Professional Development

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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Target Audience:

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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Target Audience:

Building Sustainable Networked Instructional Leadership in Elementary Mathematics Through a University Partnership with a Large Urban District

Principal Investigator:

The goal of the Responsive Math Teaching project is to increase the quality of math instruction by developing the knowledge, skills, and competencies of school-based teachers and leaders and fostering a networked community across schools. Five core components guide the work:

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Mobilizing Teachers to Increase Capacity and Broaden Women's Participation in Physics (Collaborative Research: Hazari)

Principal Investigator:

STEP UP is mobilizing and supporting physics teachers with resources that disrupt narrow perceptions of physics and promote supportive classroom cultures to facilitate physics identity development, particularly for women. Drawing on counternarratives, the lessons/materials highlight broad physics careers pursued by diverse individuals, explicitly discuss the role of bias, and recognize those who have been invisible. The lessons/materials were found to have a positive effect on the future physics intentions of women and minoritized racial/ethnic groups.

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Target Audience:

Investigating Impact of Different Types of Professional Development on What Aspects Mathematics Teachers Take Up And Use in Their Classroom

Principal Investigator:

Taking a Deep Dive (TaDD): Investigating PD impact on what teachers take up and use in their classroom, is a 3-year DRK-12 Impact study within the teaching strand. This study will collect qualitative data from four large NSF funded mathematics PD projects to examine teachers' uptake of content, pedagogy and materials in order to understand and unpack what factors are associated with what teachers take up and use two to three years beyond their original PD experience.

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Invigorating Statistics Teacher Education Through Professional Online Learning (InSTEP)

Principal Investigator:

InSTEP is developing an online personalized professional learning platform to support teachers' growth in providing students learning opportunities in statistics and data science using key practices and processes with data. We are creating a scalable, accessible, and flexible approach aligned with research-based principles of effective professional learning. We use design principles for online teacher learning, and our materials are based on research on students' and teachers' learning in statistics and data science education.

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Target Audience:

Three-Dimensional Teaching and Learning: Rebuilding and Researching an Online Middle School Curriculum

Principal Investigator:

Although several middle school science units are emerging with high ratings on an NGSS EQuIP review, few have been subjected to experimental or quasi-experimental study to examine their efficacy with teachers or students. We share the design specifications, development process, and research findings from a quasi-experimental test of a designed-for-NGSS middle school science unit. Treatment students outperformed comparison students on a test of three-dimensional learning (p = .019; d = .300).

Co-PI(s): Betty Stennett and Lindsey Mohan, BSCS Science Learning

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Target Audience:

Developing Teachers' Epistemic Cognition and Teaching Practices for Supporting Students' Epistemic Practices with Scientific Systems

Principal Investigator:

This project aims to investigate needs and challenges in developing an informed public able to evaluate empirical evidence generated from scientific activities. This includes understanding teachers' epistemic goals and practices and how to provide professional development (PD) to improve instruction. The resulting instruction will offer new affordances to advance students' and teachers' learning.

Co-PI(s): Clark Chinn, Rutgers University

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Aligning the Science Teacher Education Pathway: A Networked Improvement Community

Principal Investigator:

The A-STEP project fosters collaboration between university faculty and pathway partners to implement common set of tools (Next Gen ASET Toolkit) across a science teacher training and development pathway. Partnerships across steps function under shared goals and paradigm shifts for pedagogical reform along the teacher pathway. A-STEP promotes change across our Networked Improvement Community (NIC) and the local pathway partners working with each university, ultimately impacting the enactment of the NGSS in respective K-12 classrooms.

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Developing Preservice Teachers' Capacity to Teach Students with Learning Disabilities in Algebra I

Principal Investigator:

Project researchers are training pre-service teachers to tutor students with learning disabilities in Algebra 1, combining principles from special education, mathematics education, and cognitive psychology. The trainings emphasize the use of gestures and strategic questioning to support students with learning disabilities and to build students’ understanding in Algebra 1.

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