Wednesday

Science and Engineering Education for Infrastructure Transformation

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A challenge in teaching real-world computational thinking is that the thought process of solving a concrete problem can easily escalate into a complex mental model consisting of many abstract, intertwined moving parts that are often difficult for students to imagine and think through, preventing them from sorting out a solution and building up self-efficacy. Externalizing such a complicated mental process step by step through drawing representational diagrams piece by piece can be cognitively offloading.

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Responding to an Emerging Epidemic through Science Education

Principal Investigator:

The project is pursuing two coordinated goals associated with science teaching and learning in the COVID-19 pandemic: 1) create COVID-related curriculum materials and 2) conduct research on teaching and learning in the pandemic. We partnered with 12 teachers to create and enact a model-oriented, issue based curricular unit about COVID-19. Research efforts focus on how teachers enact the materials and how and where students get information about the pandemic as they are living through it.

Co-PI(s): Pa Friedrichsen and Laura Zangori, University of Missouri

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Preparing Teachers to Design Tasks to Support, Engage, and Assess Science Learning in Rural Schools

Principal Investigator:

The main goal of the 5DMASTERS (Making Aligned Science Tasks Equitable for Rural Students) project is to support rural science teachers to shift to assessment of students’ learning that includes five dimensions: using disciplinary core ideas, science & engineering practices, and cross-cutting concepts, and meaningfully connecting to students’ interests and identities. We will share results from our ethnographic study of rural teachers’ instructional contexts, along with the initial design of our online professional learning course.

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Place-based Learning for Elementary Science at Scale (PeBLES2)

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To support equitable access to place-based science learning, the PeBLES2 team is developing and testing a model to support elementary teachers in incorporating locally relevant phenomena into instructional materials intentional designed to be locally-adapted. We are developing two units that could be used in any region across the country with built-in opportunities and embedded supports for teachers to purposefully adapt curriculum to include local phenomena. Professional learning experiences will further help teachers incorporate place-based approaches.

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Modest Supports for Sustaining Professional Development Outcomes over the Long-Term

Principal Investigator:

This project investigated whether a two-year intervention of modest follow-up support influenced the sustainability of outcomes for elementary teachers who had previously participated in professional development programs designed to improve science education. In this poster, we discuss the supports offered to teachers and the extent to which they used these supports. We also describe the impact of the follow-up supports on teachers' self-efficacy related to science teaching and on their instructional practices.

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Leveraging Simulations in Preservice Preparation to Improve Mathematics Teaching for Students with Disabilities (Collaborative Research: Cohen and Jones)

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The broader goal of our DRK-12 project is to develop and test whether simulated classroom experience with students with disabilities can improve elementary general educators' preparedness to support these students in mathematics. To support the tools' development, we have interviewed 22 leading mathematics and special educators to unearth tensions and points of convergence in how the respective fields conceptualize mathematics instruction. The poster will discuss implications of these findings for teacher preparation and development.

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InquirySpace 2: Broadening Access to Integrated Science Practices

Principal Investigator:

Every student should have the chance to experience the exciting practice of science. But far too often, students encounter only highly structured “cookbook” labs in their science classrooms. InquirySpace combines a software environment that integrates sensors, simulations, and data exploration capabilities with instructional guidance, and helps students move from fundamental data analysis and scaffolded experiments to open experiments of their own design.

Co-PI(s): Daniel Damelin and Hee-Sun Lee, Concord Consortium; Sam Gweon, Physics Front

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High School Students' Climate Literacy Through Epistemology of Scientific Modeling (Collaborative Research: Chandler and Forbes)

Principal Investigator:

We share the conception, design, and some activities from a curriculum based on the use of a global climate model EzGCM in secondary geoscience classrooms. Implemented through the NSF-funded CLiMES (Climate Literacy through Modeling and Epistemology of Science) project, this curriculum facilitated in-depth understanding of climate literacy concepts through model-based reasoning.

Co-PI(s): Mark Chandler, Columbia University

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Enhancing Teacher and Student Understanding of Engineering in K-5 Bilingual Programs

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This study explored Bilingual and Dual Language (BDL) program models in Massachusetts and Puerto Rico. We developed and validated a survey in Spanish and English (n=105) with three constructs: (a) recommended BLD practices; (b) personal qualities for S&E teaching; and (c) recommended S&E pedagogical practices. We found that BDL teachers were confident in their ability to facilitate their students’ biliteracy development but not related to S&E literacy in Spanish-speaking countries.

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Improving Multi-dimensional Assessment and Instruction: Building and Sustaining Elementary Science Teachers' Capacity Through Learning Communities (Collaborative Research: Lehman and Pellegrino)

Principal Investigator:

The NGSA project seeks to better understand how to build and sustain the capacity of elementary science teachers to instruct and formatively assess students in ways that align with the NGSS. We utilize a professional learning model that places instructionally-supportive assessments at the forefront, and centers student discourse on disciplinary knowledge and practices to engage in sensemaking and reasoning. Teacher partners co-develop multi-dimensional assessment tasks and are starting to use them formatively with their students.

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