What's New on CADREK12.org

Resource | Uncovering Middle School CS Students’ Understanding of Variables and Control Structures: A Cognitive Think-Aloud Approach
This poster presents findings on middle school students’ understanding of core computer science (CS) concepts, such as variables and control structures, using cognitive think-aloud interviews with eight students. Each student worked on 16-22 formative assessment tasks designed to assess understanding on the ‘Algorithms and Programming’ middle school CS standards. Our study describes students’…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | Exploring Middle School Students’ Understanding of Algorithms Using Standards-aligned Formative Assessments: Teacher and Researcher Perspectives
‘Algorithms’ is a core CS concept included in the K-12 CS standards, yet student challenges with understanding different aspects of algorithms are still not well documented, especially for younger students. This paper describes an approach to decompose the broad middle-school ‘algorithms’ standard into finer grained learning targets, develop formative assessment tasks aligned with the learning…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | Designing Standards-aligned Formative Assessments to Explore Middle School Students’ Understanding of Algorithms
'Algorithms’ is a core CS concept included in the K-12 CS learning standards, yet student challenges with understanding and using algorithms are still not well documented. This paper describes an approach to decompose the broad middle-school ‘algorithms’ standard into finer grained learning targets, develop formative assessment tasks aligned with the fine-grained learning targets, and use the…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | Analyzing Teacher Learning in a Research Practice Partnership
Teachers are increasingly participating in RPPs with the goal of improving their schools and districts. This context provides teachers with unique learning opportunities as they directly take part in district-level instructional improvement work. However, we know little about what teachers learn from their involvement in RPPs. This study explores teacher learning over the course of the first year…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | Navigating Policy and Local Context in Times of Crisis: District and School Leader Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Purpose: To examine how federal/state-level policy guidance and local context have influenced district and school leader responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how these external/internal factors might provide a window into K-12 crisis leadership and policy sensemaking more broadly. Research: Investigating two districts over two years (2020–2022), data gathered include 39 hours of…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | The Crisis You Can’t Plan For: K-12 Leader Responses and Organisational Preparedness During COVID-19
Unlike many types of educational crises, the COVID-19 pandemic was a crisis leaders could not have prepared for. But research is only starting to examine how leaders’ responses and organisational context have played a role. This mixed-methods study accordingly examines how leaders have mitigated challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, and what local factors are most salient. Investigating…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | Technology-based Innovative Assessment
This section presents an overview of critical developments in technology-driven, classroom-based innovative assessment practices. It uses a framework organized around cognitive constructs, assessment functionality, and automaticity to review the technological developments of innovative assessments and identify how they have been advanced to meet researcher and practitioner needs. Specifically,…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | Technology-based Innovative Assessment
This section presents an overview of critical developments in technology-driven, classroom-based innovative assessment practices. It uses a framework organized around cognitive constructs, assessment functionality, and automaticity to review the technological developments of innovative assessments and identify how they have been advanced to meet researcher and practitioner needs. Specifically,…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | Technology-based Innovative Assessment
This section presents an overview of critical developments in technology-driven, classroom-based innovative assessment practices. It uses a framework organized around cognitive constructs, assessment functionality, and automaticity to review the technological developments of innovative assessments and identify how they have been advanced to meet researcher and practitioner needs. Specifically,…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | Technology-based Innovative Assessment
This section presents an overview of critical developments in technology-driven, classroom-based innovative assessment practices. It uses a framework organized around cognitive constructs, assessment functionality, and automaticity to review the technological developments of innovative assessments and identify how they have been advanced to meet researcher and practitioner needs. Specifically,…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | Justice-Centered STEM Education with Multilingual Learners: Conceptual Framework and Initial Inquiry into Pre-service Teachers’ Sense-Making
When pressing societal challenges (e.g., COVID-19, access to clean water) are sidelined in science classrooms, science education fails to leverage the knowledge and experiences of minoritized students in school, thus reproducing injustices in society. Our conceptual framework for justice-centered STEM education engages all students in multiple STEM subjects, including data science and computer…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | The Role of Whole-Class Conversations in Supporting Early Elementary Students’ Engineering Design Sense-Making
We consider how intentionally planned and facilitated whole-class conversations can “make space” for students’ sense-making about engineering problems and solutions and position them with epistemic authority to contribute to collective thinking. We conducted a case study on a first-grade engineering lesson that included whole-class Idea Generation and Design Synthesis Talks. We found students…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | The Role of Whole-Class Conversations in Supporting Early Elementary Students’ Engineering Design Sense-Making
We consider how intentionally planned and facilitated whole-class conversations can “make space” for students’ sense-making about engineering problems and solutions and position them with epistemic authority to contribute to collective thinking. We conducted a case study on a first-grade engineering lesson that included whole-class Idea Generation and Design Synthesis Talks. We found students…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | Design Talks: Fostering Whole-Class Conversations During Engineering Design Units
Teacher-facilitated whole-class conversations can help elementary students apply the full power of the NGSS science and engineering practices to an engineering design process. In this article we describe and provide examples for five kinds of Design Talks. Each type of Design Talk centers on a different framing question and is facilitated by specific prompts that help students voice their ideas…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Resource | Design Talks: Fostering Whole-Class Conversations During Engineering Design Units
Teacher-facilitated whole-class conversations can help elementary students apply the full power of the NGSS science and engineering practices to an engineering design process. In this article we describe and provide examples for five kinds of Design Talks. Each type of Design Talk centers on a different framing question and is facilitated by specific prompts that help students voice their ideas…
Posted: Monday, March 18
Event | IRB Basics: An Introduction to Institutional Review Boards in Informal STEM Education
Join the REVISE Center for an informational webinar on Institutional Review Boards (IRB) and their important role in informal STEM education (ISE) work! Whether you are new to research or seeking a comprehensive IRB refresher, IRB Basics: An Introduction to IRBs in Informal STEM Education is designed to enhance your understanding of ethical human subject research in ISE initiatives. The session…
Posted: Tuesday, March 12
Resource | Characterizing Mathematics Teacher Learning Patterns Through Collegial Conversation in a Community of Practice
We examined secondary (6-12) mathematics teachers’ participation in a professional development (PD) model where they collectively investigated video cases of students engaging with ambitious instructional materials. We leveraged frame analysis, frame processes, and the Teaching for Robust Understanding framework to characterize the learning of professional learning communities. We found that…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Energy and Your Environment (EYE): Place-based Curriculum Unit to Foster Students’ Energy Literacy
This chapter describes our middle school energy literacy project to develop, implement, and test curriculum materials for a unit titled Energy and Your Environment (EYE). EYE fosters place-based education by using the school building to enhance systems thinking about energy consumption and flow between the building and surrounding environment. Within the curriculum unit, students first consider…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Scaling STEM-ID—Research Strategies to Inform Initial Scaling of Middle School Engineering Curricula
This work-in-progress paper discusses ****, a three-year middle school Engineering and Technology course sequence that integrates foundational mathematics and science in an engineering context through challenges that introduce students to advanced manufacturing tools such as computer aided design (CAD) and 3D printing and incorporate engineering concepts such as pneumatics, aeronautics, and…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Multilingual Classrooms: Development of an Observational Analytic Tool to Examine Mathematics Instruction
This brief research report describes the refinement and testing of an observational rubric designed to identify and assess elements of classroom mathematics instruction that research has found to support multilingual student learning. The aim of this process is to (a) combine existing rubrics that capture teaching strategies and positioning construct protocol, (b) test the combined rubric in…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Multilingual Classrooms: Development of an Observational Analytic Tool to Examine Mathematics Instruction
This brief research report describes the refinement and testing of an observational rubric designed to identify and assess elements of classroom mathematics instruction that research has found to support multilingual student learning. The aim of this process is to (a) combine existing rubrics that capture teaching strategies and positioning construct protocol, (b) test the combined rubric in…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Multilingual Classrooms: Development of an Observational Analytic Tool to Examine Mathematics Instruction
This brief research report describes the refinement and testing of an observational rubric designed to identify and assess elements of classroom mathematics instruction that research has found to support multilingual student learning. The aim of this process is to (a) combine existing rubrics that capture teaching strategies and positioning construct protocol, (b) test the combined rubric in…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Parents and Teachers Doing Mathematics Together
Collaborative partnerships between families and teachers have the potential to support and transform students’ mathematics learning experiences. This study focused on interactions among mothers and teachers of multilingual elementary grade students who participated together in workshops focused on teaching and learning mathematics. We analyzed participants’ engagement in open-ended, culturally…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Parents and Teachers Doing Mathematics Together
Collaborative partnerships between families and teachers have the potential to support and transform students’ mathematics learning experiences. This study focused on interactions among mothers and teachers of multilingual elementary grade students who participated together in workshops focused on teaching and learning mathematics. We analyzed participants’ engagement in open-ended, culturally…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Parents and Teachers Doing Mathematics Together
Collaborative partnerships between families and teachers have the potential to support and transform students’ mathematics learning experiences. This study focused on interactions among mothers and teachers of multilingual elementary grade students who participated together in workshops focused on teaching and learning mathematics. We analyzed participants’ engagement in open-ended, culturally…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | The Development and Validation of a Survey Measuring Opportunity to Learn Spatial Reasoning Skills at Home
The early development of spatial reasoning skills has been linked to future success in mathematics (Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009), but research to date has mainly focused on the development of these skills within classroom settings rather than at home. The home environment is often the first place students are exposed to, and develop, early mathematics skills, including spatial reasoning (…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Iterative Cognitive Interview Design to Uncover Children’s Spatial Reasoning
Cognitive interviews play an important role in articulating the intended construct of educational assessments. This paper describes the iterative development of protocols for cognitive interviews with kindergarten through second-grade children to understand how their spatial reasoning skill development aligns with intended constructs. We describe the procedures used to gather evidence of…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Promoting Spatial Orientation: A Math Activity for Teachers and Families
Perry, L., Kuehnert, E., & Ketterlin-Geller, L. R. (2022). Promoting spatial orientation: A math activity for teachers and families. Teaching Young Children, 15(3), 8-12.
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Connecting Classroom Assessment with Learning Goals and Instruction Through Theories of Learning
In this report section, we discuss the importance of aligning classroom assessments with learning goals and instructional practices to both shape and evaluate students’ learning opportunities. We describe a plausible solution for improving alignment by integrating theories of learning in the design of classroom assessments. We discuss ways in which the specification of theories of learning as…
Posted: Tuesday, March 05
Resource | Designing Educative Tools for Scientific Argumentation: A Case Study of DBR Before and During the Pandemic
Design-based research is uniquely positioned to adapt instructional resources quickly to meet the needs of teachers and students. This chapter explores how researchers adapted and improved two educative tools over the course of two academic years. The educative tools were designed to support scientific argumentation through supporting students to develop task models of NGSS storyline routines.…
Posted: Friday, March 01