Thursday

Research shows a need for professional development (PD) that builds K-5 teachers' ability to incorporate the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) science practices into the classroom and supports their implementation of reform-minded science instruction. The Schoolyard SITES research study and PD program at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) partners elementary teachers with UNH Extension science volunteers to bring locally-relevant citizen science projects to elementary students and to increase teachers’ self-efficacy teaching science.

The MMaRS project is designing classroom assessment resources of numeric relational reasoning and spatial reasoning for students in grades K-2. During the pandemic, SMU researchers worked virtually with teachers and K-2 students to develop resources that are responsive to their needs and accurately elicit their reasoning. This poster will highlight the virtual data collection methods and techniques, including think aloud video interviews with students and prototype co-design work sessions with teachers.

This poster presentation will introduce the current study findings governing the design and implementation of E-Rebuild, a 3D architecture and math game that aims to promote versatile representation and epistemic practice of mathematics for students in grades 6th-8th. Utilizing the real-time, evidence-centered in-game learning assessment and a game-level editor, E-Rebuild enables not only problem-based mathematical thinking and learning, but also adaptive learner support during gameplay and participatory design of game-based math problems.

This study investigates the integration of early science with mathematics and engineering and involves co-designing resources with preschool teachers and families from historically underserved communities to provide preschool children equitable STEM learning experiences. The study also explores connections between home and school learning and involves designing resources to support multilingual learners, who represent a large (and growing) proportion of the population served in public preschool programs.

This project has developed practical measures, and associated routines and data representations, to support the implementation of instructional improvement strategies (e.g.,coaching) in middle-grades mathematics teaching. We will describe our classroom measures, which assess students' perspectives of key aspects of the classroom learning environment; the contributions they have made to our partner districts’ improvement efforts; and how we have attended to validity in the design and use of practical measures.

This study provides evidence on the confluence of school, classroom, teacher, and student inputs that shape elementary school science learning for English learners. The study explores the relationship between (1) science inputs (time on science, content covered, availability of lab resources, teacher training in science instruction, etc.), and (2) EL-specific inputs (classroom language use, EL instructional models, teacher certification/training, availability of EL support staff, etc.) for a nationally representative set of kindergarten through fifth graders.

The Teacher Engineering Education Program is designed to support teacher learning in engineering education in an 18-month online asynchronous program. In this project, we collected data from two cohorts of elementary teachers (N=26) including multiple interviews throughout the program, teachers’ video recordings of their classroom teaching, and their coursework in the four required courses. This poster summarizes our central findings on teacher learning in the program, looking at teachers’ noticing and pedagogical sensemaking in engineering.

In this project, we developed, piloted, and studied the use of a set of performance-based tasks delivered within a simulated classroom environment in order to improve preservice elementary teachers' ability to facilitate argumentation-focused discussions in mathematics and science. We conceptualized these simulated discussions as formative assessment opportunities, and studied how teacher educators made use of them within methods courses to support preservice teachers' learning. We also examined evidence of preservice teacher learning via pre/post measures.