Middle

Since March 2020, in-person science competitions have been cancelled or moved to a virtual space. This reality has encouraged teachers and students to find alternative ways to disseminate student research and participate in a scientific community. Participating in the peer review and publication of one’s research offers one such alternative. The Journal of Emerging Investigators (JEI) is a free, online, peer-reviewed science journal specifically for middle school and high school students.

Scientists spend a substantial amount of their time engaging with the primary literature: reading, constructing, reviewing and revising it. Yet, the role of primary literature is generally absent from the development of scientific inquiry skills in the pre-college science classroom, thus undermining a true understanding of what it means to do science. In this study, we examined middle and high school student perceptions of scientific inquiry and the role of disciplinary literacy practices after engaging in scientific review and publication of their research papers.

The researchers conducted a qualitative analysis of the perceptions of school personnel and pre-service teachers about an Algebra I tutoring program for students with learning disabilities. The researchers surveyed and interviewed the participants about the effectiveness of the program for the mathematics learning of the students with LD at the school and as a learning experience for the pre-service teachers. The school personnel indicated there was a mutually beneficial relationship between the tutors and the school.

This study explored an innovative coaching model termed video-based online video coaching. The innovation builds from affordances of robot-enabled videorecording of lessons, accompanied by built-in uploading and annotation features. While in-person coaching has proven effective for providing sustained support for teachers to take up challenging instructional practices, there are constraints. Both logistical and human capacity constraints make in-person coaching difficult to implement, particularly in rural contexts.

This study examined how mathematics coaches leverage written annotations to support professional discourse with teachers about important classroom events during synchronous debriefing conversations. Coaches and teachers created the annotations while asynchronously watching video of an implemented lesson as part of online video-assisted coaching cycles. More specifically, this project examined the extent to which a coach and teacher discussed the annotations during a debrief conversation in a coaching cycle.

In this project, we have designed, implemented, and started to research an innovative fully online video-based professional development model for mathematics coaches in rural contexts. Coaches in rural areas often lack access to professional development available in more populated areas, fueling the need for an online model that bridges geographic barriers (Howley & Howley, 2005; Maher & Prescott, 2017). The intent of the poster will be to share the professional development model and describe the research processes that are currently in progress.

In this chapter, we describe a three-part fully online model for the professional development of middle school mathematics teachers. While the model could be applied to any context, we created it for rural mathematics teachers to provide them access to high-quality professional development and to demonstrate that we could move face-to-face experiences to an online context without losing interactional qualities or intellectual rigor. We describe the model and how we researched it.

In this chapter, we describe a three-part fully online model for the professional development of middle school mathematics teachers. While the model could be applied to any context, we created it for rural mathematics teachers to provide them access to high-quality professional development and to demonstrate that we could move face-to-face experiences to an online context without losing interactional qualities or intellectual rigor. We describe the model and how we researched it.

Butcher, K. R., Larson, M., Lane, M., & Power, M. (2022). Rethinking Online Science Learning: Creating Virtual Research Experiences using Digitized Museum Specimens. Connected Science Learning, 4(2).

This chapter discusses the capabilities of extended reality technology in informal learning environments, such as museums and cultural heritage sites. Recent developments in extended reality technologies have led to increased integration into these informal learning spaces and have heightened the need for a systematic investigation into the affordances of modern multimedia representations spanning tangible to virtual mediums.