Science

Culturally Responsive Elementary Science Teaching

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This project explores the influence of elementary teachers' curricular context knowledge, developed over multiple curricular enactments, to adapt curriculum materials in ways that are culturally respsonsive to their students. The project utilizes Explore the Salish Sea, a place-based curriculum that braids together Western and Indigenous science. Students learn about their local ecosystem and and partner with community members to engage in stewardship. Our research follows teachers through four different cycles of curriculum enactment to develop robust case studies.

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Using Integrated, Place-based Watershed Curriculum to Increase Teacher Self-Efficacy with Culturally Relevant STEM

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Project CuRRENT addresses the need for incorporating multiple ways of knowing and learning into STEM pedagogy and curriculum through the design and delivery of a two-year professional development (PD) model that engaged elementary teachers in integrated, place-based, and regionally relevant learning focused on the theme of local watersheds. We explore how PD that embeds epistemological pluralism and is connected to local communities and ecology impacts teachers’ self-efficacy with designing and delivering place-based, NGSS-aligned STEM curriculum.

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Supporting the Implementation of Scientific Modeling Instruction in High School Chemistry and Biology in Rural Schools

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SIMIRS is a Level 2 Early Stage Design and Development project led by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and practitioners at NC State University, in partnership with 26 rural school systems across North Carolina.

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Supporting Teachers Appropriation of Ambitious Teaching Practice Within the Context of Implementing Complex Multidimensional Science Assessments

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Expectations and opportunities for student learning in science are expanding to involve students in making sense of and addressing real questions and problems in the world around them. At the same time, school districts are seeking innovative ways to support teachers in providing instruction that takes into account students’ perspectives and uses those perspectives to teach science.

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Supporting Rural STEM Middle School Teachers and Career Counselors in the Development of Effective STEM Content and Career Development Experiences

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This project provides rural middle school teachers and career counselors professional development, and the support needed to collaborate with each other and local community assets in designing, integrating, and implementing effective STEM content and career development activities. School teams co-develop project-based learning units that incorporate a place-based education perspective involving STEM assets, careers, and stakeholders from the local communities for middle school rural youth that intentionally infuse STEM careers in their area with STEM content.

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Supporting Instructional Decision Making: The Potential of an Automatically Scored Three-Dimensional Assessment System (Collaborative Research)

This collaborative early-stage design and development project has three goals: (a) develop automatically generated student reports (AutoRs) for three-dimensional (3D) science assessments to assist middle-school teachers to notice, attend to, and interpret information in ongoing classroom teaching, and (b) develop effective instructional supports to improve teachers’ use of AutoRs to make effective decisions for instructional moves, and  (c) examine the effectiveness of AutoRs and instructional supports to aide teachers’ decision making and students’ 3D learning.

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Supporting Instructional Decision Making: The Potential of an Automatically Scored Three-Dimensional Assessment System (Collaborative Research)

This collaborative early-stage design and development project has three goals: (a) develop automatically generated student reports (AutoRs) for three-dimensional (3D) science assessments to assist middle-school teachers to notice, attend to, and interpret information in ongoing classroom teaching, and (b) develop effective instructional supports to improve teachers’ use of AutoRs to make effective decisions for instructional moves, and  (c) examine the effectiveness of AutoRs and instructional supports to aide teachers’ decision making and students’ 3D learning.

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Supporting Instructional Decision Making: The Potential of an Automatically Scored Three-Dimensional Assessment System (Collaborative Research)

This collaborative early-stage design and development project has three goals: (a) develop automatically generated student reports (AutoRs) for three-dimensional (3D) science assessments to assist middle-school teachers to notice, attend to, and interpret information in ongoing classroom teaching, and (b) develop effective instructional supports to improve teachers’ use of AutoRs to make effective decisions for instructional moves, and  (c) examine the effectiveness of AutoRs and instructional supports to aide teachers’ decision making and students’ 3D learning.

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Supporting Instructional Decision Making: The Potential of an Automatically Scored Three-Dimensional Assessment System (Collaborative Research)

This collaborative early-stage design and development project has three goals: (a) develop automatically generated student reports (AutoRs) for three-dimensional (3D) science assessments to assist middle-school teachers to notice, attend to, and interpret information in ongoing classroom teaching, and (b) develop effective instructional supports to improve teachers’ use of AutoRs to make effective decisions for instructional moves, and  (c) examine the effectiveness of AutoRs and instructional supports to aide teachers’ decision making and students’ 3D learning.

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Supporting Elementary Teacher Learning for Effective School-based Citizen Science (TL4CS)

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The goal of TL4CS is to generate knowledge about teacher learning that enables elementary school-based citizen science (SBCs) to support students’ engagement with authentic science content and practices. The study addresses three research questions: (1) What kinds of supports foster teacher learning for enacting SBCS? (2) How do supports for teacher learning shape the way teachers enact SBCS? and (3) What is the potential of SBCS for positively influencing student learning and student attitudes?

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