STEM learning is a function of both student level and classroom level characteristics. Though research efforts often focus on the impacts of classrooms level features, much of the variation in student outcomes is at the student level. Hence it is critical to consider individual students and how their developmental systems (e.g., emotion, cognition, relational, attention, language) interact to influence learning in classroom settings. This is particularly important in developing effective models for personalized learning. To date, efforts to individualize curricula, differentiate instruction, or leverage formative assessment lack an evidence base to support innovation and impact. Tools are needed to describe individual-level learning processes and contexts that support them. The proposed network will incubate and pilot a laboratory classroom to produce real-time metrics on behavioral, neurological, physiological, cognitive, and physical data at individual student and teacher levels, reflecting the diverse dynamics of classroom experiences that co-regulate learning for all students.
Projects
Mathematical Opportunities in Student Thinking (MOSTs) are high-leverage instances of student mathematical thinking that emerge in whole-class discussions. The challenge for teachers is to build on these opportunities to help the whole class understand the mathematics underlying these student contributions. To help teachers learn how to build on MOSTs, there is a need for professional development resources and tools that facilitators can use. There is also a need for research about how teachers use what they learn in professional development in their teaching. This project is developing a teacher learning sequence that will support teachers in learning to productively use student thinking that surfaces in-the-moment during their instruction—that is, in learning to build on MOSTs.
Professional learning communities (PLCs) are one common model for teachers to collaborate and learn from one another. The goal of this study is to understand how teachers' expertise is positioned in a PLC and the larger system of the school and district to inform mathematics teaching and learning. This should help schools and districts understand the features of PLCs that are important for supporting teachers as they collaborate and learn.
An exit ticket is a recommended and widely used way to end a lesson. The most common purpose of exit tickets is to provide formative feedback to teachers about whether students have met the objectives of a given lesson. However, the psychology of learning literature suggests that there is an untapped potential for exit tickets to also benefit students’ learning directly. This project explores two potential enhancements to exit tickets, with the goal of improving high-school students’ mathematics knowledge and ability to regulate their own learning processes.
Mathematical Opportunities in Student Thinking (MOSTs) are high-leverage instances of student mathematical thinking that emerge in whole-class discussions. The challenge for teachers is to build on these opportunities to help the whole class understand the mathematics underlying these student contributions. To help teachers learn how to build on MOSTs, there is a need for professional development resources and tools that facilitators can use. There is also a need for research about how teachers use what they learn in professional development in their teaching. This project is developing a teacher learning sequence that will support teachers in learning to productively use student thinking that surfaces in-the-moment during their instruction—that is, in learning to build on MOSTs.
To provide equitable mathematics instruction to their students, middle grades mathematics teachers need easily accessible professional learning (PL), including opportunities to participate in discussions about both mathematics content and equity-based teaching practices. This project will help address this need by producing a refined version of the existing Video in the Middle design and development prototype. The team will also produce an asynchronous, collaborative online PL course comprising ten 2.5-hour sessions. These sessions interweave equitable mathematics teaching by incorporating the use of positioning into the classroom learning environment so that students' mathematical competence can be recognized and valued.
Mathematics education research has emphasized instruction that asks teachers to use approaches that center students’ mathematical thinking. A significant part of this is how teachers notice, or focus on, analyze, and decide how to respond to, mathematics thinking. One common professional development method is to use videos of mathematics teaching to help teachers understand what is possible for students' learning. This exploratory project aims to understand how facilitators of video-based teacher professional development learn to help mathematics teachers of middle and high school students notice student mathematical thinking.
Exemplary teaching in STEM fields encourages students from diverse backgrounds to pursue further education and careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Improving teaching, however, first requires an understanding of the current landscape of STEM instruction. The 2027 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education (NSSME+), the seventh iteration of the study, will continue monitoring the status of science, mathematics, and computer science education in the U.S. The study will examine policies and practices related to STEM education, including the extent to which instruction currently models effective, evidence-based teaching practices, and factors that influence teachers’ decisions about content and pedagogy. It will also attend to factors that contribute to the underrepresentation of some groups in STEM, further adding to general knowledge about ways to broaden participation.
While research has identified some features of professional development that impact teacher and student outcomes, there is still much mathematics education researchers do not know regarding which design features are most impactful to learning and how specific features of professional development connect to teacher learning. This project will investigate six prior NSF-funded professional development projects looking for features of the professional development associated with teacher uptake and learning, such as how the establishment of community or norms of collaboration support teachers’ long-term classroom practice.
This project will develop a technology platform that can streamline lesson planning and allow teachers to adapt resources to their students' needs. The project will design and investigate an AI-powered lesson plan tool for middle-grades mathematics teaching called Colleague. Using existing, open-access lesson plans that have been vetted in prior work, the project would refine the tool for generating math lesson plans and supporting teachers to iteratively improve their instruction. Streamlining lesson planning would open more time for teacher creativity and reduce job stress. The study would explore how teachers use Colleague to plan and adapt lessons, the influence on teaching, and the students' learning.
High-quality early educational experiences, particularly in mathematics, are crucial for students’ success in K-12 schooling. To create these foundational experiences for young children, early childhood educators need opportunities to enhance their mathematics teaching through job-embedded, sustained professional learning. This partnership development project establish a collaboration among early childhood mathematics educators, school and district leaders, the state department of education, and university faculty in Delaware that aims to enhance children’s early mathematics learning by collaboratively designing support systems for strengthening their teachers’ professional learning.
Research has shown that when teachers have strong content and pedagogical content knowledge that they can provide better quality mathematics instruction to their students and improve student outcomes. The goal of this project is to enhance elementary school teachers’ capacity to improve students’ mathematics learning through a scaled professional development program that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create a personalized, active learning environment for teachers.
Research has shown that the emotions elementary school teachers and their students experience when engaging in mathematics activities play an important role in mathematics teaching and learning. Yet, the field lacks mathematics-specific professional learning opportunities for elementary teachers that focus on the role of teachers’ and learners’ emotions in the way they experience mathematics in the classroom. This project will address these gaps by developing and testing the Orienting Positive Emotions in New Teachers for Mathematics (OPEN for Math) professional learning program.
This partnership development project deepens an existing partnership between the researcher and leadership of an elementary school in central Texas that serves predominantly Black and Latine students. The project focuses on engaging community members, teachers, and learners at the school in conversation about how mathematics teaching and learning might be improved. This partnering is important because the relationship between schools and communities is often marked by one-way communication and decision-making without dialogue. By promoting dialogue, all members of this partnership can learn more about the mathematical storylines embedded into the community, that is, the stories that community members, teachers, and learners share about their personal relationship to mathematics teaching and learning.
Writing instruction in math and science is an essential area of research to ensure equitable K-12 and college experiences and to better prepare all students in ways that provide opportunities to pursue STEM career pathways. This project is a meta-analysis in the area of secondary (grades 6-12) math and science writing instruction.
Young children thrive when strong relationships exist between their home and school environments. Early home and school experiences support the development of mathematical skills. Often, schools and teachers struggle to establish these strong relationships; therefore, Math Partners will work with teachers and teaching assistants in classroom design teams to help teachers establish healthy, positive relationships with families that center families’ knowledge and experiences in the context of mathematics.
This project will improve STEM education by studying the various strategies taught to and used by students for solving multi-digit multiplication and division to develop a more cohesive understanding of children's multiplicative reasoning. The work will also support teachers’ ability to better support students’ multiplicative reasoning strategies via professional development videos that help them learn about students’ strategies.
Tutoring programs that are jointly supported by schools and universities can offer benefits to both parties. The programs, however, are only helpful to the extent they respond to the needs and interests of the students and schools they serve. This project will establish a partnership between a large, urban university and a small, rural high school to collaboratively create a tutoring program to support the mathematics learning of students with learning disabilities.
High school and first-year college mathematics courses sometimes act as gatekeepers, ‘weeding out’ students who struggle with the subject matter and narrowing students’ opportunities for advanced STEM education and employment. Acknowledging opportunity gaps for students of color and those experiencing poverty, this partnership development project brings together Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC), and WestEd to establish dual enrollment math courses that function as a lever for equity.
Partnership development between universities and school districts requires an understanding that each organization has a distinct institutional point of view that must be considered in defining and shaping collaborative work. The goals and objectives of each organization may not always align, and at times may compete or conflict with each other. With the understanding that successful partnerships are those where practitioners and researchers achieve high levels of trust, commitment, transparency, interdependence, and mutual benefit, this project centers on building a partnership between a university that serves a largely Hispanic student population and a rural school district that also serves a community that has long been underrepresented in STEM education and career opportunities. The partners will jointly focus on how to respond to three negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic: 1) limited access to quality learning opportunities, 2) increased student learning gaps in STEM subjects, and 3) a local teacher shortage.
Anxiety about math has increased for some students due to disruptions in their learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. This partnership development project involving Portland State University and the Tigard-Tualatin School District addresses pandemic-related learning challenges in middle school mathematics, with a focus on math anxiety. Across the yearlong project, the partners play equal roles in co-developing research, practice, and policy proposals aimed at enhancing math outcomes and reducing math anxiety among the district’s middle school students.
While more accessible online learning opportunities that reflect everyday teaching challenges are becoming more available, most of these more flexible professional development experiences are being offered by colleges and universities to teachers who are not yet in the classroom. This situation provides an opportunity to explore how innovations in teacher professional development can be woven into school districts’ regular professional development work with its teachers. This partnership development project will create a shared vision and plan for making digitally-based teaching tasks available to elementary math and science teachers so they can learn at any time and from anywhere.
This project examines student and teacher experiences with the de-tracking of math sequences in a public school district in Western Oregon. It examines how a district-wide cohort of middle school students, as individuals and in groups, identify with and define what it means to be good at math, and how these identities shift over time as they progress through math sequences. It also establishes a partnership between a mathematics education researcher and a school district (Research Practice Partnership) to study changes in pedagogy, define problems of teaching practice, and design solutions as the district transitions to de-tracked classes.
Over the years, researchers and practitioners have created and tested different ways to support students who struggle with learning mathematics. These methods include directly teaching various mathematics skills and strategies that affect mathematics performance, such as alleviating mathematics anxiety and fostering motivation and engagement in mathematics learning. The idea is that teaching mathematics using a mix of these skills or strategies might help students learn better than teaching just one skill or strategy at a time. However, it remains unclear which skills or strategies should be taught together and if mixing different skills or strategies leads to differential effects across different students or contexts. Understanding this is vital because it can help researchers and practitioners determine the best ways to address the need of struggling students in mathematics. A network meta-analysis will allow the field to examine different combinations of instructional skills/strategies as well as their interaction effects, which can provide more optimal information about different instructional approaches.
This project partners with a mathematics department at a public middle school to co-design, analyze, and improve teachers’ translanguaging pedagogies, that is pedagogies that draw on students’ full linguistic repertoires as resources for their learning. This project will investigate how teachers make sense of and enact translanguaging pedagogies, how translanguaging pedagogies shape students’ mathematical experiences and learning opportunities, and how teachers’ learning of translanguaging spaces can be supported.