Elementary School

Developing and Validating Assessments to Measure and Build Elementary Teachers' Content Knowledge for Teaching About Matter and Its Interactions Within Teacher Education Settings (Collaborative Research: Hanuscin)

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CKT for Matter: The project designed and developed assessment tools and instructional materials for use in teacher education programs, and is supporting a professional learning community as part of an implementation study of the impacts of the materials on preservice teacher and teacher educator learning.

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Developing a Place-based STEM Education Model for Cultural Connections to Alaska Science

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The project builds upon prior successful work using the Cultural Connections Process Model (CCPM) to co-produce engaging place-based STEM education resources working with rural Indigenous communities. The CCPM is now applied to develop 10 educational videos and corresponding hands-on high-school lessons with participants from four Alaska Native Tribes (Iñupiat, Gwich'in Athabascan, Tlingit/Tsimshian, and Alutiiq) to determine if the model is adaptable and if the resources are transferrable and sustainable to a variety of contexts.

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Designing for Science Learning in Schools by Leveraging Participation and the Power of Place Through Community and Citizen Science (Collaborative Research)

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Our project is a four-year research-practice partnership which examines elementary students’ understanding of and agency with science content knowledge and practices during a community-engaged, place-based environmental science research and monitoring program. We investigate how research informed design features influence these learning outcomes. Our findings will inform replicable models for science standards-aligned school-based community and citizen science (CCS) for youth agency in and with science.

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Designing for Science Learning in Schools by Leveraging Participation and the Power of Place Through Community and Citizen Science (Collaborative Research)

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Our project is a four-year research-practice partnership which examines elementary students’ understanding of and agency with science content knowledge and practices during a community-engaged, place-based environmental science research and monitoring program. We investigate how research informed design features influence these learning outcomes. Our findings will inform replicable models for science standards-aligned school-based community and citizen science (CCS) for youth agency in and with science.

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Designing and Researching a Program for Preparing Teachers as Facilitators of Computational Making Activities in Classroom and Informal Learning Environments

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In this project, we engaged elementary (grades K-5) pre-service teachers (PSTs) as facilitators in a family technology program called Family Creative Learning, embedded in the Denver Public Library makerspace network. We studied PSTs’ computational thinking and facilitation practices and its impact on children's learning across informal and classroom settings where pre-service teachers concurrently conduct their field work. The project team will develop research-based resources, tools, and activities that help to cultivate these key facilitation practices.

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Design Talks: Building Community with Elementary Engineering (Collaborative Research: Andrews)

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The Design Talk project aims to to enact and characterize multiple types of whole-class engineering design conversations in first-grade through sixth-grade classrooms. The Design Talk resource library will enable educators and curriculum developers to see distinctly different kinds of classroom conversations that make engineering an activity in which all students engage in productive sense-making and ethical decision-making. This approach to classroom discourse foregrounds a perspective of care as central to engineering design work.

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Design and Development of a K-12 STEM Observation Protocol (Collaborative Research: Dare)

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This project uses over 2000 integrated STEM classroom videos to design and validate the STEM Observation Protocol (STEM-OP) for use in classrooms where integrated STEM is taking place. The STEM-OP is a valid and reliable instrument for use in a variety of educational contexts and research. The STEM-OP and associated training materials are available for use by stakeholders such as K-12 teachers, district administrators, teacher educators, and educational researchers through an online platform.

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Connecting Elementary Mathematics Teaching to Real-World Issues (Collaborative Research: Thanheiser)

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There are long-standing calls to make mathematics more meaningful, relevant, and applicable both inside and outside of the K-12 classroom. In particular, there is a growing recognition that mathematics is a valuable tool for helping students understand important real-world issues that affect their lives and society. Further, mathematics can support students in becoming mathematically literate and engaged democratic citizens. Despite the increased interest in connecting mathematics to real-world issues in the classroom, many teachers feel unprepared to do so.

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Culturally Responsive, Affective-focused Teaching of Science and Mathematics

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Broadening participation in STEM requires a change in how K-12 teachers engage and educate students who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. The CRAFT project provides a field-based science and mathematics teacher education program that supports teaching focused on students’ affective development through culturally responsive practices.

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CAREER: Teacher Learning Through Expansive Sensemaking in Science

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This project explores how to cultivate novel disciplinary spaces for secondary teachers to experience science. We are designing a content-focused education course for preservice secondary science teachers to engage in expansive and connective sensemaking, incorporating heterogeneity, power, and historicity in pursuits of explanatory accounts of the natural world. We examine how this space supports teachers to expand what counts in science and to attune to their (and their future students’) sociopolitical identities, histories, and future-making.

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