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The session will feature the experiences, outcomes, and materials from two engineering-oriented DR K-12 projects. The two projects, INFUSE and INSPIRES, use different approaches to teacher professional development with the goal of preparing science teachers to infuse or integrate engineering into their classrooms. They have both developed a unique set of materials designed to impact science and technology outcomes (working on a combination of curriculum development, professional development, and research).

In this interactive panel symposium, presenters will draw from a set of active DR K-12 projects to explore a diverse array of resources, models, and tools (RMTs) designed to operationalize varying perspectives on scientific modeling in elementary, middle, and secondary classrooms across disciplinary domains.

Over the past five years, research teams at Western Washington University and North Carolina State University have each conducted longitudinal studies to examine elementary teacher development in mathematics and science. Specifically, they have investigated the development of pre-service/novice teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and instructional practices during teacher preparation and into their initial years of teaching. 

Current knowledge assessment techniques, such as paper-and-pencil or performance assessments, can provide robust data about gross changes in the distribution of student knowledge over the course of instruction. However, we lack effective ways of coordinating student data collected across varied instruments, time points, and activity contexts to examine patterns of change and dynamics of growth across large numbers of students.

The LAMP project has developed a sequence of lessons in a hypothetical learning trajectory that targets students’ ability to write viable arguments in algebraic contexts. Most of the lessons encourage students to produce a referent (e.g., variable expression or equation, generic example, diagram) as the foundation of their argument. Students come to the lessons with a predisposition for example production in support of their claims and to augment arguments.

Algebraic habits of mind, at the core of five of the Standards for Mathematical Practice, become both a potent and appealing intervention for at-risk algebra students and a solid prevention-model middle-school course either to accelerate algebra or to ensure success in a later algebra course. The session focuses on the habits of mind in that context, in related professional development work that addresses the Standards for Mathematical Practices, and on assessment of algebraic habits of mind in teachers.

Examples of research practices that limit the validity of research syntheses are not difficult to find. For example, Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), and Abt Associates reported in their Compendium of STEM Instruments that psychometric reporting practices in the STEM community tend to be insufficient, and this limited what they could learn from their synthesis.

The original version of the Mathematical Quality and Equity (MQE) video codes (Goffney, 2010; LMT, 2010) were developed as a section of the Mathematical Quality and Instruction observational instrument developed by the Learning Mathematics for Teaching Project at the University of Michigan.

In Assessing Secondary Teachers’ Algebraic Habits of Mind, the project team is developing tools to study the following questions: What are the mathematical habits of mind (MHoM) that secondary teachers use, how do they use them, and how can we measure them?

In this session, presenters share a paper-and-pencil assessment being developed to measure how teachers use MHoM when they do mathematics for themselves. The presenters also share classroom video and a preliminary framework for examining MHoM in teaching practice.