Science

Using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we examine the correlates of elementary school science achievement gains for multilingual learners. We examine both science inputs - such as time on science, instructional materials, and topics taught - as well as language inputs - including ELL instructional model, languages spoken by educators, and multilingual resources. Our findings provide exploratory evidence on the factors related to science learning gains for multilingual learners.

The NGSA Elementary project seeks to better understand how to build and sustain the capacity of elementary science teachers to instruct and formatively assess students in NGSS-aligned ways. Our professional learning model prioritizes teacher learning in a community of practice, places instructionally supportive assessments at the forefront, and centers student discourse on disciplinary knowledge and practices to engage in sensemaking and reasoning. Teacher partners use multi-dimensional tasks in their classrooms and discuss experiences during PL sessions.

The NGSA Elementary project seeks to better understand how to build and sustain the capacity of elementary science teachers to instruct and formatively assess students in NGSS-aligned ways. Our professional learning model prioritizes teacher learning in a community of practice, places instructionally supportive assessments at the forefront, and centers student discourse on disciplinary knowledge and practices to engage in sensemaking and reasoning. Teacher partners use multi-dimensional tasks in their classrooms and discuss experiences during PL sessions.

The project uses design-based research to address: (1) whether and how interpreting and constructing visual representations improves students' understanding of science, and (2) what further benefits are conferred by marrying engagement with visual representations and prompts for reflection during informal science learning experiences. The project is grounded in the idea that visual representations can enhance science learning and encourage reflection on doing science that supports extension of that learning beyond a singular informal science experience.

The Advancing Coherent and Equitable Systems of Science Education (ACESSE, or “access”) project brings together partners from educational research and practice to promote equity and coherence in systems of science education. It involves a deep collaboration between the Council of State Science Supervisors (CSSS), the University of Washington, and the University of Colorado Boulder. Strategies and resources from this project are being shared around the country through networks of science education leaders. See https://stemteachingtools.org/

NLP-TIPS takes advantage of natural language processing (NLP) methods to detect students’ ideas in written science explanations. We design adaptive guidance that supports each student to consider their own ideas and pursue deeper understanding of phenomena. This work continues a successful partnership between University of California, Berkeley, Educational Testing Service (ETS), and science teachers from schools enrolling students from diverse racial, ethnic, and linguistic groups whose cultural experiences may be neglected in science instruction.

Socioscientific Issues (SSI) are ill-defined problems and debatable issues that can enhance student learning of scientific knowledge and literacy skills (Zeidler et al., 2005). However, most teachers are unfamiliar with planning and implementation of SSI (Macalalag et. al, 2019). Our project aimed to support the development of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge through planning and implementation of SSI lessons in their classrooms.

Improving the quality of teaching is essential to improving student outcomes. BSCS Science Learning and the University of Minnesota STEM Education Program Area adapted an effective in-person professional learning model to utilize an online approach. The adaptation of STeLLA—Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis—is important because it can reach a broader audience. To further promote the reach of STeLLA, the online version prepared local leaders to lead the program.

The purpose of this project is to gather, analyze, and synthesize research studies that have investigated different approaches to supporting students in grades 6-14 in learning to analyze, interpret, and reason about data with a focus on variation and covariation. We will use Robust Variance Estimation (RVE) to examine how effect size estimates depend on intervention characteristics, study design, outcomes of interest, and demographic characteristics of participants in the studies.

We iteratively designed and tested a research-based professional learning (PL) approach to help middle school science teachers effectively support and sustain students’ motivational competencies during ambitious science instruction. A team of researchers and middle school science teachers co-designed a PL approach called M-PLANS (Motivation - Planning Lessons to Activate eNgagement in Science). Early testing suggests promise for impacts on teacher beliefs and behavior as well as students’ motivation, engagement, and science performance.