High

Project Summary

During the lifetimes of our current middle and high school students, it is likely that our planet will undergo more anthropogenic change than it has during all of human history to date. The project is utilizing a learning progression approach for the systematic design of coordinated curriculum, tool, and assessment products focused on climate change biology. This work will provide an empirical and theoretical basis for critical concept development about the impacts of climate change on living systems.

Research Questions

Working from a large corpus of transcripts from secondary mathematics classrooms, we identify patterns of speech that encode interpersonal positioning. We extend our analysis from a previous article (Herbel-Eisenmann, Wagner & Cortes, Educ Stud Math, 2010, in press), in which we introduced a concept from corpus linguistics—a “lexical bundle,” which has been defined as a group of three or more words that frequently recur together, in a single group, in a particular register.

The significance of inquiry skills is widely acknowledged in science practice across many areas.  Unlike experimentation, another form of inquiry skill, observational investigation has been much ignored in science education and thus science assessment.  Drawing on reserach development in assessment design, this report provides a design pattern to help assessment designers create tasks assessing students' complex scientific reasoning skills in observational investigation.  The design pattern lays out considerations regarding targeted knowledge and skills in this inquiry proces

The significance of inquiry skills is widely acknowledged in science practice across many areas.  Carrying out experimental investigations is an indispensable element of scientific inquiry and, therefore, an important capability to assess.