This project investigates young children’s mathematical learning from preschool to kindergarten (ages 3-6). Data include video documenting children’s participation in instructional activities (e.g., Counting Collections), field notes, photographs, and interviews with children and teachers. Following individuals contributes to our understanding of the varied ways children navigate opportunities to participate in mathematics, their perspectives of what knowing and doing mathematics entails, and the resources they draw upon to engage in mathematical practices.

This design research project is focused on studying secondary mathematics teachers' development of critical statistical literacies for doing and teaching statistics through a professional learning community over three years. The research side of the project is focused on developing humble theories of learning and instructional resources. The educational side of the project is focused on developing teacher leaders and translating what we are learning from research into university courses and other professional development settings. 

Building Insights Through Observation is a project designed to advance our understanding of how science teachers can learn to incorporate arts-based teaching methods and visualizations of authentic science data into their pedagogical practices in order to improve students’ data literacy and critical thinking skills. This project uses geospatial visualizations along with arts-based pedagogies for observing visual features of data visualizations to develop critical thinking skills and practices required to effectively make meaning from scientific data.

Our poster addresses the focal area of Building Partnerships and Collaborating, by examining how the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and Fabens Independent School District (FISD) partnership was created and how collaboration developed among the partners. We examine the implementation of Liberating Structures to develop authentic relationships, establish interaction norms, and open and transparent communication. These three elements of our partnership development resulted in flattening the traditional hierarchy often present in research-practice partnerships.

This research project aims to enhance elementary teacher education in science and computational thinking pedagogy through the use of Culturally Relevant Teaching, i.e. teaching in ways that are relevant to students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The project will support 60 elementary teachers in summer professional development and consistent learning opportunities during the school year to learn about and enact culturally relevant computational thinking into their science instruction.

This research project aims to enhance elementary teacher education in science and computational thinking pedagogy through the use of Culturally Relevant Teaching, i.e. teaching in ways that are relevant to students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The project will support 60 elementary teachers in summer professional development and consistent learning opportunities during the school year to learn about and enact culturally relevant computational thinking into their science instruction.