What's New on CADREK12.org

Poster | Developing a Suite of Standards-based Instructionally Supportive Tools for Middle School Computer Science
The ASSIST-MSCS project strives to develop a set of educative resources, formative assessment tools and teacher professional development (PD) to support middle school teachers with their understanding of Computer Science (CS) standards and their ability to use formative assessment tools related to these standards. The goal is to support teachers in understanding the fine-grained learning (and…
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Poster | Developing a Place-based STEM Education Model for Cultural Connections to Alaska Science
The project builds upon prior successful work using the Cultural Connections Process Model (CCPM) to co-produce engaging place-based STEM education resources working with rural Indigenous communities. The CCPM is now applied to develop 10 educational videos and corresponding hands-on high-school lessons with participants from four Alaska Native Tribes (Iñupiat, Gwich'in Athabascan, Tlingit/…
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Poster | Developing a Modeling Orientation to Science: Teaching and Learning Variability and Change in Ecosystems (Collaborative Research: Peake)
This collaboration between Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Bowdoin College, and Vanderbilt University engages middle-school students in building and revising models of variability and change in ecosystems and studies the learning and instruction in these classroom contexts. Students construct and critique models that they and peers invent and develop foundational knowledge about the roles of…
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Poster | Developing a Modeling Orientation to Science: Teaching and Learning Variability and Change in Ecosystems (Collaborative Research: Miller)
Developing, critiquing, and revising models is part of the core work of science, but this process is usually invisible to students who more often encounter “final” models of systems or phenomena rather than modeling for sensemaking. The DMOS project endeavors to understand how and to what extent development of teachers’ comfort and proficiency with the modeling practice in the context of…
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Poster | Designing for Science Learning in Schools by Leveraging Participation and the Power of Place Through Community and Citizen Science (Collaborative Research)
Our project is a four-year research-practice partnership which examines elementary students’ understanding of and agency with science content knowledge and practices during a community-engaged, place-based environmental science research and monitoring program. We investigate how research informed design features influence these learning outcomes. Our findings will inform replicable models for…
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Poster | Designing for Science Learning in Schools by Leveraging Participation and the Power of Place Through Community and Citizen Science (Collaborative Research)
Our project is a four-year research-practice partnership which examines elementary students’ understanding of and agency with science content knowledge and practices during a community-engaged, place-based environmental science research and monitoring program. We investigate how research informed design features influence these learning outcomes. Our findings will inform replicable models for…
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Poster | Designing Computational Modeling Curricula across Science Subjects to Study How Repeated Engagement Impacts Student Learning Throughout High School (Collaborative Research: Conlin)
This project is a Research and Practice Partnership between two universities and the DC school district to address two problems of practice at the high school level. First, students will engage in computational modeling in science classes to provide all students opportunities to learn computational thinking. Second, teachers will have the opportunity to learn more about the Next Generation…
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Poster | Designing and Researching a Program for Preparing Teachers as Facilitators of Computational Making Activities in Classroom and Informal Learning Environments
In this project, we engaged elementary (grades K-5) pre-service teachers (PSTs) as facilitators in a family technology program called Family Creative Learning, embedded in the Denver Public Library makerspace network. We studied PSTs’ computational thinking and facilitation practices and its impact on children's learning across informal and classroom settings where pre-service teachers…
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Poster | Design Talks: Building Community with Elementary Engineering (Collaborative Research: Andrews)
The Design Talk project aims to to enact and characterize multiple types of whole-class engineering design conversations in first-grade through sixth-grade classrooms. The Design Talk resource library will enable educators and curriculum developers to see distinctly different kinds of classroom conversations that make engineering an activity in which all students engage in productive sense-making…
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Poster | Design and Development of a K-12 STEM Observation Protocol (Collaborative Research: Dare)
This project uses over 2000 integrated STEM classroom videos to design and validate the STEM Observation Protocol (STEM-OP) for use in classrooms where integrated STEM is taking place. The STEM-OP is a valid and reliable instrument for use in a variety of educational contexts and research. The STEM-OP and associated training materials are available for use by stakeholders such as K-12 teachers,…
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Poster | DataX: Exploring Justice-Oriented Data Science with Secondary School Students
The DataX project aims to develop an integrated, justice-oriented curriculum and a digital platform for teaching secondary students about data science. This project includes science and social studies teachers in the design of the resources and in testing them in classrooms. The DataX platform supports students to investigate authentic problems using real-world datasets. The project team will…
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Poster | Connecting Elementary Mathematics Teaching to Real-World Issues (Collaborative Research: Thanheiser)
There are long-standing calls to make mathematics more meaningful, relevant, and applicable both inside and outside of the K-12 classroom. In particular, there is a growing recognition that mathematics is a valuable tool for helping students understand important real-world issues that affect their lives and society. Further, mathematics can support students in becoming mathematically literate and…
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Poster | Culturally Responsive, Affective-focused Teaching of Science and Mathematics
Broadening participation in STEM requires a change in how K-12 teachers engage and educate students who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. The CRAFT project provides a field-based science and mathematics teacher education program that supports teaching focused on students’ affective development through culturally responsive practices. CRAFT is working to accomplish the following…
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Poster | Crowdsourcing Neuroscience: An Interactive Cloud-based Citizen Science Platform for High School Students, Teachers, and Researchers
MindHive is an open science, citizen science initiative that supports authentic human brain and behavioral science inquiry experiences for high school learners, educators, and their communities. The online platform features a suite of tools that enable learners’ research activities, paired with teaching materials. The program s co-designed by a team of educational researchers, teachers,…
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Poster | Crowd-Sourced Online Nexus for Developing Assessments of Middle-School Physical Science Disciplinary Core Ideas
This novel project draws upon teachers to contribute or modify existing test items, then immediately pilots them using crowdsourced subjects. Psychometric analysis generates measures of item quality and then “recycles” items to participating teachers for improvement. In this way, a large test item bank is constructed utilizing teacher input with each item possessing: appropriate reading levels,…
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Poster | Creating a Model for Sustainable Ambitious Mathematics Programs in High-Need Settings: A Researcher-Practitioner Collaboration
In this project we are studying a sustained implementation of ambitious mathematics teaching (AMT) in a high need setting. Our goal is to articulate the demands of AMT, the resources necessary to address those demands, and the tensions between AMT and other internal and external initiatives. We collaboratively developed the model with instructional leaders, students, parents, and teachers. We…
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Poster | Contextualizing Data Education via Project-based Learning
This project enhances two interdisciplinary project-based learning (PBL) modules from EL Education with authentic data experiences co-designed with science, math, and social studies middle school teachers. Applying “messy” datasets to relevant societal issues within their existing curriculum and subject matter, we used CODAP to introduce data science education skills and ways of thinking and we…
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Poster | Co-Learning Math Teaching Project: Collaborative Structures to Support Learning to Teach Across the Professional Teaching Continuum
This project addresses questions regarding how teacher education clinical experiences might become a mutually productive site for teacher candidate (TC) and mentor teacher (MT) learning. The goal of this project is to design and study a model of co-learning between TCs and MTs through the development of tools and theory in support of co-learning ambitious, equity-oriented mathematics instruction…
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Poster | Case Studies of a Suite of Next Generation Science Instructional, Assessment and Professional Development Materials in Diverse Middle School Settings
We designed a learning approach and associated curricular program that builds from the 5Es (Bybee) model to harness STEM learning toward the engineered design of solutions (phases: Engage, Explore, Explain. Engineer, and Educate). Curricular activities emphasized design features that promote interest and motivation (e.g., choice, appropriately challenging, personal relevance). Research results…
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Poster | CAREER: Understanding the Routinization of Mathematics Language Routines in Middle and High Schools
This poster will share the development of a framework around adaptive expertise and mathematics language routines. Our larger project aims to understand how teachers’ learning communities, teachers, and students develop adaptive expertise in their use of mathematics language routines. Hatano and Inagaki (1984) defined an adaptive expert as someone who can perform procedural skills with…
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Poster | CAREER: Teacher Learning Through Expansive Sensemaking in Science
This project explores how to cultivate novel disciplinary spaces for secondary teachers to experience science. We are designing a content-focused education course for preservice secondary science teachers to engage in expansive and connective sensemaking, incorporating heterogeneity, power, and historicity in pursuits of explanatory accounts of the natural world. We examine how this space…
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Poster | CAREER: Supporting Model Based Inference as an Integrated Effort Between Mathematics and Science
In our project we design and study opportunities for mathematics and science teachers to coordinate their instruction to support a more coherent approach to teaching statistical model-based inference in middle school. We aim to help more students develop a deeper understanding of ideas and practices related to measurement, data, variability, and inference. Since there is little research to show…
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Poster | CAREER: Supporting Elementary Science Teaching and Learning by Integrating Uncertainty into Classroom Science Investigations
This poster describes and presents findings from a multi-year design-based research study. The focus of the work is how to design and implement science investigations that make productive use of the uncertainty that scientists experience as they conduct investigations. Specifically, we have developed a framework that situates empirical activity in a modeling enterprise, and names and situates…
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Poster | CAREER: Investigating Changes in Students' Prior Mathematical Reasoning: An Exploration of Backward Transfer Effects in School Algebra
This project examines how instructional activities involving quadratic functions influence students’ prior ways of reasoning about linear functions, and develops and refines instructional products for teaching quadratic functions in ways that influence students’ prior ways of reasoning about linear functions in predictable and productive ways.
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Poster | CAREER: From Research to Meta-Research to Practice - The Development of an Educational Learning Environment Framework for School Algebra
This project advances the understanding of teaching and learning of algebra in grades K through 12 by using a methodology that leverages the cumulative power of an analysis of many studies on a topic. This work will synthesize results aggregated from 40 years of research in the field of mathematics education and develop a unified framework to inform parents, students, teachers, other educators,…
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Poster | CAREER: Expanding Latinxs' Opportunities to Develop Complex Thinking in Secondary Science Classrooms Through a Research-Practice Partnership
One goal of this project is to improve Latinx and multilingual students’ opportunities to engage in complex thinking in secondary science classrooms through a district and university partnership. In this poster, we present the success and challenges of co-designing and enacting equity/justice centered units that promote civic engagement with five teams of secondary science teachers (n=20) and…
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Poster | CAREER: Designing and Enacting Mathematically Captivating Learning Experiences for High School Mathematics
We will share the results of our designed based research project on how to design secondary mathematics lessons which shift the aesthetic opportunities of students. We worked with a group of six high school math teachers and used mathematical story framework to explore how mathematics lessons on topics that are typically described as boring or dull by students can instead be described as…
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Poster | CAREER: Cultivating Teachers' Epistemic Empathy to Promote Responsive Teaching
This design-based research project investigates ways to understand and cultivate science and mathematics teachers’ “epistemic empathy”—their capacity for tuning into and valuing students’ intellectual and emotional experiences in constructing, communicating, and critiquing knowledge. The project team develops educative experiences aimed at cultivating teachers’ epistemic empathy, examines the…
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Poster | CAREER: Covariational and Algebraic Reasoning: A New Path to Algebra
Project CARe’s goal is to explore how new technologies create a path into algebra that allows students to build algebraic reasoning and knowledge from their intuitive covariational reasoning, which entails conceiving two quantities changing together. For example, Project CARe explores how students can learn to solve equations by comparing two changing quantities in a dynamic digital depiction of…
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Poster | CAREER: Bridging the Digital Accessibility Gap in STEM Using Multisensory Haptic Platforms
In this project, we investigate haptic systems that are readily available for rendering visual STEM content through sight, sound, and touch. We use combinations of visual display, text-to-speech, vibrations, and the movement of one’s hands for interacting with STEM content (such as charts and graphs in math and science-based simulations) multimodally on touchscreens. Our investigations extend…
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