Projects

The aim of this project is to examine opportunity structures provided to students by inclusive STEM-focused high schools, with an emphasis on studying schools that serve students from underrepresented groups. The project is studying inclusive STEM-focused high schools across the United States to determine what defines them. The research team initially identified ten candidate critical components that define STEM-focused high schools and is refining and further clarifying the critical components through the research study.

This project is developing and testing a curricular learning progression of early algebra objectives and activities for students in grades 3 - 5. The goal of the work is to provide teachers with curricular guidance and instructional resources that are useful in preparing students for success in study of algebra at the middle grade level. The project is also developing and validating assessment tools for evaluating student progress toward essential pre-algebra mathematical understandings.

This project is designing digital games for middle school students that will help them prepare for success in Algebra. The games are intended to help students gain a deep understanding of measurement and fraction concepts that are critical as they begin to learn algebra. The project studies students' development of fraction concepts, their engagement in the tasks, and the use of hand-held devices as a useful platform for games.

This project is studying how young children in grades K-2 understand mathematical concepts that are foundational for developing algebraic thinking. Researchers are contributing to an ongoing effort to develop a learning trajectory that describes how algebraic concepts are developed. The project uses teaching experiments, with researchers talking directly to students as they explore algebraic ideas. They explore how students think about and develop concepts related to covariation, representations of functions, relationships among variable, and generalization.

This project will develop and systematically investigate a teaching model to assist teachers in developing ideas about proof in grades 2-5. The teaching model provides both a tool for learning on the part of elementary teachers and a model of practice from which they can learn as they implement it.

This project is studying the impact of implementing a NSF-funded, high school mathematics curriculum that emphasizes mathematical habits of mind. This curriculum focuses on ways of thinking and doing mathematics in contrast with curricula that focus on mathematical topics. The project is studying the development of teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and their capacity to align their instruction with the new curriculum.

This project uses items and data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) to develop two kinds of resources for preparation and professional development of secondary mathematics teachers: one in the form of prototype professional learning materials and a second in the form of PISA-based, research-grounded articles written for mathematics teachers and teacher educators. Work on both resources will focus on algebra and quantitative literacy and on factors influencing educational equity.

This project will develop three replacement units for biology and refine them through classroom testing. The units will be models of STEM integration by using the important concepts of proportional reasoning and algebraic thinking and engineering re-design to address big ideas in science while also promoting the learning of 21st century skills. The materials will be educative for teachers, and the teacher materials and professional development methods will work at scale and distance.

This project is initiating an innovative approach to pre-K students' development of quantitative reasoning through measurement. This quantitative approach builds on measurement concepts and algebraic design of the pre-numeric stage of instruction found in the Elkonin-Davydov (E-D) elementary mathematics curriculum from Russia. The project team is adapting and refocusing the conceptual framework and learning tasks of the E-D pre-numeric stage for use with four-year-olds.

The aim of this project is to explore the hypothesis that a curricular focus on quantitative reasoning in middle grades mathematics can enhance development of student skill and understanding about mathematical proof. The project is addressing that hypothesis through a series of studies that include small group teaching experiments with students, professional development work with teachers, and classroom field tests of curricular units that connect quantitative reasoning and proof in algebra.

This project is reviewing and analyzing policy documents and studies related to Algebra I learning and teaching, in order to (1) gain a better understanding of algebra education in the United States; and (2) conduct an accounting of research questions that have and have not been taken up by policy documents to date. The results are to be disseminated to both the mathematics education research community and to the education policy community.

This project focuses on practicing and preservice secondary mathematics teachers and mathematics teacher educators. The project is researching, designing, and developing materials for preservice secondary mathematics teachers that enable them to acquire the mathematical knowledge and situated rationality central to teaching, in particular as it regards the leading of mathematical discussions in classrooms.

This project operationalizes research in number, operation, and early algebra. It builds on the paradigm of Dynamic Geometry (the interactive and continuous manipulation of geometric shapes and constructions) with a new technological paradigm, Dynamic Number, centered on the direct manipulation of numerical representations and constructions. Using The Geometer’s Sketchpad as a starting point, KCP Technologies is developing new software tools to deepen students’ conceptions of number and early algebra in grades 2–8.

This research and development project provides resources for ninth-grade mathematics students and teachers by developing, piloting, and field-testing intervention modules designed as supplementary materials for Algebra 1 classes (e.g., double-period algebra). Rather than developing isolated skills and reviewing particular topics, these materials aim to foster the development of mathematical habits of mind—in particular, the algebraic habit of abstracting from calculations, a key unifying idea in the transition from arithmetic to algebra.

This project is carrying out a research and development initiative to increase the success rates of our most at-risk high school students—ninth-grade students enrolled in algebra classes but significantly underprepared for high school mathematics. It will also result in new understandings about effective approaches for teaching mathematics to struggling students and about effective ways for implementing these approaches at scale, particularly in urban school districts.

This project is using data from interviews with 160 K-12 students and 20 adults to describe common understandings and progressions of development for negative number concepts and operations. The project is motivated by the widely acknowledged finding that students have difficulty mastering key concepts and skills involved in work with integers.

This project is developing, designing, and testing materials for professional development leaders (e.g., teacher educators, district mathematics specialists, secondary mathematic department chairs) to use in their work with secondary mathematics teachers. The aim is to help those teachers analyze the discourse patterns of their own classrooms and improve their skills in creating discourse patterns that emphasize high-level mathematical explanation, justification, and argumentation.

We are analyzing the intended algebra curriculum as represented in a variety of high-school mathematics textbooks – Core Plus Mathematics Project (CPMP), Discovering Mathematics (Key Curriculum Press), EDC's Center for Mathematics Education, Glencoe, Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP), and University of Chicago School Mathematics Project (UCSMP). The textbook analysis is based on two dimensions frequently used for curriculum analysis: a content dimension and a cognitive dimension.

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.

The purpose of Project Delta is two-fold: (1) to extend an existing library of 17 interacting CD-ROM digital learning environments on numbers and operations by adding an algebra strand, and (2) to evaluate the impact of the new algebra materials on teacher development. Each of the digital environments features classroom sessions that allow for exploration of a mathematics topic, children learning over time, and teachers? instructional techniques.

The purpose of this project is to create a research-based model of how students with learning disabilities (LDs) develop multiplicative reasoning via reform-oriented pedagogy; convert the model into a computer system that dynamically models every students’ evolving conceptions and recommends tasks to promote their advancement to higher level, standard-based multiplicative structures and operations; and study how this tool impacts student outcomes.

This project develops and researches the academic potential of a hybrid instructional model that infuses computer simulations, modeling, and educational gaming into middle school technology education programs. These prototypical materials use 3-D simulations and educational gaming to support students’ learning of STEM content and skills through developing solutions to design challenges.

This project studies teaching practices in a year-long high school algebra course that integrates hand-held and other electronic devices. Of particular interest is how these technologies can support learners' capacity to efficiently and effectively draw on the distributed intelligences that technical and social networks make available. The investigation focuses on collaborative learning tasks centered on collective mathematical objects, such as functions, expressions, and coordinates that participants in a group must jointly manipulate through networked computers.

This project’s overarching goal is to evaluate the assessment components embedded within two NSF-supported mathematics curricula: Everyday Mathematics and Math Trailblazers. The investigators will apply a comprehensive validity perspective that integrates a variety of empirical evidence regarding the cognitive, psychometric, and instructional affordances of multiple assessments embedded in these curricula as part of their overall instructional design.

EDC is developing a high school capstone course in linear algebra. Student resources contain a core semester that develops two- and three-dimensional geometry using vectors and that treats matrix algebra and its applications to geometry; a semester of material that completes a typical undergraduate course (exploring bases, determinants and eigentheory); and 5 stand-alone modules that develop applications of this core to mathematics, engineering, science, and other STEM fields.