEM Smart Brief: Improving STEM Curriculum and Instruction: Engaging Students and Raising Standards
Publication | “For effective K–12 STEM instruction to become the norm, schools and districts must be transformed.” Read this brief to learn more about curriculum and instructional methods that engage students in the learning process.
Publication | Throughout my career, I have collaborated with dedicated and hard-working teachers who have opened their classrooms so that others could learn from them. Yet, one teacher, Sara, stood out from all the others. From the first time I visited Sara's…
Publication | This brief suggests practical ways of engaging teachers and other “end-users” in projects that develop materials for education in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Projects described in this brief have benefited…
Tool | Every Learning Experience in Foundation Science Begins with a brainstorming activity. This six minute video explains how brainstorming can be used to determine prior knowledge of your students, introduce new content, and establish a safe classroom…
Publication | The Energy Project at Seattle Pacific University has developed representations that embody the substance metaphor and support learners in conserving and tracking energy as it flows from object to object and changes form. Such representations…
Publication | “When students from non-mainstream backgrounds receive equitable learning opportunities, they are capable of attaining science outcomes comparable to their mainstream peers. The same is true for mathematics and, presumably, for other STEM…
Publication | This paper represents measurement methods of projects developing and testing intelligent learning environments.
Publication | Many of us learned about dominant and recessive genes in a humdrum high school biology class. Some of us may still recognize the terms and symbols twenty or thirty years later—are your eyes bb or Bb? But, as it turns out, a very small number of…
Publication | This overview is intended to describe the scope and depth of research and development DR K-12 has funded and to identify areas that could be advanced by further investigations by CADRE. The overview summarizes the 248 projects that met the…
Publication | Introductory biology courses form a cornerstone of undergraduate instruction. However, the predominantly used lecture approach fails to produce higher-order biology learning. Research shows that active learning strategies can increase student…
Publication | “Providing a richness of resources unavailable in any classroom, informal science institutions across the country have developed exemplary partnerships with public schools—and have room for more.” Read this brief to explore how out-of-school…
Publication | The Chemistry Education Research (CER) Doctoral Scholars Program trains a diverse group of graduate students how to develop assessments of secondary and tertiary students’ understandings of core concepts in chemistry.