Socio-environmental issues are both a key to secondary student interest in science and a difficult terrain for teachers to navigate. Problems like climate change have not only scientific but also social, political, and ethical aspects. In order to prepare students for fully understanding such issues, attention needs to be given to how teachers can be supported and learn for effective instruction. This four-year project enacts and researches a teacher professional development program, “Teaching for the Anthropocene,” with middle and high school science teachers that brings a concept of "critical systems thinking." The project investigates how critical systems thinking may enhance teachers’ understanding of socio-environmental issues and support them to integrate those understandings into their curriculum and teaching. The project also identifies potential challenges educators may face as well as what local conditions and program supports help them practically apply critical systems thinking in their classrooms.
Projects
Socio-environmental issues are both a key to secondary student interest in science and a difficult terrain for teachers to navigate. Problems like climate change have not only scientific but also social, political, and ethical aspects. In order to prepare students for fully understanding such issues, attention needs to be given to how teachers can be supported and learn for effective instruction. This four-year project enacts and researches a teacher professional development program, “Teaching for the Anthropocene,” with middle and high school science teachers that brings a concept of "critical systems thinking." The project investigates how critical systems thinking may enhance teachers’ understanding of socio-environmental issues and support them to integrate those understandings into their curriculum and teaching. The project also identifies potential challenges educators may face as well as what local conditions and program supports help them practically apply critical systems thinking in their classrooms.
Science education research shows that incorporating attention-grabbing concepts and experiences—phenomena—in science classes has the power to engage and inspire young learners. However, many elementary teachers, including those in small rural schools, may not have access to or the support to enact high-quality phenomenon-centered curriculum materials and resources in their science teaching practice. This project aims to address this problem of practice by designing, implementing, and investigating a professional learning approach that supports rural elementary teachers and administrators in incorporating local phenomena-driven science learning experiences in their classrooms.
Science education research shows that incorporating attention-grabbing concepts and experiences—phenomena—in science classes has the power to engage and inspire young learners. However, many elementary teachers, including those in small rural schools, may not have access to or the support to enact high-quality phenomenon-centered curriculum materials and resources in their science teaching practice. This project aims to address this problem of practice by designing, implementing, and investigating a professional learning approach that supports rural elementary teachers and administrators in incorporating local phenomena-driven science learning experiences in their classrooms.
Science education research shows that incorporating attention-grabbing concepts and experiences—phenomena—in science classes has the power to engage and inspire young learners. However, many elementary teachers, including those in small rural schools, may not have access to or the support to enact high-quality phenomenon-centered curriculum materials and resources in their science teaching practice. This project aims to address this problem of practice by designing, implementing, and investigating a professional learning approach that supports rural elementary teachers and administrators in incorporating local phenomena-driven science learning experiences in their classrooms.
Progress in science is motivated and directed by uncertainties. Yet even though uncertainty is a crucial fulcrum for scientific thought, school students are taught science within an overarching assumption that scientific knowledge is certain. This project explores the intellectual leverage of enabling middle school students to experience how scientific work grapples with uncertainty. The overall goal of this project is to understand how teachers can create equitable learning environments for culturally and linguistically diverse learners using Student Uncertainty for Productive Struggle as a pedagogical model in middle school science classrooms.
Transdisciplinary science integrates knowledge across STEM disciplines to research complex challenges such as climate science, genetic engineering, or ecology. In this project, teachers and students will design smart greenhouses by connecting electronic sensors that can detect light or other environmental data to microcontrollers that can activate devices that water plants and regulate other environmental factors such as temperature or light. This activity brings together engineering, computer science, and horticulture. Working across urban and rural contexts, the project will engage teachers in professional development as they adopt and adapt instructional materials to support their students in learning across disciplines as they build smart greenhouses.
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.
Transdisciplinary science integrates knowledge across STEM disciplines to research complex challenges such as climate science, genetic engineering, or ecology. In this project, teachers and students will design smart greenhouses by connecting electronic sensors that can detect light or other environmental data to microcontrollers that can activate devices that water plants and regulate other environmental factors such as temperature or light. This activity brings together engineering, computer science, and horticulture. Working across urban and rural contexts, the project will engage teachers in professional development as they adopt and adapt instructional materials to support their students in learning across disciplines as they build smart greenhouses.
Providing computer science (CS) education to students prior to high school is critical for catalyzing their interest in CS and closing achievement and development gaps. However, the retention rate for underrepresented group participants in middle school CS teacher preparation programs is lower than that for their peers. The resulting lack of diversity in CS teachers contributes to students’ inequitable access to quality middle school CS education. In this project will investigate effective design and implementation strategies of CS teacher preparation programs aimed to increase the number of middle school CS teachers from underrepresented groups.
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.
With recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), the United States needs to develop a diverse workforce with strong computational skills and the knowledge and capability to work with AI. Recent studies have raised questions about the extent to which youth are aware of AI and its application in industries of the future that may limit their interest in pursuing learning that lead toward careers in these industries. To address this challenge, learning trajectories (LTs) will be developed and researched for AI concepts that are challenging for middle and high school students. The project will design and pilot test learning activities and assessments targeting these concepts based on the LTs, offer teacher professional development on the LTs and related activities, and research the effectiveness of the LT-based activities when implemented by teachers during the regular school day.
Transdisciplinary science integrates knowledge across STEM disciplines to research complex challenges such as climate science, genetic engineering, or ecology. In this project, teachers and students will design smart greenhouses by connecting electronic sensors that can detect light or other environmental data to microcontrollers that can activate devices that water plants and regulate other environmental factors such as temperature or light. This activity brings together engineering, computer science, and horticulture. Working across urban and rural contexts, the project will engage teachers in professional development as they adopt and adapt instructional materials to support their students in learning across disciplines as they build smart greenhouses.
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.
Expectations and opportunities for student learning in science are expanding to involve students in making sense of and addressing real questions and problems in the world around them. At the same time, school districts are seeking innovative ways to support teachers to provide instruction that takes into account students’ perspectives and uses those perspectives to teach science. This project seeks to understand how a large, urban school district implements a practice-based professional learning program for teachers that employs performance assessments as a lever for instructional improvement by eliciting, centering, and advancing students’ thinking in middle school science classrooms.
Data literacy is the ability to ask questions, analyze, interpret, and draw conclusions from data. As the world and the workplace become more data-driven, students need to have stronger data literacy across multiple disciplines, including science. This project uses an instructional framework, Data Puzzles, to investigate how to support middle grades teachers learning to include data literacy in their science teaching. Data Puzzles integrate mathematical and computational thinking with ambitious science teaching instructional practices and contemporary science topics. Students engaging with Data Puzzles resources can analyze real-world climate science data using web-based data analysis tools to make sense of science phenomena and develop data literacy.
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.
Data literacy is the ability to ask questions, analyze, interpret, and draw conclusions from data. As the world and the workplace become more data-driven, students need to have stronger data literacy across multiple disciplines, including science. This project uses an instructional framework, Data Puzzles, to investigate how to support middle grades teachers learning to include data literacy in their science teaching. Data Puzzles integrate mathematical and computational thinking with ambitious science teaching instructional practices and contemporary science topics. Students engaging with Data Puzzles resources can analyze real-world climate science data using web-based data analysis tools to make sense of science phenomena and develop data literacy.
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.
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.
This project will examine middle school students’ learning of earth and physical sciences and their functional understanding of engineering design as they engage in newly developed environmental justice-oriented curriculum units in community-based service projects. In collaboration with middle school teachers and their students, two STEM units that integrate science inquiry, engineering design, and community-based service projects will be co-designed, implemented, and refined while examining students’ science and engineering learning and their development of science/STEM interest and agency.
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.
This project will examine middle school students’ learning of earth and physical sciences and their functional understanding of engineering design as they engage in newly developed environmental justice-oriented curriculum units in community-based service projects. In collaboration with middle school teachers and their students, two STEM units that integrate science inquiry, engineering design, and community-based service projects will be co-designed, implemented, and refined while examining students’ science and engineering learning and their development of science/STEM interest and agency.
Navigating complex societal issues such as water shortages, forest fires, and other phenomena-based problems requires understanding the social, technological, and scientific dimensions surrounding the issues and they ways these dimensions interact, shift, and change. Despite its importance, however, developing students’ socioscientific literacy has received limited attention in elementary science teaching and learning contexts. This project begins to address this problem of practice by focusing first on developing elementary teachers’ socioscientific literacy and their capacity to integrate socioscientific issues and local phenomena in their science teaching practice.