Middle school students need to understand complex scientific systems through language-intensive science practices, such as developing models and analyzing data. While many students struggle with science practices, the challenges are amplified for ELs who are simultaneously developing proficiency in English.

To support all students in linguistically diverse science classrooms, we partner with eighth-grade science and ESL teachers to develop, test, and refine inquiry-based science materials featuring interactive, dynamic visualizations in physical and life sciences.

Our visualizations explicitly depict unobservable processes, such as relationships between energy, matter, and physical states, while providing students with multiple representations of content (e.g., molecular and macro animations, text, dynamic graphs, and symbols) to help reduce linguistic barriers to science learning.

Our visualizations are supported by scaffolding approaches, such as automated feedback and prediction-reflection prompts, to engage ELs in discourse-rich science practices. For example, students design virtual experiments exploring photosynthesis and cellular respiration by using simulations to explore content, analyze data, and reflect on their work to develop written explanations. Students also use modeling tools to develop visual models of abstract phenomena, such as how water molecules move during a phase change. Automated feedback helps students revise their models and link macro to micro changes.

The UJIMA project expands our understanding of the mathematical development of Black youth as a demographic, as well as the curricular supports that can move a mathematics identity from a private, neutral, and implicit space into a public, political, explicit space of learning.

Students’ success in algebra is a key factor for college admission and the potential access that a college degree offers for the future (Moses, 1995). Unfortunately, many students are not succeeding in algebra classes. Research over the past decade has shown that not only can young children think algebraically, but encouraging them to do so is beneficial to future learning of formal algebra.

In order to capitalize on this emergent algebraic thinking, however, grade 6-8 teachers of pre-algebra and algebra courses need to be able to recognize opportunities to elicit the algebraic character of arithmetic and pre-algebraic thinking during instruction. Work in this area has begun. Blanton and Kaput (2003) discuss developing teachers “algebra eyes and ears,” and in prior work I discuss developing teachers’ attention to children’s algebraic thinking. However, this work has primarily focused on children’s ideas as expressed verbally or in writing. Focusing only on verbal and written expression of ideas has limitations, especially for English learners and students who are neurodiverse.

In this project, I will investigate teachers’ attention to multimodal student algebraic thinking and design and investigate a video club PD that uses novel video annotation tools to help support teachers’ multimodal noticing.