Middle

Creating Inclusive PreK–12 STEM Learning Environments

Broadening Participation
Elementary
Middle
High
Undergraduate
Graduate
Other

Brief CoverBroadening participation in PreK–12 STEM provides ALL students with STEM learning experiences that can prepare them for civic life and the workforce.

Author/Presenter: 
Malcom Butler
Cory Buxton
Odis Johnson Jr.
Leanne Ketterlin-Geller
Catherine McCulloch
Natalie Nielsen
Arthur Powell
Lead Organization(s): 
Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC)
Year: 
2018
Short Description: 

This brief offers insights from National Science Foundation-supported research for education leaders and policymakers who are broadening participation in science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM). Many of these insights confirm knowledge that has been reported in research literature; however, some offer a different perspective on familiar challenges.

Webinar Resources: Strengthening Educators’ Practices for Engaging and Empowering Students with Disabilities and Difficulties as Mathematics Learners

Mathematics
Professional Development
Elementary
Middle

Access Link: 
https://youtu.be/u_PKaGJSk2w
Author/Presenter: 
Amy Brodesky
Jessica Hunt
Karen Mutch-Jones
Judy Storeygard
Year: 
2020
Short Description: 

Amy Brodesky, Jessica Hunt, Karen Mutch-Jones and Judy Storeygard shared key components, successes, and challenges of asset-based PD in mathematics. The webinar focused on the pressing question: What are ways to support educators in providing high-quality, inclusive instruction that empowers students with disabilities/difficulties as mathematics thinkers and doers?

Resource(s): 
PDF icon Strengthening Math Webinar Slides.pdf

“Approximate” Multiplicative Relationships between Quantitative Unknowns

Algebra
Mathematics
Middle

Three 18-session design experiments were conducted, each with 6–9 7th and 8th grade students, to investigate relationships between students’ rational number knowledge and algebraic reasoning. Students were to represent in drawings and equations two multiplicatively related unknown heights (e.g., one was 5 times another). Twelve of the 22 participating students operated with the second multiplicative concept, which meant they viewed known quantities as units of units, or two-levels-of-units structures, but not as three-levels-of-units structures.

Access Link: 
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0732312317301402
Author/Presenter: 
Amy J. Hackenberg
Robin Jones
Ayfer Eker
Mark Creager
Lead Organization(s): 
Indiana University (IU)
Year: 
2017
Short Description: 

Three 18-session design experiments were conducted, each with 6–9 7th and 8th grade students, to investigate relationships between students’ rational number knowledge and algebraic reasoning. Implications for teaching are explored in this article.

Tiering Instruction for Middle School Students

Algebra
Mathematics
Middle

Differentiating instruction (DI) is a pedagogical approach to managing classroom diversity in which teachers proactively adapt curricula, teaching methods, and products of learning to address individual students' needs in an effort to maximize learning for all (Tomlinson, 2005). DI is rooted in formative assessment, positions teachers and students together as learners, and involves providing choices and different pathways for students. Although teachers can differentiate for many characteristics of students, we differentiate for students' diverse ways of thinking.

Author/Presenter: 
Amy J. Hackenberg
Robin Jones
Rebecca Borowski
Lead Organization(s): 
Indiana University (IU)
Year: 
2020
Short Description: 

In this article, we describe an example of differentiating instruction (DI) involving middle school students from a five-year project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Resource(s): 
PDF icon Tiering Instruction for Middle School Students

Exploring Prospective Teachers’ Ability to Generate and Analyze Evidence-based Explanatory Arguments

Mathematics
Disciplinary Content Knowledge
Professional Development
Elementary
Middle

In this paper, using written responses of 37 PSTs preparing to teach grades 1-8 mathematics, we examined explanations they constructed to support their problem solutions and explanations they provided in support of their critiques of student-generated explanations. We also examined features of explanations on which PSTs drew in their critiques of mathematical explanations of students. Our results draw attention to the importance of helping PSTs develop competencies in constructing and critiquing mathematical explanations concurrently.

Access Link: 
Author/Presenter: 
Marta T. Magiera
Vecihi S. Zambak
Lead Organization(s): 
Marquette University
Year: 
2020
Short Description: 

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 student-generated explanations.

Resource(s): 
PDF icon Exploring Prospective Teachers’ Ability

Restoring Mathematics Identities of Black Learners: A Curricular Approach

Mathematics
Curriculum
Middle
High

Black learners are subject to systemic physical, symbolic, and epistemological violence in mathematics classrooms. Such violence has negative ramifications for Black children’s mathematics learning and identity development. The authors argue that space should be made within the mathematics classroom to repair the harm caused by this violence. This article describes an identity-based curriculum, Mathematics for Justice, Identity, and meta-Cognition (or MaJIC), that provides a form of mathematics therapy through a restorative justice framework.

Access Link: 
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00405841.2019.1626620
Author/Presenter: 
Maisie L. Gholson
Darrius D. Robinson
Lead Organization(s): 
University of Michigan (UM)
Year: 
2019
Short Description: 

This article describes an identity-based curriculum, Mathematics for Justice, Identity, and meta-Cognition (or MaJIC), that provides a form of mathematics therapy through a restorative justice framework.

Mathematics Teaching Hass Its Own Imperatives: Mathematical Practice and the Work of Mathematics Instruction

Mathematics
Curriculum
Elementary
Middle
High

How should we expect growing understandings of the nature of mathematical practice to inform classroom mathematical practice? We address this question from a perspective that takes seriously the notion that mathematics education, as a societal enterprise, is accountable to multiple sets of stakeholders, with the discipline of mathematics being only one of them. As they lead instruction, teachers can benefit from the influence of understandings of mathematical practice but they also need to recognize obligations to other stakeholders.

Access Link: 
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11858-020-01157-7
Author/Presenter: 
Patricio Herbst
Daniel Chazan
Lead Organization(s): 
University of Michigan (UM)
Year: 
2020
Short Description: 

In the article, the authors locate how mathematics instruction may actively respond to the influence of the discipline of mathematics and exemplify how obligations to other stakeholders may participate in the practical rationality of mathematics teaching as those influences are incorporated into instruction.

Visual Access to Mathematics Resources

Mathematics
Middle

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic school closures, the VAM project compiled example strategies, tasks, and apps for supporting students who are English learners (ELs) in mathematics, with information about how to adapt these examples to remote learning. Online workshops related to the resources and strategies were also offered for educators. 

Access Link: 
http://go.edc.org/VAM-resources
Author/Presenter: 
Pam Buffington
Lead Organization(s): 
Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC)
Year: 
2020
Short Description: 

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic school closures, the VAM project compiled example strategies, tasks, and apps for supporting students who are English learners (ELs) in mathematics, with information about how to adapt these examples to remote learning. Online workshops related to the resources and strategies were also offered for educators. 

From Science Student to Conceptual Agent: Examining the Individual Shifts in Engagement During Scaffolded Instruction

Science
Middle
High

In this paper we describe a qualitative study in which we examine individual student engagement during implementation of an instructional scaffold for critical evaluation of scientific models during Earth and space science lessons. We coded dialogic interactions of one student group in a sixth grade science classroom across three observations, wherein we analyzed the trajectory of engagement for a single student - Ray (a pseudonym), within the co-constructed learning of the group.

Access Link: 
http://cadrek12.org/sites/default/files/webform/2020/AERA%202020%20Matewos%20et%...
Author/Presenter: 
Ananya Matewos
Doug Lombardi
Janelle Bailey
Imogen Herrick
Lead Organization(s): 
University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP)
Year: 
2020
Short Description: 

In this paper we describe a qualitative study in which we examine individual student engagement during implementation of an instructional scaffold for critical evaluation of scientific models during Earth and space science lessons. We coded dialogic interactions of one student group in a sixth grade science classroom across three observations, wherein we analyzed the trajectory of engagement for a single student - Ray (a pseudonym), within the co-constructed learning of the group. The first of these observations involved implementation of a preconstructed scaffold, called the Model-Evidence Link (MEL) diagram, on the topic of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). With the MEL, students use evidence to compare a scientific model to an alternative model. In the second two observations, students used a more agentic variation of the activity called the build-a-MEL, to study the topics of fossils and freshwater resources respectively. After three observations, we transcribed and coded each interaction of students in the group. We then categorized and identified emerging patterns of Ray’s discourse and interactions with group members by using both a priori engagement codes and open coding. This paper was prepared for the 2020 AERA Annual Meeting. 

Science Strategy Interventions

Science
Elementary
Middle
High
Undergraduate
Graduate

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 can be implemented in science classrooms, some strategies are either specific to science or are encouraged within science. Historically, concept development and conceptual change approaches and empirical investigations dominated science’s strategies and strategic processing.

Access Link: 
http://cadrek12.org/sites/default/files/webform/2020/AERA%202020%20Symposium-Sci...
Author/Presenter: 
Doug Lombardi
Janelle Bailey
Lead Organization(s): 
University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP)
Year: 
2020
Short Description: 

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 can be implemented in science classrooms, some strategies are either specific to science or are encouraged within science. Historically, concept development and conceptual change approaches and empirical investigations dominated science’s strategies and strategic processing. More recently, argumentation, science as modeling, and the incorporation of socio-scientific topics dominate the strategies and strategic processing within science teaching and learning. Challenges to more widespread use of these approaches include lack of teacher experience and pedagogical knowledge around the strategies, as well as time and curricular limitations. Teacher education and professional development programs should seek to explicitly implement contemporary science strategy interventions to improve upon their use in K-12 classrooms and other learning environments. Doing so effectively will require well-researched and validated instructional scaffolds to facilitate the teaching and use of contemporary science learning strategies. This paper was prepared for the 2020 AERA Annual Meeting.

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