Projects

The purpose of this project is to gather, analyze, and synthesize mathematics and science education research studies published from 1988 to the present that have investigated different approaches to supporting students in grades 6-14 in learning to analyze, interpret, and reason about data.

This project is developing, testing, and evaluating a diversity-enhanced, STEM-based, professional development workshop for high school teachers and career guidance counselors. The project team is developing educational materials and running workshops that focus on pedagogical methods for incorporating hands-on activities into STEM classrooms in order to expose all students to technology and engineering. The long-term goal is to broaden and increase the diversity of students entering engineering-based college degree programs.

This project studies the impact of emphasizing formative assessment strategies in concurrent undergraduate methods courses and STEM content courses on the subsequent teaching practices of these pre-service teachers and their students. The study focuses on future middle school STEM teachers. The mixed methods research design will examine the impact of the treatment on teachers' practices during their practicum and induction years and on the STEM achievement of their middle school students.

This project tests the efficacy of an intensive, three year professional development program, the BSCS National Academy for Curriculum Leadership (NACL) on student science achievement in the state of Washington. The goal of the NACL is to develop the capacity of district-based secondary science leadership teams to sustain the implementation of research-based science instructional materials that promote improvement in teaching and learning.

The purpose of this project is to develop, implement and test a professional development program, SOAR for Math, to build capacity for mentors and teachers to improve English learner's academic language development and mathematical content understanding.

This project is creating a system of online and face-to-face support services to strengthen the teaching and learning of Algebra II. The resources will make use of technology, will differentiate support for teachers in various stages of their careers and will aim to serve teachers of under-achieving populations of students. Support will be provided for four critical aspects of a teacher's work: Instructional planning, instructional delivery, instructional outcomes assessment and professional capacity development.

This project convenes a conference to develop a cadre of African American science education faculty to research issues surrounding the teaching and learning of science. This cadre of faculty will develop a research agenda, submit grant proposals for funding, and submit manuscripts for publication. The overall goal of this project is to improve K-12 teaching and learning by faculty development of the research scholarship of African American science educators in the United States.

This project will develop 15 modules for high school students that connect biology, computation, and mathematics with corresponding teacher materials and professional development activities. The modules will draw on an approach to biological phenomena as involving information processing, in three illustrative areas conducive to learning at the high school level: Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Mathematical Methods in Epidemiology, and Mathematical Methods in Ecology.

This project continues research and development work on high school instructional materials that integrate biology, computing, and mathematics. The project goal is to develop and test a one-semester high school course. The course consists of some modules developed under a previous NSF grant as well as some new material. Intended deliverables include up to five new instructional modules and a coherent one-semester course suitable for the increasing state requirements for a fourth year of mathematics.

This project is designed to assist K-3 teachers in teaching life and physical science for conceptual understanding. It integrates videos, stills and voice-over into one multimedia web-based tool. The program provides teachers with experiences in understanding details related to the \"how\" of high quality science teaching. The professional development activities illuminate what happens in planning and in arranging science classrooms to promote student learning.

This project will develop and test an education partnership model focusing on climate change (The Climate Lab) that features inquiry-oriented and place-based learning. The project will develop a curriculum that will provide opportunities for middle school students and teachers to compare their locally collected data with historic data to create unique and powerful learning opportunities. 

This project will develop and test an education partnership model focusing on climate change (The Climate Lab) that features inquiry-oriented and place-based learning. The project will develop a curriculum that will provide opportunities for middle school students and teachers to compare their locally collected data with historic data to create unique and powerful learning opportunities.

The Coaching Cycle project is creating an online course for K–8 mathematics instructional coaches. The project targets coaches in rural areas and small schools who do not have access to regular district-wide professional development. It provides training in the skills needed for effective instructional coaching in mathematics by using artifacts collected by practicing coaches to engage course participants in the practice of coaching skills.

This project is developing and conducting research on the Cohort Model for addressing the mathematics education of students that perform in the bottom quartile on state and district tests. The predicted outcome is that most students will remain in the cohort for all four years and that almost all of those who do will perform well enough on college entrance exams to be admitted and will test out of remedial mathematics courses.

This project will investigate the development and emergence of spatial gender stereotypes (and their relation to math gender stereotypes) in elementary school-aged children and their impact on parent-child interactions in the pre-school period.

In this project, investigators are laying the foundation for a rigorous quasi-experiment to test the effects of attending such a school using longitudinal student records, surveys, and interviews. By documenting survey response rates, student location rates, and rates for successful matching of student administrative and survey data, this project is demonstrating that it is possible to collect data that would enable a large-scale study to be launched with the necessary instruments and experience in hand.

This synthesis study includes a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis of research published since 2001 evaluating the impact of family engagement interventions on student STEM outcomes. The goal of this project is to (a) determine the effectiveness of family engagement interventions on STEM outcomes, (b) identify practices/components within interventions that are most effective for promoting STEM outcomes, and (c) reveal the extent to which the effects of family engagement interventions vary as a function of study quality and/or certain child, family, and community characteristics.

This project develops a series of interactive on-line games and investigates the effect these games have on increasing middle school science students' and teachers' knowledge and skills of scientific argumentation. There are four areas of argumentation addressed by the games: (1) understanding a claim, (2) judging the evidence about a claim based on type and quality (objectivity, reliability or validity), (3) analyzing the reasoning applied to the claim, and (4) evaluating the claim.

This conference showcases and analyzes progressive ideas about curriculum, teaching, assessment, and technology in high school and early college mathematics. The conference brings together leaders of state and local school system mathematics programs, mathematicians, curriculum developers, educational researchers, and education policy makers for in-depth discussion of the challenges and opportunities for innovation in high school mathematics.

This project is developing and testing a website, software application, and supplemental instructional materials that use publicly accessible genomics data to foster scientific inquiry among high schools students. Outcomes for students and teachers include developing knowledge, skills, and understandings related to genetic inheritance; data investigation and analysis; the process of scientific inquiry; and collaboration.

This study will build upon the team's prior research from early in the pandemic. Researchers will continue to collect data from families and aims to understand parents’ perspectives on the educational impacts of COVID-19 by leveraging a nationally representative, longitudinal study, the Understanding America Study (UAS). The study will track educational experiences during the Spring and Summer of 2021 and into the 2021-22 school year.

Building on the team's prior research from early in the pandemic, this project team will continue to collect data from families and aims to understand parents’ perspectives on the educational impacts of COVID-19 by leveraging a nationally representative, longitudinal study, the Understanding America Study (UAS). The study will track educational experiences during the spring and summer of 2022 and into the 2022-23 school year. The team will analyze student and family overall and for key demographic groups of interest as schooling during the pandemic continues. This RAPID project allows critically important data to continue to be collected and contribute to continued understanding of the impacts of and responses to the pandemic by American families.

In this project researchers are implementing and studying a research-based curriculum that was designed to help children in grades 3-5 prepare for learning algebra at the middle school level. Researchers are investigating the impact of a long-term, comprehensive early algebra experience on students as they proceed from third grade to sixth grade. Researchers are working to build a learning progression that describes how algebraic concepts develop and mature from early grades through high school.

In this project researchers are implementing and studying a research-based curriculum that was designed to help children in grades 3-5 prepare for learning algebra at the middle school level. Researchers are investigating the impact of a long-term, comprehensive early algebra experience on students as they proceed from third grade to sixth grade. Researchers are working to build a learning progression that describes how algebraic concepts develop and mature from early grades through high school.

This project is designed to enhance understanding of how online professional development environments contribute to teach learning, changes in classroom practice and changes in student learning in comparison to face-to-face professional development. Using secondary school teachers learning to use a reformed-oriented environmental science curriculum, groups of teachers will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) traditional face-to-face workshop, (2)self-guided online professional development, or (3)online “short course” professional development guided by a facilitator.