Science

New technologies are increasingly giving science teachers the ability to access and customize science lessons. However, there is substantial debate in the literature about whether and under what conditions teacher customization benefit student learning. In this study, we examined teacher customization of inquiry-based science lessons from an online lesson portal. We found that students who completed teacher-customized lessons had greater improvements in science content understanding than students who completed non-customized lessons.

The Innovative Technology in Science Inquiry (ITSI) project is a learning portal with hundreds of free, customizable science, math,

Lynch, S.J. (2015, Aug. 1). Science for All: A new breed of schools is closing achievement gaps among students and may hold the key to a revitalized 21st-century workforce. Scientific American. Retrieved from: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-for-all/

The recent revisions to the advanced placement (AP) chemistry curriculum promote deep conceptual understanding of chemistry content over more rote memorization of facts and algorithmic problem solving. For many teachers, this will mean moving away from traditional worksheets and verification lab activities that they have used to address the vast amounts of content in the AP chemistry course. Moreover, a substantial shift in teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning of chemistry will be needed to facilitate the transformation of their instructional practices.

There is the tendency to explain away successful urban schools as indicative of the heroic efforts by a tireless individual, effectively blaming schools that underperform for a lack of grit and dedication. This study reports the development of a research instrument (School Science Infrastructure, or SSI) and then applying that tool to an investigation of equitable science performance by elementary schools.

Crissman, S., Lacy, S., Nordine, J., and Tobin, R. (2015). Looking Through the Energy Lens. Science and Children, 52(6), 26-31.

The STEM School Study (S3) team sat down with inclusive STEM school leaders from over 25 inclusive STEM schools and asked them to describe the parts of their schools that are essential to their school models. We found that while STEM schools vary in many ways, there are eight major Elements common to them all. Each Element is comprised of a number of components and together, they illustrate what STEM schools are and lay the groundwork for understanding how STEM schools work to achieve their goals.

Automated assessment of student learning has become the subject of increasing attention. Students’ textual responses to short answer questions offer a rich source of data for assessment. However, automatically analyzing textual constructed responses poses significant computational challenges, exacerbated by the disfluencies that occur prominently in elementary students’ writing. With robust text analytics, there is the potential to analyze a student’s text responses and accurately predict his or her future success.

Real-time formative assessment of student learning has become the subject of increasing attention. Students’ textual responses to short answer questions offer a rich source of data for formative assessment. However, automatically analyzing textual constructed responses poses significant computational challenges, and the difficulty of generating accurate assessments is exacerbated by the disfluencies that occur prominently in elementary students’ writing. With robust text analytics, there is the potential to accurately analyze students’ text responses and predict students’ future success.