Thursday

CASPIR is a 5-year NSF-funded project aimed at co-developing and implementing the Elementary Math Leadership (EML) model in four K-8 school districts to improve K-8 math teaching and learning. This is done by: (1) gathering information about problems of practice collaboratively identified by districts/research team; (2) co-designing and co-implementing coherent PD; and (3) engaging in iterative cycles of co-development, implementation, and revision to productively adapt the PD model over a series of years.

Our team works with high school chemistry teachers to co-develop a suite of curricular materials that engage students in making sense of chemical phenomena in terms of atomic/molecular behavior. This suite of materials undergoes a regular cycle of development and refinement, guided by teachers’ sense of “what works” when implementing the materials and observations of classroom discourse practices. Our work investigates how to best support teachers as they design learning environments to promote student sensemaking.

This study focuses on youth community action and science in our forests. We address questions about when and where youth cultivate their agency and create change relevant to their lives through environmental science. We explore these questions through a place-based and community-lead, forest monitoring program looking at forest health and fire risk in the wildfire prone Sierra Nevada foothills. This school-based program brings together 3rd through 5th grade teachers, students, local scientists and land managers.

The project examines how representations of practice facilitate preservice teachers' professional knowledge for teaching fractions and multiplication/division. The project focuses specifically on: how single and multi-perspective 360 video affects PSTs' professional knowledge; how PSTs use technological scaffolds to engage in 360 video, and its effect on their professional knowledge; and the design of a platform for teacher educators to create their own 360 video immersive experiences

Co-PI(s): Richard E. Ferdig and C. C. Lu, Kent State University

Professional development (PD) is more effective when it involves more than lead classroom teachers. Collaborative Math is a year-long professional development program designed to bring together preschool center leadership and all teaching staff for an in-depth study of early mathematics teaching and learning. We implemented the program in a total of 15 Head Start centers across two years. We found positive shifts in teacher confidence and knowledge as well as child math achievement.

The goal of the design and development study, Proof in Secondary Classrooms (PISC), is to develop an innovative intervention to support the teaching and learning of mathematical proof in secondary geometry. PISC made use of features of lesson study and continuous improvement. Findings featured in the poster involve quantitative assessment results from pre-tests and post-tests administered over three years. Overall, the PISC curriculum had a statistically significant, positive impact on students' end-of-year results.

The main issue our project addresses is how students' reasoning about mathematics concepts that are not new to them (e.g., linear functions) changes when learning about a new concept (e.g., quadratic functions), and we call this phenomenon backward transfer. We specifically focus on mathematics, but believe our backward transfer research is highly relevant within and across STEM content domains more broadly.