New evidence continues to emerge on the formative potential of the early years in a person's life. NSF is investing in programs to transform STEM teaching and learning in pre-K and the early grades. In this video, Arthur Baroody, Jere Confrey, Julie Sarama, and Paul Goldenberg discuss the importance of giving every child the opportunity to excel in math at an early age.
Battling isolation is a continual challenge for science and math educators. As a novice science teacher, the closing of the classroom door effectively cut me off from all support systems. Later, as a university teacher educator, my interests in school-based teacher preparation isolated me from campus-bound traditions. And now, as a PI of an NSF project I realize that running a grant-funded project brings new ways to feel alone.
On Being Inducted into the DRK-12 Program
As a CADRE Fellow, one of my tasks at the DRK-12 PI Meeting--in addition to making new connections and learning about the projects that are being funded by the DRK-12 program--is to blog about the sessions that I attend. The first day was a real interesting one, and this is the first of my posts on my experiences.
The two memorable revelations for me of the 2010 DR K-12 PI meeting were the exceptionally polished software products on display and the lack of discussion about parental responsibility for learning.
As a researcher who studies mathematics interventions for students with mild disabilities, the principles of universal design presented in the SmartGraphs software by the Concord Consortium were encouraging to me. Considering the difficulties that students with learning disabilities in mathematics and students with mild intellectual disabilities have with working memory, the multiple, user-friendly representations of math and science concepts presented in this software could potentially be valuable for these students.
A primary goal of education research is to inform and benefit the everyday work of practitioners, yet often it is hard to establish and maintain partnerships between groups. What is so difficult about building relationships to bridge this divide?
Shortly after my 10th birthday, Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” This was a short 11 years after the creation of NASA, which was just one of the political-technical reactions to the successful Soviet launch of the first Earth satellite, Sputnik 1. How were these brilliant American and Russian scientists and engineers educated in the mathematical sciences?
Editor's Note: People like us (DR K-12) are primarily funded to understand and/or fix parts of the supply chain in education. If something isn't working well, we fix standards or testing or administration or curriculum or teaching, etc. Goldenberg suggests that, in addition to thinking about the supply side of education, we research and think about influencing the demand side as well.
