DRK-12 Research and Products
Publication | Socially relevant and controversial topics, such as the climate crisis, are subject to differences in the explanations that scientists and the public find plausible. Scaffolds can help students be evaluative of the validity of explanations based…
Publication | The goal of our National Science Foundation-funded Geological Models for Exploration of Dynamic Earth (GEODE) project is to help students use plate tectonics as an explanation for the landforms and geological phenomena observed on Earth’s…
Publication | This is a description of a new methodological tool to gather response process validity evidence. The context is scholarship within mathematics education contexts.
Product for Educators | A set of NGSS-aligned investigations for each discipline (physics, chemistry, biology) designed to introduce and scaffold engagement in science practices and build an understanding of the interplay between experimental design, data…
Publication | In this work, we extend variational auto encoders (VAE) to estimate item parameters and correlated latent abilities, and directly compare the ML2P-VAE method to more traditional parameter estimation methods, such as Monte Carlo expectation-…
Publication | Museums are local-to-global organizations operating in a digitized, distributed, and diverse 21st century world. Museums leaders face significant challenges in achieving broader relevance, meaningful engagement, and equitable outreach. This…
Publication | In a project designed to help create the next generation of problem-solvers, North Carolina State University researchers challenged a group of 11th graders to investigate and find solutions to a global problem: that billions of people lack…
Publication | Selected response items and constructed response (CR) items are often found in the same test. Conventional psychometric models for these two types of items typically focus on using the scores for correctness of the responses. Recent research…
Product for Educators | Getting Unstuck is a 10-module intermediate Scratch curriculum to help your students develop greater creative and conceptual fluency with code. The curriculum reimagines the classroom as a design studio: a culture of learning in which…
Publication | The process of modeling a complex phenomenon often requires working across representational systems of differing scales, modalities, and purposes. When put into contact, entities across multiple representational systems can become related or “…
Presentation | AERA symposium presentation on accessible distance learning in science during COVID.
Publication | In this paper, authors network five frameworks (cognitive demand, lesson cohesion, cognitive engagement, collective argumentation, and student contribution) for an analytic approach that allows us to present a more holistic picture of classrooms…
Publication | In this article, the authors present evidence from teachers' reflections that this stability was supported by the teachers' intellectual and emotional experiences as learners. Specifically, they argue that engaging in extended scientific inquiry…
Publication | Estimating and monitoring the construct-irrelevant variance (CIV) is of significant importance to validity, especially for constructed response assessments with rich contextualized information. To examine CIV in contextualized constructed…
Publication | This paper contributes to current discussions about supporting prospective teachers (PSTs) in developing skills of noticing students’ mathematical thinking. The results document that without providing any intentional support for PSTs’ noticing…
Publication | A teacher uses formative assessment interviews to uncover evidence of students’ understandings and to plan targeted instruction in a mathematics intervention class. Authors present an example of a student interview, a discussion of the benefits…
Publication | This article presents a tool and discusses the rationale for the authors’ development of a tool designed to assess the alignment of culturally responsive schooling principles within schools serving predominantly U.S. Indigenous…
Publication | Science involves changing the scale of objects—particularly scales of size, time, and intensity—from what is experienced in the world. Similar to investigations conducted in science laboratories, classroom investigations involve re-representing…
Publication | Introduction to special issue focusing on think alouds and response process evidence. This work cuts across STEM education scholarship and introduces readers to robust means to engage in think alouds.
Publication | This chapter discusses the capabilities of extended reality technology in informal learning environments, such as museums and cultural heritage sites. The chapter critically appraises several affordances of extended reality technologies while…
Presentation | AERA presentation on elementary teachers’ perceptions and facilitation of argumentation in the context of professional learning.
Publication | This peer-reviewed research journal publication addresses one of the grant goals with respect to how students performed on a set of proof tasks.
Product for Educators | The SchoolWide Lab middle school curriculum units are anchored in phenomena, aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards(NGSS) and purposefully integrate Computational Thinking (CT). To date, four units have been developed by a…
Product for Educators | This resource presents a curricular module for high school biology classes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The module is made up of 8 lessons that will likely take about 10-15 hours of instructional time. Major themes of the module…
Publication | This exploratory study aimed to (1) identify the barriers to moving STEM enrichment programming in a rural environment from in-person to virtual activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) describe key decisions that were made in…