Science

Comparing the Efficacy of Collaborative Professional Development Formats for Improving Student Outcomes of a Student-Teacher-Scientist Partnership Program

Principal Investigator:

This poster shares preliminary results from our first cohort of participants toward answering the question "How does online mentoring of student-led plant biology investigations impact high school students' views of scientists? This is just one aspect of the overall research project, which involves 1) a conceptual replication of a previous efficacy study (DIgging Deeper, NSF #2010556) on the impact of a student-teacher-scientist partnership online mentoring program (Taylor et al.

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CAREER: Supporting Model Based Inference as an Integrated Effort Between Mathematics and Science

Principal Investigator:

This project is designing opportunities for mathematics and science teachers to coordinate their instruction to support a more coherent approach to teaching statistical model-based inference in middle school. It is preparing teachers to help more students develop a deeper understanding of ideas and practices related to measurement, data, variability, and inference and to use these tools to generate knowledge about the natural world.

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Developing Science Assessments for Language Diversity in Early Elementary Classrooms

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There is an urgent need for vetted Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)–aligned, classroom-based formative assessment tasks for the early grades that incorporate language and literacy development of young students into the design.

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Centering Indigenous Science in K-12 Science Instructional Materials

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To successfully understand and address complex and important questions in the field of environmental science, many kinds of communities’ knowledge about their local environment need to be engaged. This one-year partnership development project involves a collaboration to design an approach that would yield opportunities for K-12 students to learn about environmental science in ways that honor both traditional STEM knowledge and Native ways of knowing among the Pomo community in California.

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CAREER: Second Chance STEM: Uncovering School Policies Structuring Access to and Engagement in High School STEM Credit Recovery

Principal Investigator:

Online STEM credit courses have become attractive to school leaders as a way to support students who fail STEM courses in face-to-face school year settings. However, there is little research about the processes involved in how schools make decisions regarding student credit recovery. This study is engaged in data collection in high schools in a diverse county including credit recovery classroom observations, interviews, and administrative data to measure and evaluate policies around credit recovery.

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Developing Learning Trajectories Supporting Middle School Student Understanding of Artificial Intelligence Concepts; Building Teacher Capacity for Teaching Across Science Disciplines Using "Smart" Greenhouses (Collaborative Research)

This project will develop a professional development (PD) program to support teachers in implementing a physical computing anchored transdisciplinary curriculum. The program includes summer institutes and year-long activities where teachers will be first immersed in the same transdisciplinary learning experiences their students will undergo and then co-design/revise the curriculum for the local context. We will follow teachers over time to understand what trajectories teachers follow as they strive to shift toward more transdisciplinary teaching practices.

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Developing Learning Trajectories Supporting Middle School Student Understanding of Artificial Intelligence Concepts; Building Teacher Capacity for Teaching Across Science Disciplines Using "Smart" Greenhouses (Collaborative Research)

This project will develop a professional development (PD) program to support teachers in implementing a physical computing anchored transdisciplinary curriculum. The program includes summer institutes and year-long activities where teachers will be first immersed in the same transdisciplinary learning experiences their students will undergo and then co-design/revise the curriculum for the local context. We will follow teachers over time to understand what trajectories teachers follow as they strive to shift toward more transdisciplinary teaching practices.

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Developing Learning Trajectories Supporting Middle School Student Understanding of Artificial Intelligence Concepts; Building Teacher Capacity for Teaching Across Science Disciplines Using "Smart" Greenhouses (Collaborative Research)

This project will develop a professional development (PD) program to support teachers in implementing a physical computing anchored transdisciplinary curriculum. The program includes summer institutes and year-long activities where teachers will be first immersed in the same transdisciplinary learning experiences their students will undergo and then co-design/revise the curriculum for the local context. We will follow teachers over time to understand what trajectories teachers follow as they strive to shift toward more transdisciplinary teaching practices.

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Broadening Participation Among Multilingual Learners Through High School Teachers' Professional Learning Experiences in the Instructional Conversation Pedagogy

Principal Investigator:

This three-year project aims to increase multilingual students’ engagement in scientific and engineering practices (SEPs) through a model of professional learning for high school teachers focused on embedding the Instructional Conversation (IC) pedagogy within standards-aligned SEPs. Under this model, science teachers will collaborate with English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers to co-develop linguistically-sustaining instructional materials that provide students with intentionally scaffolded opportunities to use scientific dialogue as they engage in the SEPs.

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Culturally Responsive Elementary Science Teaching

Principal Investigator:

This project explores the influence of elementary teachers' curricular context knowledge, developed over multiple curricular enactments, to adapt curriculum materials in ways that are culturally respsonsive to their students. The project utilizes Explore the Salish Sea, a place-based curriculum that braids together Western and Indigenous science. Students learn about their local ecosystem and and partner with community members to engage in stewardship. Our research follows teachers through four different cycles of curriculum enactment to develop robust case studies.

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