Reading List: Recent DRK-12 Project Publications
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Teaching Earth and Environmental Science using Model-Evidence Link Diagrams
High-quality science education is essential for students to become scientifically literate. Model-Evidence Link (MEL) diagrams and build-a-MEL (baMEL) diagrams are instructional scaffolds that create an opportunity for students to build scientific understanding through the evaluation of the connections between evidence and alternative explanations of a scientific phenomenon. The MELs and baMELs allow for a natural incorporation of three-dimensional learning that has been recommended by the Next Generation Science Standards to enhance students’ comprehension. Through this science teaching methodology, students are able to see that by diagramming and then writing about one’s thoughts about the connections between evidence and explanations, one can deepen their understanding of scientific concepts.
The Origins build-a-MEL: Introducing a Scaffold to Explore the Origins of the Universe
The origin of the Universe is something that people have pondered for thousands of years. As evidence has mounted, the Big Bang theory has become the consensus scientific model. Much of this same evidence refutes opposing theories such as the earlier Steady State model. The NGSS for high school includes the nature of and evidence for the Big Bang, providing a rich opportunity to explore—with the help of a scaffold—the connections between evidence and competing models about the origins of the Universe.
The Curious Construct of Active Learning
The construct of active learning permeates undergraduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), but despite its prevalence, the construct means different things to different people, groups, and STEM domains. To better understand active learning, we constructed this review through an innovative interdisciplinary collaboration involving research teams from psychology and discipline-based education research (DBER). Our collaboration examined active learning from two different perspectives (i.e., psychology and DBER) and surveyed the current landscape of undergraduate STEM instructional practices related to the modes of active learning and traditional lecture.
Fourth-Grade Students' Sensemaking during Multi-step Problem Solving
The purpose of this study was to investigate fourth-grade students’ sensemaking of a word problem. Sensemaking occurs when students connect their understanding of situations with existing knowledge. We investigated students’ sensemaking through inductive task analysis of their strategies and solutions to a problem that involved determining the difference between two quantities and number of groups within the task.
Beyond Assessing Knowledge about Models and Modeling: Moving toward Expansive, Meaningful, and Equitable Modeling Practice
This article focused on expansive, meaningful, and equitable modeling practice.
Interlocking Models as Sites of Modeling Practice and Conceptual Innovation
The process of modeling a complex phenomenon often requires working across representational systems of differing scales, modalities, and purposes. When put into contact, entities across multiple representational systems can become related or “interlock.” This paper describes how students drew from multiple representational systems to construct “interlocking models” and how reasoning with interlocking models supported meaningful practice and conceptual innovation.
No Science Fair? No Problem. Engaging Students in Science Communication through Peer Review and Publication in a Remote World
This article describes resources that are freely available to help teachers navigate the peer review and publication processes and guide their students through the successful completion of submission and publication of their research papers.
Participating in the Scientific Publication Process: Exploring How Pre-college Students Perceive Publication within the Scientific Enterprise
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.
Tracing Take-Up Across Practice-based Professional Development and Collaborative Lesson Design
This study explored how two professional development approaches to reforming math instruction with different mechanisms for fostering change might have valuable synergies when used in tandem to support take-up, i.e., teachers’ acceptance, adoption, and incorporation of ideas into practice.
A Model for Developing Sustainable Math Instructional Leadership
The Responsive Math Teaching project has been developing and refining a model for the development of mathematics instructional leadership in a network of 13 urban under-resourced elementary schools. This report summarizes the core elements of this model for developing sustainable math instructional leadership for systemic change at the district level.
Perspectives on Algebra I Tutoring Experiences With Students With Learning Disabilities
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.
Flipping Instruction in a Fifth Grade Class: A Case of an Elementary Mathematics Specialist
In this article, we use data from interviews, class observations, and an analysis of instructional videos to describe an elementary mathematics specialists' efforts to incorporate flipped instruction for mathematics in her fifth grade class. We use this case to highlight how a knowledgeable teacher might use flipped instruction to enhance her teaching, and also describe potential challenges.
Profiles of Elementary Teachers’ Use of Mathematics Curriculum Materials and the Influence of Teacher Expertise
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has consistently emphasized the importance of curricular coherence in mathematics education. However, the predominance of the Internet has led to a lack of consistency in the use and quality of curricular materials. We drew on teachers’ self-report of their use of curriculum materials and conducted a Latent Class Analysis to examine patterns in 56 elementary teachers’ selection, use, and perceptions of materials for teaching mathematics, including the role that teacher expertise may play in these patterns.
Simulations as a Platform for Understanding and Improving Teachers' Classroom Skills
This blog post looks at the role of simulations in teacher learning.
Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions of Assessment Tasks that Measure Content Knowledge for Teaching about Matter
This study explores how 79 elementary preservice teachers perceive the relevance and importance of assessment task scenarios designed to elicit information about content knowledge for teaching (CKT) about matter and its interactions—a foundational topic for teaching physical science.
Coaching from a Distance: Exploring Video-based Online Coaching
This study explored an innovative coaching model termed video-based online video coaching. As part of an NSF-funded project, we studied nine mathematics coaches over four years as they engaged in video-based coaching with teachers from geographically distant, rural contexts.
Examining the Use of Video Annotations in Debriefing Conversations during Video-Assisted Coaching Cycles
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. We present a rationale for needing new knowledge about the relationships between video annotations and professional discourse as well as the potential implications of such knowledge.
A Three-Part Synchronous Online Model for Middle Grade Mathematics Teachers’ Professional Development
In this chapter, we describe a three-part fully online model for the professional development of middle school mathematics teachers. This chapter contributes to understanding how online contexts provide opportunities to collect and analyze data in ways that would be difficult to accomplish in face-to-face settings.
Rethinking Online Science Learning: Creating Virtual Research Experiences using Digitized Museum Specimens
This article focused on creating virtual research experiences using digitized museum specimens.
Informal Learning with Extended Reality Environments: Current Trends in Museums, Heritage, and Tourism
This chapter discusses the capabilities of extended reality technology in informal learning environments, such as museums and cultural heritage sites. The chapter critically appraises several affordances of extended reality technologies while expanding on these notions by outlining the cognitive theory of multimedia learning to inform practical instructional design principles.
Museum Leadership for Engaging, Equitable Education: The Transformative Potential of Digitized Collections for Authentic Learning Experiences
Museums are local-to-global organizations operating in a digitized, distributed, and diverse 21st century world. Museums leaders face significant challenges in achieving broader relevance, meaningful engagement, and equitable outreach. This article examines the transformative potential of digitized collections to increase public engagement and enhance authentic educational efforts of museums, with specific emphasis on visual media as a key resource to achieve these outcomes.
Using Climate Models to Learn About Global Climate Change
This article focuses on investigating the phenomenon of increasing surface air temperatures using a global climate modeling approach.
Empirical Research on K-16 Climate Education: A Systematic Review of the Literature
Recent implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) has intensified the focus on teaching and learning of the Earth’s climate and GCC in formal learning environments. Concurrently, the empirical research associated with climate education has also increased. We used an exhaustive, stepwise process to search for and identify relevant literature, systematically analyzing 178 empirical, peer-reviewed studies focused on climate literacy and education in formal K-16 settings.
Climate Education in Secondary Science: Comparison of Model-based and Non-Model-based Investigations of Earth’s Climate
In this mixed method study, we analyse the effectiveness of two pedagogical approaches – one model-based and another non-model-based – for developing secondary students’ understanding of the phenomenon of increase in Earth’s average surface temperatures, a core dimension of global climate change (GCC).
Standards-Aligned Instructional Supports to Promote Computer Science Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge
This position paper advocates supporting computer science (CS) teacher professional learning by supplementing existing curriculum-specific teacher professional development (PD) with standards-aligned PD that focuses on teachers' conceptual understanding of CS standards and ability to adapt instruction based on student understanding of concepts underlying the CS standards. We share concrete examples of how to design standards-aligned educative resources and instructionally supportive tools that promote teachers' understanding of CS standards and common student challenges and develop teachers' formative assessment literacy, all essential components of CS pedagogical content knowledge.
Second and Fifth Graders’ Use of Knowledge-Pieces and Knowledge-Structures When Solving Integer Addition Problems
In this study, we explored second and fifth graders’ noticing of negative signs and incorporation of them into their strategies when solving integer addition problems. For both grade levels, the order of the numerals, the location of the negative signs, and also the numbers’ absolute values in the problems played a role in students’ strategies used. Fifth graders’ greater strategy variability often reflected strategic use of the meanings of the minus sign. Our findings provide insights into students’ problem interpretation and solution strategies for integer addition problems and supports a blended theory of conceptual change.
Designing for Framing in Online Teacher Education: Supporting Teachers’ Attending to Student Thinking in Video Discussions of Classroom Engineering
We present findings from an online course designed to support teachers to frame video discussions as making sense of student thinking. In an engineering pedagogy course designed to emphasize responsiveness to students’ thinking, we documented shifts in teachers’ framing, with teachers more frequently making sense of, rather than evaluating, student thinking later in the course. These findings show that it is possible to design an asynchronous online course to productively engage teachers in video discussions and inform theory development in online teacher education.
The Development and Assessment of Counting-based Cardinal Number Concepts
The give-n task is widely used in developmental psychology to indicate young children’s knowledge or use of the cardinality principle (CP): the last number word used in the counting process indicates the total number of items in a collection. Fuson (1988) distinguished between the CP, which she called the count-cardinal concept, and the cardinal-count concept, which she argued is a more advanced cardinality concept that underlies the counting-out process required by the give-n task with larger numbers. One aim of the present research was to evaluate Fuson’s disputed hypothesis that these two cardinality concepts are distinct and that the count-cardinal concept serves as a developmental prerequisite for constructing the cardinal-count concept. Consistent with Fuson’s hypothesis, the present study with twenty-four 3- and 4-year-olds revealed that success on a battery of tests assessing understanding of the count-cardinal concept was significantly and substantially better than that on the give-n task, which she presumed assessed the cardinal-count concept.
Secondary Mathematics Teachers’ Use of Students’ Incorrect Answers in Supporting Collective Argumentation
This study illustrates how two secondary mathematics teachers used students’ incorrect answers as they supported students’ engagement in collective argumentation.
Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Mathematics and Science A Cross-Disciplinary Synthesis of Recent DRK-12 Projects
This review synthesized insights from 27 NSF-funded projects, totaling $62 million, that studied pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in STEM education from prekindergarten (PreK) to Grade 12, split roughly equally across mathematics and science education. The projects primarily applied correlational/observational and longitudinal methods, often targeted teaching in the middle school grades, and used a wide variety of approaches to measure teachers’ PCK. The projects advanced substantive knowledge about PCK across four major lines of research, especially regarding the measurement and development of PCK.
Modeling in Science Education: A Synthesis of Recent Discovery Research PreK-12 Projects
This review synthesizes findings from 18 NSF-funded projects, totaling nearly $22 million, that studied scientific modeling in science education from prekindergarten to Grade 12. The projects typically used descriptive designs to understand digital and nondigital modeling resources that help students explore scientific phenomena. Further, the projects provide initial evidence that resources supporting student modeling, such as modeling platforms and computer simulations, can promote science learning.
Mathematical and Scientific Argumentation in PreK-12: A Cross-Disciplinary Synthesis of Recent DRK-12 Projects
This review synthesizes insights from 23 NSF-funded projects, totaling $40 million, that studied mathematical and scientific argumentation in STEM education from prekindergarten (PreK) to Grade 12. The projects reported on both studies of argumentation interventions and naturalistic observations in “business-as-usual” settings. The projects advanced substantive knowledge about how to support student argumentation. In particular, the projects highlighted the importance of making an argument’s structure explicit and facilitating student-to-student discourse, especially with technological tools.
Explaining Differences in One Teacher’s Instruction Across Multiple Tracked Fifth‐Grade Classes
In this article, we describe the case of “Keri,” a fifth-grade teacher who had completed an Elementary Mathematics Specialist (EMS) certification program. Drawn from a larger study investigating the knowledge, beliefs, and practices of EMSs, Keri's case was unique in that she was teaching mathematics to four classes in a departmentalized structure, where students were placed into different classes according to perceived mathematics ability. Observations from the larger study revealed that Keri's instructional practices did not align with her reported beliefs and knowledge. To explore this deviation, we conducted a case study where we observed Keri's instruction across multiple classes and used interviews to explore reasons for Keri's instructional decisions in terms of her perceived professional obligations.
The Honeycomb of Engineering Framework: Philosophy of Engineering Guiding Precollege Engineering Education
This conceptual paper introduces the honeycomb of engineering framework, which offers an epistemologically justified theoretical position and a pedagogical lens that can be used to examine ways engineering concepts and practices are taught in precollege education.
“Science Theatre Makes You Good at Science”: Affordances of Embodied Performances in Urban Elementary Science Classrooms
School science continues to alienate students identifying with nondominant, non-western cultures, and learners of color, and considers science as an enterprise where success necessitates divorcing the self and corporeal body from ideas and the mind. Resisting the colonizing pedagogy of the mind–body divide, we aimed at creating pedagogical spaces and places in science classes that sustain equitable opportunities for engagement and meaning making where body and mind are enmeshed. In the context of a partnership between school- and university-based educators and researchers, we explored how multimodal literacies cultivated through the performing arts, provide students from minoritized communities opportunities to both create knowledge and to position themselves as science experts and brilliant and creative meaning makers.
Quantification in Empirical Activity
Science involves changing the scale of objects—particularly scales of size, time, and intensity—from what is experienced in the world. Similar to investigations conducted in science laboratories, classroom investigations involve re-representing and re-scaling entities, manipulating them, and observing effects in new locations and timescales. However, this aspect of investigation is under-studied and under-utilized as a resource for learning. We argue that, from elementary school, children can experience quantification, or identifying, developing, and working with variables, as consequential and can take up differences in representation and scale in empirical investigations as opportunities for sense-making and conceptual progress.
Climate Crisis Learning through Scaffolded Instructional Tools
Socially relevant and controversial topics, such as the climate crisis, are subject to differences in the explanations that scientists and the public find plausible. Scaffolds can help students be evaluative of the validity of explanations based on evidence when addressing such topics and support knowledge gains. This study compared two scaffolds in which students weighed connections between lines of evidence and explanations for the topics of climate change and extreme weather events.
Articulating a Transformative Approach for Designing Tasks that Measure Young Learners’ Developing Proficiencies in Integrated Science and Literacy
This paper introduces an approach for designing NGSS-aligned assessments that measure young learners’ science progress while also attending to the scientific language and literacy practices that are integral parts of the NGSS Performance Expectations.
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Science: The SCI-Bridge Model
Urban Title I schools need teachers who recognize and can help address challenges with broadening participation in science and inequities in access to quality science instruction found in elementary schools. The paper presents scholarly work supported by a National Science Foundation Discovery Research K-12 grant. A new science instructional model that intersects effective practices in science education with the theoretical principles of culturally relevant pedagogy is provided. Grounded in evidence-based practice, the new model, SCI-Bridge, features how culturally responsive classroom management, facilitated discourse, and contextual anchoring can be implemented as part of science instruction in elementary classrooms.
Newcomer Emergent Bilingual Students’ Meaning-Making in Urban Biology Classrooms: A Communities of Practice Perspective
This study investigated how newcomer emergent bilinguals made meaning in two 9th-grade biology classrooms. Methods relevant to naturalistic inquiry were used to collect and analyze data. Findings indicate that newcomers bridged aspects of personal experiences with social competencies valued in classrooms through using heritage languages, engaging as brokers and collaborators, and attempting to realize goals of learning English and content simultaneously. Findings also show that misalignments between social competence and personal experience constrained meaning-making. This study illustrates a need for activities that reflect and expand newcomer resources and experiences, and for activities that can take shape through student participation.
Cultivating Epistemic Empathy in Preservice Teacher Education
This study investigates the emergence and cultivation of teachers' “epistemic empathy” in response to analyzing videos of student inquiry. We define epistemic empathy as the act of understanding and appreciating someone's cognitive and emotional experience within an epistemic activity—i.e., activity aimed at the construction, communication, and critique of knowledge. Our goals are (1) to conceptually develop the construct and contrast it to more general notions of caring and (2) to empirically examine epistemic empathy in the context of preservice teacher education. We discuss tensions in teachers' expressions of epistemic empathy, and we end with implications for research and practice.
“He Got a Glimpse of the Joys of Understanding” – The Role of Epistemic Empathy in Teacher Learning
Efforts to promote reform-based instruction have overlooked the import of affect in teacher learning. Drawing on prior work, I argue that teachers’ affective experiences in the discipline are integral to their learning how to teach the discipline. Moreover, I suggest that both affective and epistemological aspects of teachers’ experiences can serve to cultivate their epistemic empathy—the capacity for tuning into and valuing someone’s intellectual and emotional experience within an epistemic activity—in ways that support student-centered instruction.
From Professional Development to Native Nation Building: Opening Up Space for Leadership, Relationality, and Self-Determination through the Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators
Many of us have multiple stories that would be appropriate to tell given the theme of this Special Issue. I am compelled to tell a story about my work with teachers, teacher leaders, and other allies on the Navajo Nation. The Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators (DINÉ) was started by teacher leaders who envisioned a collaborative professional development institute specifically for K12 teachers on the Navajo Nation. In their rural, Indigenous-serving schools, teachers are often asked to deliver scripted curriculum that is decontextualized, dehistoricized, and therefore, dehumanizing for their students, themselves, and their communities. Their vision for the DINÉ was developed and honed over many years in response to this context. In this essay, I will briefly describe the DINÉ, how and why it began, and its current status. I will focus on three critical spaces that have opened up in and through the DINÉ: teacher leadership, connection/relationality, and activism/self-determination. In reflecting on these three spaces, I suggest that our work in the DINÉ is fundamentally about Native Nation building.
Developing and Piloting a Tool to Assess Culturally Responsive Principles in Schools Serving Indigenous Students
This article presents a tool and discusses the rationale for the authors’ development of a tool designed to assess the alignment of culturally responsive schooling principles within schools serving predominantly U.S. Indigenous students. Schools that serve a majority of Indigenous students are generally located on or bordering Native Nations that are federally recognized as being sovereign Nations with a government-to-government relationship to the federal government, so the more generic diversity, equity, and inclusion tools that currently exist are insufficient for the unique contexts of schools in Indian Country. Thus, we offer a tool that can be used to identify and strengthen the integration of culturally responsive principles specifically for, with, and in Indigenous-serving schools.
Beyond the Basics: A Detailed Conceptual Framework of Integrated STEM
This paper puts forth a detailed conceptual framework for K-12 integrated STEM education that can be used by researchers, educators, and curriculum developers as a common vision
Preparing Science Teachers Through Practice-Based Teacher Education
This comprehensive volume advances a vision of teacher preparation programs focused on core practices supporting ambitious science instruction. The book advocates for collaborative learning and building a community of teacher educators that can collectively share and refine strategies, tools, and practices.
Argumentation Infographic
Research suggests that if students use viable argumentation in their middle school classes, then they will increase their complex mathematical reasoning and mathematics achievement. This is a 2-page infographic detailing the results from a case study.
LLAMA Year 5 Technical Report
This is a technical report detailing the methods and findings for each of the research studies in the LLAMA project.
Conceptions and Consequences of Mathematical Argumentation, Justification, and Proof
This book aims to advance ongoing debates in the field of mathematics and mathematics education regarding conceptions of argumentation, justification, and proof and the consequences for research and practice when applying particular conceptions of each construct. Through analyses of classroom practice across grade levels using different lenses - particular conceptions of argumentation, justification, and proof - researchers consider the implications of how each conception shapes empirical outcomes. In each section, organized by grade band, authors adopt particular conceptions of argumentation, justification, and proof, and they analyse one data set from each perspective. In addition, each section includes a synthesis chapter from an expert in the field to bring to the fore potential implications, as well as new questions, raised by the analyses. Finally, a culminating section considers the use of each conception across grade bands and data sets.
Domain appropriateness and skepticism in viable argumentation
Several recent studies have focused on helping students understand the limitations of empirical arguments (e.g., Stylianides, G. J. & Stylianides, A. J., 2009, Brown, 2014). One view is that students use empirical argumentation because they hold empirical proof schemes—they are convinced a general claim is true by checking a few cases (Harel & Sowder, 1998). Some researchers have sought to unseat students’ empirical proof schemes by developing students’ skepticism, their uncertainty about the truth of a general claim in the face of confirming (but not exhaustive) evidence (e.g., Brown, 2014; Stylianides, G. J. & Stylianides, A. J., 2009). With sufficient skepticism, students would seek more secure, non-empirical arguments to convince themselves that a general claim is true. We take a different perspective, seeking to develop students’ awareness of domain appropriateness (DA), whether the argument type is appropriate to the domain of the claim. In particular, DA entails understanding that an empirical check of a proper subset of cases in a claim’s domain does not (i) guarantee the claim is true and does not (ii) provide an argument that is acceptable in the mathematical or classroom community, although checking all cases does both (i) and (ii). DA is distinct from skepticism; it is not concerned with students’ confidence about the truth of a general claim. We studied how ten 8th graders developed DA through classroom experiences that were part of a broader project focused on developing viable argumentation.
Eliminating counterexamples: A case study intervention for improving adolescents’ ability to critique direct arguments
Students’ difficulties with argumentation, proving, and the role of counterexamples in proving are well documented. Students in this study experienced an intervention for improving their argumentation and proving practices. The intervention included the eliminating counterexamples (ECE) framework as a means of constructing and critiquing viable arguments for a general claim. This framework involves constructing descriptions of all possible counterexamples to a conditional claim and determining whether or not a direct argument eliminates the possibility of counterexamples. This case study investigates U.S. eighth-grade (age 13) mathematics students’ conceptions about the validity of a direct argument after the students received instruction on the ECE framework. We describe student activities in response to the intervention, and we identify students’ conceptions that are inconsistent with canonical notions of mathematical proving and appear to be barriers to using the ECE framework.
Eliminating counterexamples: An intervention for improving adolescents’ contrapositive reasoning
Students’ difficulties with contrapositive reasoning are well documented. Lack of intuition about contrapositive reasoning and lack of a meta-argument for the logical equivalence between a conditional claim and its contrapositive may contribute to students’ struggles. This case study investigated the effectiveness of the eliminating counterexamples intervention in improving students’ ability to construct, critique, and validate contrapositive arguments in a U.S. eighth-grade mathematics classroom. The intervention involved constructing descriptions of all possible counterexamples to a conditional claim and its contrapositive, comparing the two descriptions, noting that the descriptions are the same barring the order of phrases, and finding a counterexample to show the claim is false or viably arguing that no counterexample exists.
A Framework of Construct-Irrelevant Variance for Contextualized Constructed Response Assessment
Estimating and monitoring the construct-irrelevant variance (CIV) is of significant importance to validity, especially for constructed response assessments with rich contextualized information. To examine CIV in contextualized constructed response assessments, we developed a framework including a model accounting for CIV and a measurement that could differentiate the CIV.
“Well That's How the Kids Feel!”—Epistemic Empathy as a Driver of Responsive Teaching
In this article, the authors present evidence from teachers' reflections that this stability was supported by the teachers' intellectual and emotional experiences as learners. Specifically, they argue that engaging in extended scientific inquiry provided a basis for the teachers having epistemic empathy for their students—their tuning into and appreciating their students' intellectual and emotional experiences in science, which in turn supported teachers' responsiveness in the classroom.
The Quest for Sustainable Futures: Designing Transformative Learning Spaces with Multilingual Black, Brown, and Latinx Young People Through Critical Response-ability
In this paper we argue for the need to design and develop transformative learning ecologies that explicitly position the diverse voices of youth from nondominant communities as central to re-defining and re-envisioning relationally just, pluralistic, and sustainable futures. To this end, we seek to provide examples from participatory design-based learning ecologies to illustrate the centering of middle school youth voices and agencies from multilingual Black, Brown, and Latinx communities through critical response-ability.
Influence of Features of Curriculum Materials on the Planned Curriculum
This study explored the verb clauses and thematic development evident in curriculum materials and in transcripts of teachers planning lessons using the materials.
Promoting Teacher Self-Efficacy for Supporting English Learners in Mathematics: Effects of the Visual Access to Mathematics Professional Development
The Visual Access to Mathematics (VAM) project developed and studied teacher professional development (PD) focused on linguistically-responsive teaching to facilitate ELs’ mathematical problem solving and discourse. This study examines whether VAM PD has a positive impact on teachers’ self-efficacy in supporting ELs in mathematics and how components of the PD may have influenced teacher outcomes.
Prompting Collaborative and Exploratory Discourse: An Epistemic Network Analysis Study
This study used an easy-to-implement prompting intervention in the context of collaborative (pair) programming with upper elementary students to demonstrate the potential of Epistemic Network Analysis to understand the impact of the intervention.
Talk is the Ticket to Teaching Math to English Learners
This article describes one mathematics professional development program designed to support all K-5 students' engagement in productive mathematical discussions, in particular emergent multilingual learners.
Decomposing Practice in Teacher Professional Development: Examining Sequences of Learning Activities
In this paper, authors analyze a PD design, examining its activities and the sequencing of professional learning tasks.
Controlled Implementations: Teaching Practice to Practicing Mathematics Teachers
In this chapter, authors use the Framework for Teaching Practice (Grossman, et al., 2009) as a conceptual tool for analzying the design of professional development.
In the Classrooms of Newly Hired Secondary Science Teachers: The Consequences of Teaching In-field or Out-of-field
Science teachers must sometimes teach outside of their expertise, and this type of teaching assignment is referred to as being out-of-field. Among newly hired teachers, this type of assignment may have a detrimental impact in the development of their instruction. This study explored the classroom instruction of 17 newly hired teachers who were teaching both in-field and out-of-field in the physical sciences during their first three years.
Out-of-Field Teaching in Science
Special issue of the Journal of Science Teacher Education focused on out-of-field teaching in science.
Taking STEM Enrichment Camps Virtual: Strategies & Reflections from Quick Pivot Due to COVID-19
This exploratory study aimed to (1) identify the barriers to moving STEM enrichment programming in a rural environment from in-person to virtual activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) describe key decisions that were made in transitioning to the virtual format along with the rationale behind those decisions, and (3) disseminate best practices that emerged from the inaugural effort.
The Power of Interviewing Students
A teacher uses formative assessment interviews to uncover evidence of students’ understandings and to plan targeted instruction in a mathematics intervention class. Authors present an example of a student interview, a discussion of the benefits and challenges of conducting interviews, and actionable suggestions for implementing them.
The Development of ePCK of Newly Hired In-field and Out-of-field Teachers during their First Three Years of Teaching
This study explored the potential impact of teaching outside of one’s field of expertise. This longitudinal cross-case study examined the development of enacted pedagogical content knowledge (ePCK) among a group of in-field and out-of-field (OOF) physical science teachers during their first 3 years of teaching.
Theory to Practice: Prospective Mathematics Teachers’ Recontextualizing Discourses Surrounding Collective Argumentation
Teacher education programs have a critical role in supporting prospective teachers’ connections between theory and practice. In this study, authors examined three prospective secondary mathematics teachers’ discourses regarding collective argumentation during and after a unit of instruction addressing collective argumentation and ways they recontextualized their on-campus coursework (theory) into their student teaching (practice) as demonstrated by their support for students’ mathematical arguments during student teaching.
Negotiations in Scientific Argumentation: An Interpersonal Analysis
Argumentation enables students to engage in real world scientific practices by rationalizing claims grounded in supporting evidence. Student engagement in scientific argumentation activates the negotiation process by which students develop and defend evidence-based claims. Little is known, however, on the intricate process and potential patterns of negotiation between students during scientific argumentation. The present study seeks to fill this gap by exploring how a group of university science education students negotiated when evaluating the relationship between lines of evidence and alternative explanatory models of a phenomena (i.e., climate change).
Exploring Experienced Designers' Strategies in a CAD Learning Environment
This study explores design strategies used by experienced designers in Energy3D, a computer-aided design (CAD) simulation environment designed for learning settings, to provide insight into supporting students' use of CAD simulation environments in precollege settings.
How Science Teachers DiALoG Classrooms: Towards a Practical and Responsive Formative Assessment of Oral Argumentation
This article presents lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence about classroom argumentation as it happens.
Collaboratively Engineering for Justice in Sixth Grade STEM
In this article, it is argued that processes of co-production can support teachers and students in organizing resources for justice through science learning. Drawing upon a critical justice conceptual framework, critical ethnographic data from one urban middle school classroom during a unit focused on engineering for sustainable communities were analyzed.
Backward Transfer Influences from Quadratic Functions Instruction on Students’ Prior Ways of Covariational Reasoning about Linear Functions
The study reported in this article examined the ways in which new mathematics learning influences students’ prior ways of reasoning. Authors conceptualize this kind of influence as a form of transfer of learning called backward transfer. The focus of the study was on students’ covariational reasoning about linear functions before and after they participated in a multi-lesson instructional unit on quadratic functions.
Cognitive Instructional Principles in Elementary Mathematics Classrooms: A Case of Teaching Inverse Relations
This study examines how three cognitive instructional principles including worked examples, representations, and deep questions are used in eight experienced elementary teachers’ early algebra lessons in the U.S.
Understanding of the Properties of Operations: A Cross-Cultural Analysis
This study examines how sampled Chinese and U.S. third and fourth grade students (NChina=167,NUS=97) understand the commutative, associative, and distributive properties.
Teaching Early Algebra through Example-based Problem Solving: Insights from Chinese and U.S. Elementary Classrooms
Drawing on rich classroom observations of educators teaching in China and the U.S., this book details an innovative and effective approach to teaching algebra at the elementary level, namely, "teaching through example-based problem solving" (TEPS).
“Zooming In” on Robotics during COVID-19: A Preservice Teacher, an Engineering Student, and a 5th Grader Engineer Robotic Flowers via Zoom
An NSF-funded program partnering preservice teachers and undergraduate engineering students to teach robotics to fifth graders was adapted to a virtual format via Zoom. A case study intimately explored one team’s experience as they engineered bio-inspired robots over five weekly sessions.
It’s Virtually Possible: Rethinking Preservice Teachers’ Field Experiences in the Age of COVID-19 and Beyond
This chapter offers lessons learned by teacher educators who guided preservice teachers in the modification of hands-on engineering lessons for virtual implementation during the spring 2020 semester as part of an NSF-funded project.
Competencies and Behaviors Observed When Students Solve Geometry Proof Problems: An Interview Study with Smartpen Technology
This peer-reviewed research journal publication addresses one of the grant goals with respect to how students performed on a set of proof tasks.
Teachers Collaborating in Communities of Mathematics Immersion
The Mathematics Immersion for Secondary Teachers at Scale program engages sets of teachers in local school sites, connected synchronously and asynchronously to colleagues in other sites, in doing mathematics designed to promote experiences of mathematical immersion, community, and connection to the work of teaching. This study of two groups of sites over one year examines fidelity to the program as a model for systematically providing these opportunities, and the extent to which teacher participants experienced immersion, community, and connection in their collaborative work with the course facilitator and their local and distant colleagues.
Networking Frameworks: A Method for Analyzing the Complexities of Classroom Cultures Focusing on Justifying
In this paper, authors network five frameworks (cognitive demand, lesson cohesion, cognitive engagement, collective argumentation, and student contribution) for an analytic approach that allows us to present a more holistic picture of classrooms which engage students in justifying.
Growing Garden-based Learning: Mapping Practical and Theoretical Work through Design
Echoing calls to expand environmental education research through design, this study explores the role of design in garden-based education and illustrate its contributions towards practical impact and theoretical insight.
Developing Transmedia Engineering Curricula Using Cognitive Tools to Impact Learning and the Development of STEM Identity
This paper examines the use of Imaginative Education (IE) to create an NGSS-aligned middle school engineering curriculum that supports transfer and the development of STEM identity.
Integrating a Statistical Topic Model and a Diagnostic Classification Model for Analyzing Items in a Mixed Format Assessment
Selected response items and constructed response (CR) items are often found in the same test. Conventional psychometric models for these two types of items typically focus on using the scores for correctness of the responses. Recent research suggests, however, that more information may be available from the CR items than just scores for correctness. In this study, we describe an approach in which a statistical topic model along with a diagnostic classification model (DCM) was applied to a mixed item format formative test of English and Language Arts.
How Facilitating K–12 Professional Development Shapes Science Faculty's Instructional Change
This qualitative study examines the processes by which science faculty reshape their pedagogical practices through facilitating professional development for K–12 teachers, and how individual characteristics, social interactions, and organizational contexts influence their choices.
Profiles of Middle School Science Teachers: Accounting for Cognitive and Motivational Characteristics
This study takes a person‐centered approach by applying latent profile analysis to examine how cognitive (pedagogical content knowledge) and motivational (instructional goal orientations, self‐efficacy beliefs, and reform values) characteristics combine to form science teacher profiles in middle school.
Justice in Science Education: How to Honor Student Epistemologies While Supporting 3-Dimensional Science Teaching
Conference proceedings from the 2019 Science Education at the Crossroads Conference.
Disciplinary Literacy in STEM: A Functional Approach
This study explores disciplinary literacy instruction integrated within an elementary engineering unit in an urban classroom.
Teaching Science in Rural Elementary Schools: Affordances and Constraints in the Age of NGSS
Providing science instruction is an ongoing priority and challenge in elementary grades, especially in high-need rural schools. Nonetheless, few studies have investigated the factors that facilitate or limit teachers’ science instruction in these settings, particularly since the introduction of the Next Generation Science Standards. In this study we investigated affordances and constraints to elementary science instruction in high-need rural schools.
Teachers' Responses to Instances of Student Mathematical Thinking with Varied Potential to Support Student Learning
This study investigated teachers’ responses to a common set of instances of student mathematical thinking (SMT) with varied potential to support students’ mathematical learning, as well as the productivity of such responses.
Clarifiable Ambiguity in Classroom Mathematics Discourse
Ambiguity is a natural part of communication in a mathematics classroom. In this paper, a particular subset of ambiguity is characterized as clarifiable. Clarifiable ambiguity in classroom mathematics discourse is common, frequently goes unaddressed, and unnecessarily hinders in-the-moment communication because it likely could be made more clear in a relatively straightforward way if it were attended to. We argue for deliberate attention to clarifiable ambiguity as a critical aspect of attending to meaning and as a necessary precursor to productive use of student mathematical thinking.
Articulating the Student Mathematics in Student Contributions
We draw on our experiences researching teachers’ use of student thinking to theoretically unpack the work of attending to student contributions in order to articulate the student mathematics (SM) of those contribution.
Visualizing Chemistry Teachers’ Enacted Assessment Design Practices to Better Understand Barriers to “Best Practices”
In this paper, the relationship between high school chemistry teachers’ self-generated “best practices” for developing formative assessments and the assessments they implement in their courses are examined.
Investigating How Assessment Design Guides High School Chemistry Teachers’ Interpretation of Student Responses to a Planned, Formative Assessment
This study seeks to better understand what teachers notice when interpreting assessment results and how the design of the assessment may influence teachers’ patterns of noticing. The study described herein investigates high school chemistry teachers’ interpretations of student responses to formative assessment items by identifying patterns in what teachers notice.
Investigating High School Chemistry Teachers’ Assessment Item Generation Processes for a Solubility Lab
Designing high school chemistry assessments is a complex and difficult task. Although prior studies about assessment have offered teachers guidelines and standards as support to generate quality assessment items, little is known about how teachers engage these supports or enact their own beliefs into practice while developing assessments. Presented in this paper are the results from analyzing discourse among five high school chemistry teachers during an assessment item generation activity, including assessment items produced throughout the activity
Preparing Paraeducators for the Teacher Pipeline: Building Confidence Through Professional Development in Mathematics
The article describes our project that was designed to provide experiences to support paraeducators' professional growth in a large urban district by building their mathematical knowledge for teaching and leadership. Providing paras with professional learning opportunities can open pathways to teaching positions, giving them the potential to diversify the teaching pool and address teacher shortages.
Think Alouds: Informing Scholarship and Broadening Partnerships through Assessment
Introduction to special issue focusing on think alouds and response process evidence. This work cuts across STEM education scholarship and introduces readers to robust means to engage in think alouds.
Gathering Response Process Data for a Problem-Solving Measure through Whole-Class Think Alouds
This is a description of a new methodological tool to gather response process validity evidence. The context is scholarship within mathematics education contexts.
“Teaching Them How to Fish”: Learning to Learn and Teach Responsively
The Responsive Math Teaching (RMT) project’s 3-year model for professional development introduces teachers to a new instructional model through a full year of monthly Math Circles, where they experience problem solving and productive struggle from the student perspective while working through challenging open-ended tasks, engaging in mathematical discussions, and reflecting on the process. This paper examines teachers’ views of what they learned from this experience and how it affected both their instructional practices and their visions of mathematics teaching and learning.
Effect and Influence of Ambisonic Audio in Viewing 360 Video
Research has provided evidence of the value of producing multiple representationsof content for learners (e.g., verbal, visual, etc.). However, much of the research has acknowledged changes in visual technologies while not recognizing or utilizing related audio innovations. The purpose of this study was to respond to this gap by comparing the outcomes of watching 360 video with either monophonic or ambisonic audio.
Toward a Productive Definition of Technology in Science and STEM Education
This theoretical paper summarizes of technology initiatives across science and STEM education from the past 30 years to present perspectives on the role of technology in science-focused STEM education.
Computational Participation and the Learner‐Technology Pairing in K‐12 STEM Education
This paper explores the theoretical connection between STEM and emergent technologies, with a focus on learner behaviors and the potential of technology-mediated experiences with computational participation (CP) in shaping STEM learning.
Constructing Goals for Student Learning through Conversation
Learning goals differ from performance goals. This article elaborates on their function and importance as the guiding force behind maintaining cognitive rigor during mathematics learning.
Design, Development, and Initial Testing of Asset-Based Intervention Grounded in Trajectories of Student Fraction Learning
One of the most relentless areas of difficulty in mathematics for children with learning disabilities (LDs) and difficulties is fractions. This article reports the development and initial testing of an intervention designed to increase access to and advancement in conceptual understanding.
Development and Pilot Testing of a Three-Dimensional, Phenomenon-based Unit that Integrates Evolution and Heredity
Describes development and pilot testing of a 3-dimensional, phenomenon-based unit that integrates evolution and heredity. The 8-week unit is designed for introductory-level high school biology courses. Results from a national pilot test with 944 grade nine and ten students in 16 teachers' classrooms show statistically significant gains with large effect sizes from pretest to posttest in students' conceptual understanding of evolution and heredity. Students also gained sill in identifying claims, evidence and reasoning in scientific arguments.
Building Argumentation Skills in the Biology Classroom: An Evolution Unit that Develops Students’ Capacity to Construct Arguments from Evidence
Describes a scaffolded claims-evidence-reasoning (CER) argumentation framework that is embedded within a new eight-week, freely available curriculum unit developed by the Genetic Science Learning Center – Evolution: DNA and the Unity.
LEAP: Learning through an Early Algebra Progression
Designed to be integrated with any curriculum, each grade level includes 18-20 one-hour lessons to be conducted throughout the school year. Each LEAP lesson lasts about an hour is designed to fit within a typical daily math instructional period.
What You Find Depends on How You See: Examining Asset and Deficit Perspectives of Preservice Science Teachers’ Knowledge and Learning
This article explores how scholars have framed studies of preservice science teacher (PST) knowledge and learning over the past twelve years.
Prospective K-8 Teachers’ Noticing of Student Justifications and Generalizations in the Context of Analyzing Written Artifacts and Video-Records
This paper contributes to current discussions about supporting prospective teachers (PSTs) in developing skills of noticing students’ mathematical thinking. The results document that without providing any intentional support for PSTs’ noticing skills, PSTs are more deliberate to focus on mathematically significant aspects of student thinking while analyzing written artifacts of student work compared to video-records.
Length Measurement in the Early Years: Teaching and Learning with Learning Trajectories
This study evaluated a portion of our learning trajectory, focusing on the instructional component. We found that the instruction was successful in promoting a progression from one level to the next for 40% of the children, with others developing positive new behaviors (but not sufficient to progress to a new level).
Impacts of Attending an Inclusive STEM High School: Meta-analytImpacts of Attending an Inclusive STEM High School: Meta-analytic Estimates from Five Studiesic Estimates from Five Studies
This study uses a meta-analytic approach to investigate the relationship between attending an inclusive STEM high school and a set of high school outcomes known to predict college entry and declaration of a STEM college major.
On the Alignment of Teachers’ Mathematical Content Knowledge Assessments with the Common Core State Standards
This article provides content maps for two widely used teacher assessment instruments in the USA relative to the widely adopted Common Core State Standards. This common reference enables comparisons of content alignment both between the instruments and between parallel forms within each instrument.
Learning to Lead: An Approach to Mathematics Teacher Leader Development
This paper describes a partnership between a university and an urban school district, formed with a goal of preparing mathematics teacher leaders to conduct professional development (PD) at their schools.
Strengthen Mathematics Intervention to Promote Student Success: Suggestions for middle level principals
This article offers six suggestions for middle school principals to implement or strengthen mathematics intervention classes at their schools, based off the findings of the authors' NSF-funded research.
Data Investigations to Further Social Justice Inside and Outside of STEM
This article focuses on discussion and preliminary findings from classroom testing of the prototype learning module: Investigating Income Inequality in the U.S.
Machine Learning-Enabled Automated Feedback: Supporting Students’ Revision of Scientific Arguments Based on Data Drawn from Simulation
This paper focuses on three simulation-based scientific argumentation tasks called Trap, Aquifer, and Supply. These tasks were part of an online science curriculum module addressing groundwater systems for secondary school students.
Students and Teachers Mobilizing Mathematical Concepts through Reciprocal Noticing
This article elaborates a theoretical, methodological, and analytical approach intended to highlight the materiality and reciprocity of noticing in mathematics classrooms.
Using Authentic Video Clips of Classroom Instruction to Capture Teachers’ Moment-to-Moment Perceiving as Knowledge-Filtered Noticing
This article reports on the development of a novel, video-based measure of teachers’ moment-to-moment noticing as knowledge-filtered perception.
Shifts in Elementary Teachers' Pedagogical Reasoning: Studying Teacher Learning in an Online Graduate Program in Engineering Education
The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine elementary teachers' pedagogical reasoning in an online graduate program. Authors asked: What stances do teachers take toward learning and teaching engineering design? How do these stances shift over the course of the program?
The Role of Instructional Materials in the Relationship Between the Official Curriculum and the Enacted Curriculum
The authors studied how the distal policy mechanisms of curricular aims and objectives articulated in official curriculum documents influenced classroom instruction, and the factors that were associated with the enactment of those curricular aims and objectives.
Development and Validation of a High School STEM Self‐Assessment Inventory
The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a self‐assessment using critical components of successful inclusive STEM high schools for school personnel and educational researchers who wish to better understand their STEM programs and identify areas of strength.
Transferability of Teacher Noticing
This study compared prospective mathematics teachers' (PMTs) noticing while teaching a lesson during their student teaching internship of PMTs who participated in a noticing intervention to those who did not participate in the intervention to determine whether the two groups of PMTs noticed different aspects of instruction.
An Emerging Community in Online Mathematics Teacher Professional Development: An Interactional Perspective
The purpose of this study was to better understand the process by which a community emerges in such a PD setting by examining how the cohesiveness of 21 mathematics teachers’ social network evolves and associated shifts in the quality of mathematics teachers’ mathematical discourse.
Exploring Differences in Practicing Teachers’ Knowledge Use in a Dynamic and Static Proportional Task
This exploratory study investigated 32 teachers’ use of knowledge resources in two mathematically similar tasks (one a paper and pencil task, the other a dynamic task) around proportional reasoning.
Encouraging Collaboration and Building Community in Online Asynchronous Professional Development: Designing for Social Capital
This study explores how a design combining social capital mechanisms with essential teacher learning and PD characteristics supported teachers’ abilities to participate in the online course and collaboratively build knowledge.
Engineering Mindsets and Learning Outcomes in Elementary School
This article describes the general and engineering mindsets of students in fifth‐grade U.S. classrooms (ages 10 and 11) who received engineering instruction. It explores how general mindsets may predict engineering learning outcomes and how engineering mindsets may be predicted by general mindset and other variables.
Design Considerations in Multisite Randomized Trials Probing Moderated Treatment Effects Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics
The purpose of this study is to develop a statistical framework and tools for the effective and efficient design of multisite randomized trials (MRTs) probing moderated treatment effects.
Teacher Noticing and Reasoning about Student Thinking in Classrooms as a Result of Participating in a Combined Professional Development Intervention
This article examines the teacher learning that results from participating in a two-year professional development intervention that combined lesson study, video clubs, and animation discussions.
Characterizing Science Classroom Discourse Across Scales
This Research in Science Education article focuses on characterizing classroom discourse in science.
The Role of Balance Scales in Supporting Productive Thinking about Equations Among Diverse Learners
This research focuses on ways in which balance scales mediate students’ relational understandings of the equal sign.
Teachers’ Abilities to Make Sense of Variable Parts Reasoning
The purpose of this study was to investigate how teachers understand one specific aspect of proportional reasoning - the extent to which practicing teachers were able to make sense of reasoning that involved the fixed number of variable-sized parts perspective.
Different Ways to Implement Innovative Teaching Approaches at Scale
This article discusses the implementation of innovative teaching approaches in mathematics.
Efficacy of a First-Grade Mathematics Intervention on Measurement and Data Analysis
This study investigated the efficacy of the Precision Mathematics Level 1 (PM-L1) intervention, a Tier 2 print- and technology-based mathematics intervention designed to increase first-grade students’ conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills around the areas of measurement and data analysis.
Applying the Curriculum Research Framework in the Design and Development of a Technology-Based Tier 2 Mathematics Intervention
The production of the first-grade Precision Mathematics intervention was grounded in the Curriculum Research Framework (CRF), which involves a series of iterative cycles of development, implementation field-testing, analysis, and revision. Results from initial implementation studies suggest that teachers and students can feasibly implement the first-grade Precision Mathematics intervention in authentic education settings. Challenges faced in developing technology-based mathematics interventions are discussed.
Engaging Students with Non-routine Geometry Proof Tasks
Students who earned high marks during the proof semester of a geometry course were interviewed to understand what high-achieving students actually took away from the treatment of proof in geometry. The findings suggest that students had turned proving into a rote task, whereby they expected to mark a diagram and prove two triangles congruent.
Describing Curricular Materials for Mathematics Teacher Education in an Online, Rich Media Platform
This chapter explores a way of describing the teacher education curricular materials being developed by mathematics teacher educators through their interaction with the LessonSketch online platform.
The Price of Nice: How Good Intentions Maintain Educational Inequity
In The Price of Nice, an interdisciplinary group of scholars explores Niceness in educational spaces from elementary schools through higher education to highlight how this seemingly benign quality reinforces structural inequalities.
The Anthropology of Educational Policy: Ethnographic Inquiries into Policy as Sociocultural Practice
This book provides a single "go to" source on the disciplinary history, theoretical framework, methodology, and empirical applications of the anthropology of education policy across a range of education topics, policy debates, and settings.
“You are Never too Little to Understand Your Culture”: Strengthening Early Childhood Teachers through the Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators
This article describes one effort to strengthen early childhood teaching in schools on the Navajo Nation that centers the work of two teachers within a program attempting to support teachers in the development of academically rigorous, culturally responsive curriculum across the Navajo Nation.
Making Critical Thinking Visible for Student Analysis and Reflection: Using Structured Documentation to Enhance Effective Reasoning and Communication
This Science Scope article discusses how to foster critical-thinking skills in middle school science.
Does Early Algebra Matter? The Effectiveness of an Early Algebra Intervention in Grades 3 to 5
A cluster randomized trial design was used to examine the effectiveness of a Grades 3 to 5 early algebra intervention with a diverse student population.
The Joys of Teaching Ecology in K–12 and Informal Settings
This article describes opportunities for primary and secondary ecology education in formal and informal settings.
Improving Ecological Education through a Four‐Dimensional Framework
This article describes the 4‐Dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) framework. Developed by a task force of ESA members who solicited input from a variety of groups, the framework takes a fresh and innovative approach toward the teaching of ecology.
Designing in Context: Reaching Beyond Usability in Learning Analytics Dashboard Design
In this paper, authors present a design narrative of our experience developing dashboards to support middle school mathematics teachers’ pedagogical practices, in a multi-university, multi-school district, improvement science initiative in the United States.
K–12 DREAMS to Teach Program at Morehouse College
This study explores the pathways to K–12 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics instruction among Black/African American males in the Discovery Research Education for African American Men in STEM to Teach (DREAMS to Teach) program at Morehouse College
The Re-Novicing of Elementary Teachers in Science? Grade Level Reassignment and Teacher PCK
In this study, authors examine the consequences of within-school churn for the pedagogical content knowledge of elementary teacher participants in an NSF-funded science PD program.
Insight from DRK-12 CAREER Awardees
This resource contains advice from CAREER awardees in the DRK-12 portfolio about how to develop a competitive proposal and successfully manage a CAREER project based on their experience.
Tiering Instruction for Middle School Students
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.
Exploring Prospective Teachers’ Ability to Generate and Analyze Evidence-based Explanatory Arguments
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.
Restoring Mathematics Identities of Black Learners: A Curricular Approach
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.
Getting a Grip: A Framework for Designing and Adapting Elementary School Science Investigations
This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching.
Mathematics Teaching Has Its Own Imperatives: Mathematical Practice and the Work of Mathematics Instruction
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.
From Science Student to Conceptual Agent: Examining the Individual Shifts in Engagement During Scaffolded Instruction
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
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.
Teacher Voices from an Online Elementary Mathematics Community: Examining Perceptions of Professional Learning
This study compares web usage data with interviews from 41 participants, who are members of an online professional development site called the Everyday Mathematics Virtual Learning Community (VLC), to explore how elementary school teachers learn from classroom video.
WorldWide Telescope in Education
This chapter describes curricula that use WorldWide Telescope in teaching key topics in Astro 101 and K–12 science, including parallax, Hubble’s Law and large-scale structure in the universe, seasons, Moon phases and eclipses, and life in the universe.
Rethinking the Classroom Science Investigation
In this article, authors propose a framework that centers the investigation as a key locus for constructing alignments among phenomena, data, and explanatory models and makes visible the work that scientists engage in as they develop and stabilize alignments.
The Impact of High School Life Science Teachers’ Subject Matter Knowledge and Knowledge of Student Misconceptions on Students’ Learning
This article investigates whether teachers’ subject matter knowledge (SMK) and knowledge of students’ misconceptions (KOSM) in high school life science are associated with students’ posttest performance on multiple-choice test items designed to reveal student misconceptions.
Initiation-Entry-Focus-Exit and Participation: A Framework for Understanding Teacher Groupwork Monitoring Routines
In this paper, authors offer a framework for teacher monitoring routines—a consequential yet understudied aspect of instruction when teachers oversee students’ working together.
Teaching Practices for Differentiating Mathematics Instruction for Middle School Students
This study is a case of using second-order models of students’ mathematical thinking to differentiate instruction, and it reveals that inquiring into research-based knowledge and inquiring responsively into students’ thinking are at the heart of differentiating mathematics instruction.
Thinking Beyond the Score: Multidimensional Analysis of Student Performance to Inform the Next Generation of Science Assessments
Informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics and Latent Dirichlet Allocation analyses, this study utilizes an innovative bilingual (Spanish–English) constructed response assessment of science and language practices for middle and high school students to perform a multilayered analysis of student responses.
Next Generation Sheltered Instruction to Support English Learners in Secondary Science Classrooms
Using findings from a 4‐year research and development effort, we propose an updated model of sheltered instruction for science classrooms that leverages the opportunities provided by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to better support multilingual learners in middle and high school science.
Designing Robotics-based Science Lessons Aligned with the Three Dimensions of NGSS-plus-5E Model: A Content Analysis
In this study, analyzing lesson plans using the rubrics provided opportunities for suggestions and feedback for improvement to developers and it informs the development of new lessons by the project team.
Use of a Design Canvas in a Robotics Workshop and Analysis of its Efficacy
This paper describes how the design canvas of Kline et al. was adopted and implemented in our workshop and investigates its benefits.
Analyzing Successful Teaching Practices in Middle School Science and Math Classrooms when using Robotics
This paper analyzes teaching practices that successfully integrate robotics in middle school science and math classrooms.
Designing NGSS-Aligned Lesson Plans During a Teacher Professional Development Program
This paper describes a program to engage teachers to learn about mechatronics, robotics, and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) through hands-on activities and collaborative research.
Middle School Teacher Professional Development in Creating a NGSS-plus-5E Robotics Curriculum
This paper will describe the process and result of developing a LEGO robotics, NGSS, and 5E aligned middle school curriculum during a three-week summer PD program for teachers who teach urban students-of-color.
Investigating Classroom-related Factors that Influence Student Perceptions of LEGO Robots as Educational Tools in Middle Schools
This paper investigates classroom-related factors such as pedagogical strategies and management of robotics-based educational content that contribute to the formation of student perceptions in robotics-enhanced classes.
Critical Science Agency and Power Hierarchies: Restructuring Power within Groups to Address Injustice Beyond Them
Drawing upon a social practice theory analytical lens with a focus on power and using critical participatory ethnography methods, this study investigated the ways middle school students restructured power hierarchies as they worked to complete the design challenge of making their classroom community more sustainable, and how power hierarchy restructuring impacted students' opportunities to enact critical science agency (CSA).
Revisiting Purpose and Conceptualisation in the Design of Assessments of Mathematics Teachers’ Knowledge
In this paper, authors focus on the design of assessments of mathematics teachers’ knowledge by emphasising the importance of identifying the purpose for the assessment, defining the specific construct to be measured, and considering the affordances of particular psychometric models on the development of assessments as well as how they are able to communicate learning or understanding.
Experimental Impacts of the Ongoing Assessment Project on Teachers and Students
In this report, authors describe the results of a rigorous two-year study of the impacts of a mathematics initiative called Ongoing Assessment Project (OGAP) on teacher and student learning in grades 3-5 in two Philadelphia area school districts.
Pathways for Analyzing and Responding to Student Work for Formative Assessment: The Role of Teachers’ Goals for Student Learning
This study explored how teachers interpreted and responded to their own student work during the process of formative assessment.
Synchronous Online Model for Mathematics Teachers' Professional Development
In this chapter, the authors present the design rationale for and empirical results from a predominantly synchronous three-part online model for the professional development of mathematics teachers in rural contexts.
Bridging the Distance: One-on-One Video Coaching Supports Rural Teachers
This article describes online video coaching model used with middle-grades, rural mathematics teachers.
Coordinating between Graphs and Science Concepts: Density and Buoyancy
Authors investigate ways to support students in integrating their understanding of density concepts through a graph that is linked to a simulation depicting the relationship between mass, volume, and density.
Impact of Graph Technologies in K-12 Science and Mathematics Education
In this article, authors use meta-analysis to analyze 42 design and comparison studies involving data from 7699 students spanning over 35 years.
Revealing Teacher Knowledge through Making: A Case Study of Two Prospective Mathematics Teachers
We describe an experience within mathematics teacher preparation that engages pre-service teachers of mathematics (PMTs) in Making and design practices that we hypothesized would inform their conceptual, curricular, and pedagogical thinking.
Families’ Capacity to Engage in Science Inquiry at Home Through Structured Activities
The purpose of this study was to describe how families utilize science activity packs at home.
Maximizing the Quality of Learning Opportunities for Every Student
In this editorial, authors discuss the first of the five overarching problems: defining and measuring learning opportunities precisely enough to study how to maximize the quality of the opportunities experienced by every student.
Addressing the Problem of Always Starting Over: Identifying, Valuing, and Sharing Professional Knowledge for Teaching
Authors discuss the possibilities of retaining and sharing professional knowledge as a way of addressing the problem of always starting over.
Teachers’ Orientations toward Using Student Mathematical Thinking as a Resource during Whole-Class Discussion
The purpose of this study is to characterize teachers’ orientations toward using student mathematical thinking as a resource during whole-class instruction.
Chemistry Critical Friendships: Investigating Chemistry-Specific Discourse within a Domain-General Discussion of Best Practices for Inquiry Assessments
Presented in this paper are the results from analyzing a discussion between five high school chemistry teachers as they generated a set of best practices for inquiry assessments.
Analysis of the e-TEN Calibration Data
The present report summarizes the analyses of the calibration data for the electronic Test of Early Numeracy (e-TEN), an adaptive, iPad-based test of early numeracy achievement.
Pre-service Teachers’ Conceptions of Mathematical Argumentation
Drawing on a situated perspective on learning, authors analyzed written, open-ended journals of 52 pre-service teachers (PSTs) concurrently enrolled in mathematics and pedagogy with field experience courses for elementary education majors.
Fostering Video Sharing and Discourse Among STEM Educational Researchers in a Multimodal Environment
This article looks at the 2017 STEM for All Video Showcase, a multimodal environment, that enabled educational researchers to share and discuss short videos depicting their federally-funded work to improve STEM education. In a mixed methods study, authors investigate the forms of participation that took place and the benefits that accrued to those who presented.
From the Inside Out: Teacher Responses to the AP Curriculum Redesign
From 2012–2015, Advanced Placement (AP) science courses underwent a large-scale curricular reform to include more scientific inquiry and reasoning, reduce emphasis on broad content coverage, and focus on depth of understanding, with corresponding changes in high-stakes AP examinations. In this study, authors explore how teachers prepared for and adapted to this reform over a three-year period.
Productive Thinking and Science Learning in Design Teams
In this study, authors examined middle-school students’ naturally occurring design conversations in small design teams and their learning of science as a result of engaging in an engineering and science unit.
Characterizing the Formative Assessment Enactment of Experienced Science Teachers
In this article, authors examined classroom videos of nine experienced teachers of elementary, middle, and high school science, aiming to create a model of FA enactment that is useful to teachers.
Helping K-12 Teachers Get Unstuck with Scratch: The Design of an Online Professional Learning Experience
In this paper, authors describe the design and implementation of Getting Unstuck, a 21-day, email-based learning experience for K-12 teachers interested in developing greater familiarity and fluency with Scratch.
Longitudinal Investigation of Primary Inservice Teachers’ Modelling the Hydrological Phenomena
This manuscript focuses on longitudinal research with four primary inservice teachers’ learning and engagement in model-based teaching about water over three years, investigating teachers conceptualizations and practice modelling water related phenomena over time. Findings from the study indicate while each teacher had individual trajectories in conceptualising and enacting scientific modelling in the classroom, we observed unique approaches within teachers.
Making Mathematical Thinking Visible
This article describes how diagrams can be a powerful tool to develop and communicate mathematical understanding for English language learners.
Developing Student 21st Century Skills in Selected Exemplary Inclusive STEM High Schools
This conversion mixed method study analyzed student work samples and teacher lesson plans from seven exemplary inclusive STEM high schools to better understand at what level teachers at these schools are engaging and developing student 21st Century skills.
Supporting the Scientific Practices through Epistemologically Responsive Science Teaching
In this article, authors explore a variety of types of responsive teaching and elaborate a specific type of responsive teaching—epistemologically responsive science teaching.
Eliminating Counterexamples: A Case Study Intervention for Improving Adolescents’ Ability to Critique Direct Arguments
This case study investigates U.S. eighth-grade (age 13) mathematics students’ conceptions about the validity of a direct argument after the students received instruction on the eliminating counterexamples (ECE) framework.
Empowering Students with Specific Learning Disabilities: Jim’s Concept of Unit Fraction
This paper investigates how one elementary school child with specific visual motor integration differences constructed a unit fraction concept.
In-Game Actions to Promote Game-Based Math Learning Engagement
This mixed-method study was designed to examine whether middle school students’ in-game actions are likely to promote certain types of learning engagement (i.e., content and cognitive engagement).
Profiling Self-Regulation Behaviors in STEM Learning of Engineering Design
This study analyzes the engineering design behaviors of 108 ninth-grade U.S. students using principal component analysis and cluster analysis.
The Effect of Automated Feedback on Revision Behavior and Learning Gains in Formative Assessment of Scientific Argument Writing
This study investigates a formative feedback system integrated into an online science curriculum module teaching climate change.
The Impact of Engineering Curriculum Design Principles on Elementary Students’ Engineering and Science Learning
This article reports an efficacy study of an elementary engineering curriculum, Engineering is Elementary, that includes a set of hypothesized critical components designed to encourage student engagement in practices, connect engineering and science learning, and reach diverse students.
Complementary Assessments of Prospective Teachers’ Skill with Eliciting Student Thinking
This article reports on how three prospective teachers had differing opportunities to demonstrate their skills in the context of the field assessment, but similar opportunities in the context of the simulation assessment.
How Place-based Science Education Strategies can Support Equity for Students, Teachers, and Communities
This brief describes how to support equity for students, teachers, and communities through place-based science education strategies.
Hurricane with a History: Hawaiian Newspapers Illuminate an 1871 Storm
In this article, authors explain how 114 years of Hawaiian-language newspapers starting in 1834 extend our knowledge of natural disasters into the nineteenth century and to precontact times.
The Role of Teacher Framing in Producing Coherent NGSS-Aligned Teaching
In this Journal of Science Teacher Education article, Jarod Kawasaki and William Sandoval report on one teachers’ efforts to re-design an entire instructional unit as a coherent storyline about forces and motion as a part of a multiyear professional development project around the NGSS.
“This is Really Frying My Brain!”: How Affect Supports Inquiry in an Online Learning Environment
This article discusses supporting inquiry in an online learning environment.
Toward a theoretical structure to characterize early probabilistic thinking
The purpose of this report is to sketch a tentative theoretical structure with the potential to anchor curricular decisions and inform further research on early probability learning.
Gina’s mathematics: Thinking, tricks, or “teaching”?
This paper discusses the extent to which one case study elementary school child with identified learning disabilities (LDs) made sense of composite units and unit fractions.
Epistemological framing and novice elementary teachers' approaches to learning and teaching engineering design
In this article, authors present a comparative case study examining the epistemological framing dynamics of two novice urban teachers and argue that the stances that novice teachers adopt toward engineering learning and knowledge are consequential for the opportunities they create for students.
Qualitative graphing in an authentic inquiry context: How construction and critique help middle school students to reason about cancer
This study offers a critical exploration of how to design instruction that simultaneously supports students' science and graph understanding within complex inquiry contexts.
Understanding Science and Language Connections: New Approaches to Assessment with Bilingual Learners
Authors report on the use of bilingual constructed response science assessments in the context of a research and development partnership with secondary school science teachers.
Validating a Model for Assessing Science Teacher’s Adaptive Expertise with Computer-Supported Complex Systems Curricula and Its Relationship to Student Learning Outcomes
In this study, the authors propose and validate a model of adaptive expertise needed for teachers to successfully deliver NGSS-informed computer-supported complex systems curricula in high school science classrooms.
Mathematical content knowledge and knowledge for teaching: exploring their distinguishability and contribution to student learning
In this replication and extension study, we explore these issues, drawing on evidence from a multi-year study of over 200 fourth- and fifth-grade US teachers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of these data suggested a single dimension for teacher knowledge.
Growth in children’s understanding of generalizing and representing mathematical structure and relationships
Authors share results from a quasi-experimental study that examines growth in students’ algebraic thinking practices of generalizing and representing generalizations, particularly with variable notation, as a result of an early algebra instructional sequence implemented across grades 3–5.
Children’s Integer Understanding and the Effects of Linear Board Games: A Look at Two Measures
The purpose of this study was to identify affordances and limitations of using order and value comparison tasks versus number placement tasks to infer students’ negative integer understanding and growth in understanding.
Coordinating between Graphs and Science Concepts: Density and Buoyancy
Authors investigate ways to support students in integrating their understanding of density concepts through a graph that is linked to a simulation depicting the relationship between mass, volume, and density.
Non-visual Perception of Lines on a Multimodal Touchscreen Tablet
In this article, authors demonstrate that line following via multimodal feedback is possible on touchscreens and present guidelines for the presentation of such non-visual graphical concepts.
Simulations as a Tool for Practicing Questioning
Authors discuss some of the affordances and constraints of using online teaching simulations to support reflection on specific pedagogical actions.
Guiding collaborative revision of science explanations
This paper illustrates how the combination of teacher and computer guidance can strengthen collaborative revision and identifies opportunities for teacher guidance in a computer-supported collaborative learning environment.
Scaling up innovative learning in mathematics: exploring the effect of different professional development approaches on teacher knowledge, beliefs, and instructional practice
The purpose of the current study was to explore different ways for teachers to engage in Professional learning experiences (PLEs) and how these approaches might enable the field to scale up these efforts in a sustainable manner.
Patterns Linking Interpreting and Deciding How to Respond During the Launch of a Lesson: Noticing from an Integrated Perspective
Authors describe a complementary way of studying the connections between different aspects of noticing, one that stresses the content of teachers noticing. They report on a study in which participants were shown depictions of students reacting to the launch of a complex task. Participants then chose among a variety of possible interpretations and teacher responses.
Instruments to Measure Elementary Student Mindsets about Smartness and Failure in General and with respect to Engineering
The aim of this study was to assess evidence for the validity of General Mindset (GM) and Engineering Mindset (EM) surveys that we developed for fifth-grade students (ages 10-11).
How to support secondary school students’ consideration of uncertainty in scientific argument writing: A case study of a High-Adventure Science curriculum module
In this article, authors discuss an online Earth science curriculum module called, “Will there be enough fresh water?” designed to engage students in thinking about uncertainty as part of writing scientific arguments.
Framing, Adapting, and Applying: Learning to Contextualize Science Activity in Multilingual Science Classrooms
This article looks at context-based approaches to science instruction. Authors studied the effects of changes to a set of secondary science teacher education programs, all of which were redesigned with attention to the Secondary Science Teaching with English Language and Literacy Acquisition (SSTELLA) instructional framework, a framework for responsive and contextualized instruction in multilingual science classrooms.
Clarifiable Ambiguity in Classroom Mathematics Discourse
In this article, authors argue for deliberate attention to clarifiable ambiguity as a critical aspect of attending to meaning and as a necessary precursor to productive use of student mathematical thinking.
Aligning Test Scoring Procedures with Test Uses: A Balancing Act
Test scoring procedures should align with the intended uses and interpretations of test results. In this paper, we examine three test scoring procedures for an operational assessment of early numeracy, the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA). Current test specifications call for subscores to be reported for each of the eight subtests on the EGMA. This test scoring procedures has been criticized as being difficult for stakeholders to use and interpret, thereby impacting the overall usefulness of the EGMA for informing decisions. We examine the psychometric properties including the reliability and distinctiveness of the results and usefulness of reporting test scores as (1) total scores, (2) subscores, and (3) composite scores. These test scoring procedures are compared using data from an actual administration of the EGMA. Conclusions and recommendations for test scoring procedures are made. Generalizations to other testing programs are proposed.
Curriculum and Instruction at Exemplar Inclusive STEM High Schools
In recent years, prominent organizations have released large-scale policy reports on the state of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in the United States, with particular emphasis on curricula and instructional practices. The purpose of this paper was to examine the curriculum and instruction occurring at high performing STEM-focused high schools that have no academic conditions for student admission. This study conducted a cross-case analysis across eight case studies of contextually different but well-regarded inclusive STEM high school. Common themes that emerged included different hierarchical levels of design and implementation (classroom-level, cross-cutting school level, school-wide) as well as responsive design of curriculum and instruction. Unique contextual differences are discussed as well as implications for replication of inclusive STEM school design.
The Impact of Multimedia Educative Curriculum Materials (MECMs) on Teachers' Beliefs about Scientific Argumentation
Authors discuss how teachers used MECMs and whether that use impacted their beliefs about the practice of scientific argumentation.
Integrating a Space for Teacher Interaction into an Educative Curriculum: Design Principles and Teachers' Use of the iPlan Tool
Authors describe the design principles of iPlan, a web-based tool provides access to educative curriculum materials in an online interactive learning platform, and discuss implications for designing educative and online systems for teacher learning.
How Viewers Orient Toward Student Dialogue in Online Math Videos
Authors describe an alternative model of online math videos that feature unscripted dialogue of secondary school students, who convey sources of confusion and resolve the dilemmas that arise during problem solving.
Characterizing the Interplay of Cognitive and Metacognitive Knowledge in Computational Modeling and Simulation Practices
Authors discuss student dimensions of expertise when engaged in modeling and simulation practices and describe how students used their cognitive and metacognitive knowledge to approach a computational challenge.
Exploring Students’ Experimentation Strategies in Engineering Design Using an Educational CAD Tool
The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ experimentation strategies while they work on a design challenge.
The Role of Simulation-Enabled Design Learning Experiences on Middle School Students’ Self-generated Inherence Heuristics
This article describes the effect of simulation-enabled Learning by Design learning experiences on student-generated heuristics that can lead to solutions to problems.
The Impacts of a Research-Based Model for Mentoring Elementary Preservice Teachers in Science
This article focuses on the impacts of a program designed to prepare elementary classroom teachers to mentor preservice teachers for effective science instruction.
Mentoring the Mentors: Hybridizing Professional Development to Support Cooperating Teachers’ Mentoring Practice in Science
This article describes key features of a hybrid professional development (PD) program that was designed to prepare elementary classroom teachers to mentor preservice teachers for effective science instruction.
What Can We Learn from Correct Answers?
This article describes how research-based learning progressions can be used to enhance the analysis and response to student work.
Theorizing Reciprocal Noticing with Non-dominant Students in Mathematics
In this paper, the author theorizes reciprocal noticing as a relational practice through which teachers and students exchange roles as knowers by reciprocating each other’s noticing as they study mathematics concepts.
What They Learn When They Learn Coding: Investigating Cognitive Domains and Computer Programming Knowledge in Young Children
This study investigated N = 57 Kindergarten through second grade children’s performance on a programming assessment after engaging in a 6-week curricular intervention called ScratchJr.
Impact of Model‐based Science Curriculum and Instruction on Elementary Students' Explanations for the Hydrosphere
Scientific modeling affords opportunities for students to develop representations, make their ideas visible, and generate model‐based explanations for complex natural systems like the water cycle. This study describes a comprehensive evaluation of a 5‐year, design‐based research project focused on the development, implementation, revision, and testing of an enhanced, model‐centered version of the Full Option Science System (FOSS) Water (2005) unit in third grade classrooms.
The Soda Can Crusher Challenge
In this article, authors describe how we engaged grade 3–5 students in an engineering design activity supported with relevant reading, writing, and talking tasks embedded within the engineering design activity.
The Differential Impact of Two Engineering Professional Development Programs on Elementary Teachers’ Engineering Teaching Efficacy Beliefs
The purpose of this study is to explore to what extent supporting elementary teachers’ PCK about teaching engineering would improve their beliefs that students’ engineering learning can be influenced by effective engineering instruction.
Engineering for sustainable communities: Epistemic tools in support of equitable and consequential middle school engineering
This study is focused on engineering for sustainable communities (EfSC) in three middle school classrooms.
Designing for Rightful Presence in STEM: The Role of Making Present Practices
In this article, it is argued that the construct of rightful presence, and the coconstructed “making present” practices that give rise to moments of rightful presence, is 1 way to consider how to make sense of the historicized and relational nature of consequential learning.
Automated text scoring and real‐time adjustable feedback: Supporting revision of scientific arguments involving uncertainty
This paper describes HASbot, an automated text scoring and real‐time feedback system designed to support student revision of scientific arguments.
Addressing Misconceptions in Secondary Geometry Proof
Use these ideas to diagnose and address common conceptual obstacles that inhibit students’ success.
What Matters for Urban Adolescents’ Engagement and Disengagement in School: A Mixed-Methods Study
This study uses a mixed-method sequential exploratory design to examine influences on urban adolescents’ engagement and disengagement in school.
Student learning emotions in middle school mathematics classrooms: investigating associations with dialogic instructional practices
Authors examine how dialogic instruction, a socially dynamic form of instruction, was associated with four learning emotions in mathematics: enjoyment, pride, anger, and boredom.
Does student-centered instruction engage students differently? The moderation effect of student ethnicity
This study examined the relationship between student-centered mathematics instruction and adolescents’ behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social engagement in mathematics and whether the relationship differed by ethnicity.
Beyond Classroom Academics: A School-Wide and Multi-Contextual Perspective on Student Engagement in School
A school-wide and multi-contextual perspective on student engagement in school.
Examining physics identity development through two high school interventions
Using structural equation modeling, the researchers test a path model of various physics identity constructs, extending an earlier, established model. In this paper, they also compare a preliminary structural analysis of students' physics identities before and after the career lesson, with an eye towards understanding how students' identities develop over time and due to these experiences.
What does it mean to notice my students’ ideas in science today?: An investigation of elementary teachers’ practice of noticing their students’ thinking in science
An investigation of elementary teachers’ noticing of students’ ideas and their thinking surrounding their noticing practice.
The Computational Algorithmic Thinking (CAT) Capability Flow: An Approach to Articulating CAT Capabilities over Time in African-American Middle-school Girls
This paper explores the CAT Capability Flow, which begins to describe the processes and sub-skills and capabilities involve in computational algorithmic thinking (CAT). To do this, authors engage in an approach which results in an initial flowchart that depicts the processes students are engaging in as an iteratively-refined articulation of the steps involved in computational algorithmic thinking.
#BlackGirlMagic: The identity conceptualizationof Black women in undergraduate STEM education
In this study, authors use Phenomenological Variant Ecological Systems Theory as a strengths‐based approach to investigate 10 undergraduate Black women’s perceptions of race and gender on their STEM identity development and engagement.
Race to the Top and Lesson Study Implementation in Florida: District Policy and Leadership for Teacher Professional Development
Based on a mixed methods study of a statewide survey and interviews of district professional development directors, we found that district requirement of lesson study, funding provision, and future sustainability plan were significantly and positively associated with a broader implementation of lesson study within the district. Implications for educational leaders at local educational agencies are discussed.
Lesson Study Design Features for Supporting Collaborative Teacher Learning
Based on a teacher survey of lesson study, this study found that facilitators’ focus on student thinking, the quality of materials, and duration of lesson study were significantly associated with teacher participation in an effective inquiry process, which in turn is associated with perceived positive changes in teacher knowledge, self-efficacy, and expectation.
Integrating STEM into Preschool Education: Designing a Professional Development Model in Diverse Settings
In this article, the authors outline the main components and the iterative design process we undertook to ensure that the professional supports are relevant and effective for teachers and children.
Opportunities to Participate (OtP) in Science: Examining Differences Longitudinally and Across Socioeconomically Diverse Schools
The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a survey of opportunities to participate (OtP) in science that will allow educators and researchers to closely approximate the types of learning opportunities students have in science classrooms.
Personal and Canonical PCK: A Synergistic Relationship?
Features approaches for leveraging PCK research in STEM learning across formal and informal settings.
Climate Literacy: Insights from Research on K-16 Climate Education
Authors discuss insights from research on K-16 climate education.
Thinking Scientifically in a Changing World
Shifting people’s judgments toward the scientific involves teaching them to purposefully evaluate connections between evidence and alternative explanations.
Scaffolding Scientific Thinking: Students’ Evaluations and Judgments During Earth Science Knowledge Construction
The present paper documents a quasi-experimental study where high school Earth science students completed these instructional scaffolds, including an explanation task scored for evaluative levels (erroneous, descriptive, relational, and critical), along with measures of plausibility reappraisal and knowledge.
Validation: A Burgeoning Methodology for Mathematics Education Scholarship
The goal for this proceeding is to foster the conversation about validation using examples and to communicate information about validation in ways that are broadly accessible.
Content validity evidence for new problem-solving measures (PSM3, PSM4, and PSM5)
The study’s purpose is to describe content validity evidence related to new problem-solving measures currently under development.
Teaching of the associative property: A natural classroom investigation
In this study we investigate the teaching of the associative property in a natural classroom setting through observation of classroom video of several elementary math classes in a large urban school district.
Transitioning from textbook to classroom instruction in mathematics: The case of an expert Chinese teacher
This study reports how an expert Chinese teacher implements mathematics textbook lessons in enacted instruction.
Modeling with tape diagrams
This article describes a tool to build, ensure, and solidify students’ understanding of quantitative relationships.
Transferring specialized content knowledge to elementary classrooms: Preservice teachers’ learning to teach the associative property
This study explores how preservice teachers (PSTs) transfer the intended specialized content knowledge (SCK) to elementary classrooms.
Most and Least: Differences in Integer Comparisons Based on Temperature Comparison Language
This article explores how students’ integer value comparisons differed based on question phrasing (which temperature is hottest, most hot, least hot, coldest, most cold, least cold) and on numbers presented (positive, negative, mixed) within the context of temperature.
Teachers' framing of argumentation goals: Working together to develop individual versus communal understanding
This study explores how teachers describe, or frame, expectations for classroom discussions pertaining to the science practice of argumentation. Authors use the theoretical lens of a participation framework to examine how teachers emphasize particular actions and goals for their students' argumentation.
Dynamics of Scientific Engagement in a Blended Online Learning Environment
Authors investigate in-service teachers’ scientific engagement in a blended online science inquiry course. A key implication of this study is the importance of instructional attention to epistemology and affect to create online learning environments that promote productive framings of scientific inquiry.
Developing a Three-Dimensional View of Science Teaching: A Tool to Support Preservice Teacher Discourse
This study utilized the methodology of Improvement Science “Plan, Do Study, Act” cycles in order to design a Three-Dimensional Mapping Tool (3D Map) as a visual scaffold for use in science teaching methods courses to support preservice teachers in unpacking the components of NGSS and to promote discourse related to the three-dimensionality of planning instruction.
Teachers’ orientations toward using student mathematical thinking as a resource during whole-class discussion
The purpose of this study is to characterize teachers’ orientations toward using student mathematical thinking as a resource during whole-class instruction.
A framework for characterizing students’ cognitive processes related to informal best fit lines
Using existing literature, authors create a hypothetical framework of cognitive processes associated with studying informal best fit lines and refine the framework using data from a cycle of design-based research about building students’ understanding of covariation.
Teaching About Energy
In this article, we draw upon the Conceptual Profile Theory to discuss the negotiation of meanings related to the energy concept in an 11th grade physics classroom.
Measuring Pedagogy and the Integration of Engineering Design in STEM Classrooms
The present study examined changes in high school biology and technology education pedagogy during the first year of a three-year professional development (PD) program using the INSPIRES educative curriculum.
Project Accelerate: Bringing AP® Physics 1 to Underserved Students
Project Accelerate is a partnership program between Boston University (BU) and the nation’s high schools combining the supportive infrastructures from the students’ traditional school with a highly interactive private edX online instructional tool to bring a College Board accredited AP Physics 1 course to schools not offering this opportunity. During the 2015-16 academic year, Boston University piloted this model with four Boston Public School (BPS) high schools and three small suburban high schools. During the first year of the pilot, students enrolled in Project Accelerate outperformed their peer groups enrolled in traditional AP Physics 1 classrooms.
Probing the Relevance of Chemical Identity Thinking in Biochemical Contexts
In this study, we examined the relevance of CI in biochemical contexts and first explored the ways in which practicing biochemists consider CI relevant in their work.
Touchscreen-Based Haptic Information Access for Assisting Blind and Visually-Impaired Users: Perceptual Parameters and Design Guidelines
This paper studies key usability parameters governing accurate rendering of haptically-perceivable graphical materials
Comparing Haptic Pattern Matching on Tablets and Phones: Large Screens Are Not Necessarily Better
The current study investigates two questions: (1) Do screen size and grid density impact a user's accuracy on pattern-matching tasks? (2) Do screen size and grid density impact a user's time on task?
Productive Struggle for All: Differentiated Instruction
This article looks at strategies that create access while maintaining the cognitive demand of a mathematics task.
Rehumanizing the Mathematics Education of Students with Disabilities: Critical Perspectives on Research and Practice
This editorial is part of a special issue of Investigations in Mathematics Learning Critical Approaches that was inspired by a Disability in Mathematics Education working group.
Think-Pair-Show-Share to Increase Classroom Discourse
The authors fuse Universal Design for Learning (UDL), differentiation, and talk moves into three key planning and pedagogy considerations.
Pre-service K-8 Teachers’ Professional Noticing and Strategy Evaluation Skills: An Exploratory Study
This study sheds light on three teaching competencies: Pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) professional noticing of student mathematical reasoning and strategies, their ability to assess the validity of student reasoning and strategies, and to select student strategy for class discussion.
Cross-Case Analysis of Engineering Education Experiences in Inclusive STEM-Focused High Schools in the United States
The purpose of this paper is to report results of a systematic cross-case analysis exploring the extent of engineering learning opportunities in five exemplar Inclusive STEM High Schools (ISHSs).
The Impact of Teacher Gender on Girls’ Performance on Programming Tasks in Early Elementary School
The goal of this paper is to examine whether having female robotics teachers positively impacts girls’ performance on programming and robotics tasks.
Fostering high school students’ conceptual understanding and argumentation performance in science through Quality Talk discussions
The purpose of our quasi‐experimental study was to examine the effectiveness of Quality Talk Science, a professional development model and intervention, in fostering changes in teachers’ and students’ discourse practices as well as their conceptual understanding and scientific argumentation. Findings revealed treatment teachers’ and students’ discourse practices better reflected critical‐analytic thinking and argumentation at posttest relative to comparison classrooms.
Promoting Linguistically Diverse Students’ Short-Term and Long-Term Understanding of Chemical Phenomena Using Visualizations
In this study, we examine the short-term and long-term effects of interactive visualizations in improving linguistically diverse eighth-grade students’ understanding of properties of matter and chemical reactions during inquiry instruction.
Using a three‐dimensional thinking graph to support inquiry learning
This study proposes and investigates the effects of a three‐dimensional thinking graph (3DTG) that allows learners to combine in a single image, problem information, subject knowledge (key concepts and their relationships), and the hypothesizing and reasoning process involved in exploring a problem, to support inquiry learning.
Reframing Inclusive Science Instruction to Support Teachers in Promoting Equitable Three-Dimensional Science Classrooms
In this conceptual article, we reframe inclusive science instruction by examining the literature in science and multicultural education and describe five elements to support teachers in realizing inclusive science instruction as a pedagogical shift.
Elementary Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teaching Structure and Properties of Matter
In this study we examined 5th-grade teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for 1 particular core idea: the small particle model (SPM) of matter. We assessed teachers’ initial PCK through a lesson plan task, the Content Representation tool, and interviews and then adapted and tested a scoring rubric to facilitate comparison of teachers’ PCK.
Middle school teachers’ differing perceptions and use of curriculum materials and the common core
Eight middle school mathematics teachers’ perceptions and uses of curriculum materials and the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) were investigated.
Teaching of the associative property: A natural classroom investigation
In this study we investigate the teaching of the associative property in a natural classroom setting through observation of classroom video of several elementary math classes in a large urban school district.
Examining the career paths of doctorates in mathematics education working in institutions of higher education
This article focuses on the career paths in higher education taken by 351 doctoral graduates in mathematics education and provides insight into their career path and their resulting workload.
The complex interplay between examples and proving: Where are we and where should we head?
Our work suggests re-conceptualization of research concerning students’ over reliance on example-based reasoning, moving from a view of such reasoning as a stumbling block to quickly overcome toward a view of such reasoning as a necessary and critical foundation in learning to prove.
Creating Inclusive PreK–12 STEM Learning Environments
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.
Improving the preparation of novice secondary science teachers for English learners: A proof of concept study
This proof of concept study investigated a secondary science teacher preparation intervention in six university programs across Arizona, California, and Texas. Researchers and science method instructors (SMIs) collaboratively restructured respective science method courses to hold fidelity to an interrelated set of instructional practices that attend to science learning as envisioned in a Framework for K–12 Science Education, while also creating contextualized spaces for language and literacy development targeted to English learners (ELs), but also supportive of “mainstream” students.
Towards Meaningful Physics Recognition: What does this recognition actually look like?
This article examines recognition by presenting the case of a physics teacher, Dr. D, and his student, Kristina, to address the question: What are the ways in which a young woman perceives recognition from her teacher?
Teacher’s Toolkit: The Argumentation Toolkit
This column provides how-to strategies and practical advice for the science teacher.
Engineering Encounters: Engineering a Model of the Earth as a Water Filter
This column describes creating a classroom culture for engineering.
Why and how do middle school students exchange ideas during science inquiry?
This study explores how technology can support idea exchanges in ways that value individuals’ prior ideas, and allow students to use these ideas to benefit their own and their peers’ learning.
Supporting English Learners in STEM Subjects
The imperative that all students, including English learners (ELs), achieve high academic standards and have opportunities to participate in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning has become even more urgent and complex given shifts in science and mathematics standards. As a group, these students are underrepresented in STEM fields in college and in the workforce at a time when the demand for workers and professionals in STEM fields is unmet and increasing. However, English learners bring a wealth of resources to STEM learning, including knowledge and interest in STEM-related content that is born out of their experiences in their homes and communities, home languages, variation in discourse practices, and, in some cases, experiences with schooling in other countries.
English Learners in STEM Subjects: Transforming Classrooms, Schools, and Lives examines the research on ELs’ learning, teaching, and assessment in STEM subjects and provides guidance on how to improve learning outcomes in STEM for these students. This report considers the complex social and academic use of language delineated in the new mathematics and science standards, the diversity of the population of ELs, and the integration of English as a second language instruction with core instructional programs in STEM.
The Use of Theory in Research on Broadening Participation in PreK–12 STEM Education: Information and guidance for prospective DRK–12 grantees
This paper seeks to provide a resource for prospective DRK-12 awardees by identifying some of the theories that current and recent DRK-12 awardees are using in their research on broadening participation.
Considerations for STEM Education from PreK through Grade 3
This brief draws on research supported by the National Science Foundation to highlight important considerations for educators and others who design and provide STEM educational experiences for young children.
“Just put it together to make no commotion:” Re-imagining Urban Elementary Students’ Participation in Engineering Design Practices
In the growing field of K-12 engineering education, there is limited research that highlights the experiences of youth from historically marginalized communities within engineering learning environments. This study offers insights into the ways in which two groups of elementary school students constructed approaches for participating in the engineering design practice of collaborative reflective decision-making. Findings suggest that students conceptualized urban, engineering learning environments as spaces for risk management. This notion of managing risks informed their participation in collaborative decision-making, and the ways in which they viewed themselves as doers of engineering. Implications for this study include the continued need for the development of methodologies and frameworks that provide opportunities to uncover these potential risks, and design supports for student participation in engineering design practices.
The Evidence Based Curriculum Design Framework: Leveraging Diverse Perspectives in the Design Process
The ubiquity of touchscreen, mobile tablet technology has resulted in a plethora of “apps for learning” yet few leverage the learning sciences as a design driver. This paper describes our approach to integrating the learning sciences with best practices in app design: a design framework that involves researchers and developers in a co-development process to create apps based on research and evidence. Our framework centers around a learning blueprint which is intended to serve as a “boundary object.” This boundary object facilitates a design process that allows the design team to focus on both children’s engagement and learning. Here we describe the challenges that our project team encountered and our approaches to overcome those challenges on the Next Generation Preschool Math (NGPM) project, a development and research effort devoted to creating a supplemental preschool math curriculum supplement with integrated digital apps.
Science in the LearningGardens: A study of motivation, achievement, and science identity in low-income middle schools
This study reports results from 113 students and three science teachers from two low-income urban middle schools participating in SciLG. It highlights the role of students’ views of themselves as competent, related, and autonomous in the garden, as well as their engagement and re-engagement in the garden, as potential pathways by which garden-based science activities can shape science motivation, learning, and academic identity in science.
National Survey on Supporting Struggling Mathematics Learners in the Middle Grades: Executive Summary
This executive summary captures the results of the National Survey on Supporting Struggling Mathematics Learners in the Middle Grades, a study designed and conducted by EDC. T
Writing a Scientific Explanation
This resource provides access to a classroom video of a lesson from the project's middle school ecosystems unit, and the related student scaffold and scoring rubric.
Teachers’ Noticing of Students’ Thinking in Science Through Classroom Artifacts: In What Ways Are Science and Engineering Practices Evident?
Building on the work of teacher noticing, this study investigated teachers’ noticing of students’ thinking evident in artifacts from their science teaching context.
Teacher learning in a combined professional development intervention
The study examines geometry teachers' video club discussions in a two-year professional development intervention that combined lesson study, video clubs, and animation discussions to promote teacher noticing of students' prior knowledge.
How to envision equitable mathematics instruction: Views of U.S. and Korean preservice teachers
This article focused on equitable mathematics instruction for U.S. and Korean preservice teachers.
Moving toward approximations of practice in teacher professional development: Learning to summarize a problem-based lesson
This article focuses on problem-based lessons in teacher professional development.
Designing Simulations to Learn About Pre-service Teachers’ Capabilities with Eliciting and Interpreting Student Thinking
This chapter focuses on the design of simulation assessments to learn about pre-service teachers’ capabilities with eliciting and interpreting student thinking.
Authenticity and Personal Creativity: How EarSketch Affects Student Persistence
This conference paper explains how EarSketch affects student persistence.
Evaluation of three interventions teaching area measurement as spatial structuring to young children
In this article, authors evaluated the effects of three instructional interventions designed to support young children’s understanding of area measurement as a structuring process.
Examining the Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching of Proving in Scenarios Written by Pre-service Teachers
This chapter examines what aspects of Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching of Proving (MKT-P) can be observed in written scenarios of classroom interactions, produced by pre-service teachers of mathematics.
Ambitious Science Teaching
Ambitious Science Teaching outlines a powerful framework for science teaching to ensure that instruction is rigorous and equitable for students from all backgrounds. The practices presented in the book are being used in schools and districts that seek to improve science teaching at scale, and a wide range of science subjects and grade levels are represented.
Uncovering the Skills That Preservice Teachers Bring to Teacher Education: The Practice of Eliciting a Student’s Thinking
This article reports a study of the specific knowledge of and skills with teaching practice that novices bring to teacher education with respect to one teaching practice, eliciting student thinking in elementary mathematics, and describes the use of a standardized teaching simulation to learn about novices’ skills.
Our Watershed
In this article, students use data and models to make a difference in their own school yard.
Supporting Science Teachers In Creating Lessons With Explicit Conceptual Storylines
This article describes a four-step strategy used in our professional development program to help elementary science teachers recognize and create lesson plans with coherent conceptual storylines.
An Examination of Credit Recovery Students’ Use of Computer-Based Scaffolding in a Problem-Based, Scientific Inquiry Unit
In this study, we investigated how high school credit recovery students worked in small groups and used computer-based scaffolds to conduct scientific inquiry in a problem-based learning unit centered on water quality.
CADRE Early Career Guide: Tips for Early Career STEM Education Researchers
The CADRE Early Career Guide offers advice from experienced DR K-12 awardees on becoming a successful researcher in the field of STEM education. The guide also profiles a support program, the CADRE Fellows, for doctoral students in STEM education research.
NSF Prospective New Awardee Guide (January 2018)
Effective as of January 2018, NSF's Prospective New Awardee Guide includes information on federal requirements, NSF points of contact and frequently asked questions, grantee standards, and indirect costs.