This award will support teacher practitioners from the U.S. to attend the 2020 International Mind, Brain, and Education Society (IMBES) conference. The IMBES conference is an opportunity for scholars and educators to come together to engage in reciprocal dialogue about research and practice in biology, education, and the cognitive and developmental sciences.
This project aims to develop, implement, and evaluate an Internet of Things (IoT) based educational curriculum and technology that provides grades 9-12 students with Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SE) education.
This project operationalizes research in number, operation, and early algebra. It builds on the paradigm of Dynamic Geometry (the interactive and continuous manipulation of geometric shapes and constructions) with a new technological paradigm, Dynamic Number, centered on the direct manipulation of numerical representations and constructions. Using The Geometer’s Sketchpad as a starting point, KCP Technologies is developing new software tools to deepen students’ conceptions of number and early algebra in grades 2–8.
This project is supporting and investigating the implementation of reformed mathematics instruction at the middle school level in two large school districts. The primary goal of the project is to develop an empirically grounded theory of action for implementing reform at school and district levels. The researchers are investigating reform within a coherent system that focuses on leadership and school-based professional development.
This project will investigate the challenges, needs, and support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to succeed in applying for educational research support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), in particular the Division of Research on Learning in Informal and Formal Settings (DRL). The project will investigate what changes and/or supports would contribute to significantly increasing the number of applications and successful grant awards for STEM educational research project proposed by HBCUs.
While research has identified some features of professional development that impact teacher and student outcomes, there is still much mathematics education researchers do not know regarding which design features are most impactful to learning and how specific features of professional development connect to teacher learning. This project will investigate six prior NSF-funded professional development projects looking for features of the professional development associated with teacher uptake and learning, such as how the establishment of community or norms of collaboration support teachers’ long-term classroom practice.
Despite growing interest in supporting the integration of computational thinking (CT) in elementary education, there is not an agreed-upon definition of CT that is developmentally appropriate for early childhood, nor is there a clear understanding of how young children’s CT develops and which kinds of instructional approaches and practices truly support the development of CT. Early elementary educators need feasible research-based, developmentally appropriate CT curricula. This project will contribute to this critical STEM educational need by working with a design team of 5 elementary teachers to develop a research-based integrated mathematics and CT curriculum.
Despite growing interest in supporting the integration of computational thinking (CT) in elementary education, there is not an agreed-upon definition of CT that is developmentally appropriate for early childhood, nor is there a clear understanding of how young children’s CT develops and which kinds of instructional approaches and practices truly support the development of CT. Early elementary educators need feasible research-based, developmentally appropriate CT curricula. This project will contribute to this critical STEM educational need by working with a design team of 5 elementary teachers to develop a research-based integrated mathematics and CT curriculum.
This study will investigate factors influencing teacher change after professional learning (PL) experiences and will examine the extent to which modest supports for science and engineering teaching in grades 3-5 sustain PL outcomes over the long term, such as increases in instructional time devoted to science, teacher self-efficacy in science, and teacher use of reform-oriented instructional strategies aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards.
This study will investigate factors influencing teacher change after professional learning (PL) experiences and will examine the extent to which modest supports for science and engineering teaching in grades 3-5 sustain PL outcomes over the long term, such as increases in instructional time devoted to science, teacher self-efficacy in science, and teacher use of reform-oriented instructional strategies aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards.
This project responds to the need for technology-enhanced assessments that promote the critical practice of scientific argumentation--making and explaining a claim from evidence about a scientific question and critically evaluating sources of uncertainty in the claim. It will investigate how to enhance this practice through automated scoring and immediate feedback in the context of two high school curriculum units--climate change and fresh-water availability--in schools with diverse student populations.
This project will study the design and development of PD that supports teacher development and student learning, and provide accumulation of evidence to inform teacher educators, administrators, teachers, and policymakers of factors associated with successful PD experiences and variation across teachers and types of PDs. The study will examine teachers' uptake of mathematics content, pedagogy and materials from different types of professional development in order to understand and unpack the factors that are associated with what teachers take up and use two-three years beyond their original PD experience.
This project focuses on the teaching practice of building on student thinking, a practice in which teachers engage students in making sense of their peers' mathematical ideas in ways that help the whole class move forward in their mathematical understanding. The study examines how teachers incorporate this practice into mathematics discussions in secondary classrooms by designing tasks that generate opportunities for teachers to build on students' thinking and by studying teachers' orchestration of whole class discussions around student responses to these tasks.
This project focuses on the teaching practice of building on student thinking, a practice in which teachers engage students in making sense of their peers' mathematical ideas in ways that help the whole class move forward in their mathematical understanding. The study examines how teachers incorporate this practice into mathematics discussions in secondary classrooms by designing tasks that generate opportunities for teachers to build on students' thinking and by studying teachers' orchestration of whole class discussions around student responses to these tasks.
This project focuses on the teaching practice of building on student thinking, a practice in which teachers engage students in making sense of their peers' mathematical ideas in ways that help the whole class move forward in their mathematical understanding. The study examines how teachers incorporate this practice into mathematics discussions in secondary classrooms by designing tasks that generate opportunities for teachers to build on students' thinking and by studying teachers' orchestration of whole class discussions around student responses to these tasks.
This Rapid Response Research (RAPID) project is an exploratory mixed methods study investigating the impact of vulnerability and resilience in the recovery of North Carolina schools affected by both Hurricanes Florence (2018) and Matthew (2016). Specifically, the study assesses whether schools that were impacted by both storms used organizational learning strategies to recover faster than schools that were impacted by either Hurricane Florence or Matthew alone.
The PI of this project argues cogently that assessment of pre-service teacher preparedness to teach is based on a flawed model. The goal then is to use a simulation model from other professional arenas: the training of doctors, nurses, etc., to offer new insights and control for the many variables that come to play when conducting evaluations in practice.
Professional learning communities (PLCs) are one common model for teachers to collaborate and learn from one another. The goal of this study is to understand how teachers' expertise is positioned in a PLC and the larger system of the school and district to inform mathematics teaching and learning. This should help schools and districts understand the features of PLCs that are important for supporting teachers as they collaborate and learn.
This project is connecting mathematicians and mathematics teachers in middle schools by offering summer workshops and continued communication throughout the year. The workshops focus on mathematical problem solving and include activities that offer multiple entry points. The goal of the workshops is to increase teachers' knowledge of mathematics for teaching and to help teachers use their knowledge to improve student learning of mathematics.
This study examines ways that teacher-level factors (including teacher background variables and instructional practices) and student-level factors (such as self-rated mathematics interest and proficiency), and interactions among these factors, are associated with American Indian/Alaska native (AI/AN) student academic achievement in middle grades mathematics. The ultimate goal is to identify malleable factors that, if changed, could improve teachers' practices and AI/AN student achievement in mathematics.
