Access to high quality STEM education is highly variable depending on where one lives. In addition, early career teachers need support during their first years of teaching to be successful and help them stay in the profession. This project aims to provide in-service and beginning elementary school teachers increased opportunities to refine their mathematics teaching to support minoritized youth in racially diverse rural communities in Georgia that have less access to elementary mathematics specialists. This project follows and supports both beginning teachers (BTs) and elementary mathematics coaches (EMCs) over 5 years to develop and refine their mathematics teaching and coaching, respectively, using equity-based tools to guide reflection and conversations about both the BTs’ instructional practices and the EMCs’ coaching practices.
Projects
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.
A long-standing challenge for education and learning sciences is sharing the distinct knowledge bases of researchers and teachers with each other. The goal of this project is to support teachers, STEM coaches, and researchers in sharing that knowledge so that they can learn from one another.
This project leverages the role of mentor teachers to support novices’ development of pedagogical reasoning and increase the likelihood that they will be prepared to engage in responsive mathematics teaching. Mentor teachers in three differently structured teacher education programs will receive professional development aimed at making their pedagogical reasoning visible and supporting them in engaging collaboratively with novices in this type of teacher thinking. The researchers will study mentor teachers’ development of collaborative pedagogical reasoning (Co-PR) and its relationship to responsive teaching.
In this project, the investigators will explore different ways that elementary school teachers participate in online learning in a platform that includes videos, discussions, and other resources for mathematics teaching. Knowing that teachers may use the platform to different degrees depending on their interest and time available, the study will investigate how different profiles of participation influence teachers' learning.
In this project, researchers will develop and investigate a novel professional development model to support mathematics teachers’ learning of responsive pedagogies for linguistically marginalized students. Working with secondary mathematics teachers in diverse settings in North Carolina, the project team will develop a series of workshops on linguistically responsive pedagogies tailored to participants’ challenges and school contexts. In addition to these workshops, as teachers enact linguistically responsive pedagogies in their classrooms, the research team will support their learning with video-coaching.
One of the most persistent challenges in education is the gap between research and classroom practice, meaning that research-informed recommendations and practices that could support students’ mathematics learning do not always reach the classroom. Improving how mathematics-focused education research is communicated to a teacher audience—using strategies that are useful and valuable from the teacher perspective—is one key avenue for mitigating consequences of the research-practice gap. This project will develop, assess, and refine innovative key abstracts (i.e., concise, infographic-type resources) for communicating mathematics-focused practitioner articles with a teacher audience. Teacher perspectives will be embedded throughout the project to inform key abstract design. The project also involves a collaboration with the university disability center to provide funded research opportunities in STEM education to university students with disabilities.
This project will investigate the potential of a novel approach to mathematics intervention that leverages the affordances of technology and evidence-based pedagogy to improve mathematics learning for middle school students. The mathematics intervention entitled EMPIRES is a collaborative activity set in Ancient Mesopotamia that offers a multifaceted approach in which (1) rich, narrative math problems increase conceptual comprehension; (2) animated representations of mathematics concepts support mathematical understanding; (3) multiplayer collaboration leads to peer instruction and modeling; (4) simulations offer exciting challenges that increase mathematics resiliency; and (5) a bridge curriculum aids transfer of learning to multiple contexts, including traditional standardized tests.
Despite growing interest in supporting the integration of computational thinking (CT) in elementary education, there is not an agreed-upon definition of CT that is developmentally appropriate for early childhood, nor is there a clear understanding of how young children’s CT develops and which kinds of instructional approaches and practices truly support the development of CT. Early elementary educators need feasible research-based, developmentally appropriate CT curricula. This project will contribute to this critical STEM educational need by working with a design team of 5 elementary teachers to develop a research-based integrated mathematics and CT curriculum.
This project will provide rural STEM middle school teachers and career counselors professional development and the support needed to collaborate with each other and local community assets in designing, integrating, and implementing effective STEM content and career development activities. Local teams will co-develop project-based learning units that incorporate a place-based education perspective involving STEM assets, careers, and stakeholders from the local communities for middle school rural youth that intentionally infuse STEM careers in their area with STEM content.
Promoting equity-focused mathematics education requires models that will prepare and support mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs) who will question existing norms and advocate for all their students. This project will develop a model of support for middle and high school mathematics PSTs to support them in becoming critical mathematics teachers (CMTs), teachers who address the needs of diverse students, are mindful of achievement disparities, and aware of their own biases. The main objective of the project is to develop a cohesive system of support for middle and high school PSTs to become CMTs.
Realizing the potential of preschool to address historical inequities demands a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the varied ways opportunities to learn play out for individual children within and across classrooms. The goal of this project is to illuminate the variability in opportunities for mathematics learning in early childhood through capturing the experiences of individual children over time. The goal is to understand how these children navigate opportunities to participate in mathematical activity, their perspectives of what knowing and doing mathematics entails, and the resources they draw upon to engage in mathematical practices.
This project examines middle school students’ graph literacy from an asset-based perspective, documenting the ways in which students think about graphs (i.e., their cognitive strategies and intuitive insights), and the ways in which instruction can build upon that thinking in order to support the development of graph literacy. Drawing from students’ graphical representations of real-life contexts (e.g., population growth) that span various mathematical domains, this program of research will develop a holistic theoretical framework that can inform mathematics instruction in multiple content areas.
The purpose of this project is to further develop, refine, and evaluate a research-based STEM learning tool (i.e. block play) that tests theories of mathematical learning. The first objective is to empirically evaluate the impacts of different types of block play on children’s mathematics. The second objective is to evaluate the extent to which children’s mathematical language (spatial and quantitative), spatial skills, and executive function are mechanisms that link block play with children’s mathematical learning. Results from this study will contribute to the theoretical understanding of how and why block play may influence the development of early mathematics, a key component of STEM and school readiness, and will advance the research base about low-cost, feasible, and effective strategies for improving children's mathematics learning.
This comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis synthesizes evidence surrounding math and science remote education programs from the past 15 years. The goal is to understand the effectiveness of math and science remote education programs; how their effectiveness varies by program characteristics (e.g., fully online vs. hybrid, synchronous vs. asynchronous, and student-instructor ratio); and whether their effects vary with student sample characteristics.
The project is designing a web-based, district-led professional development implementation, focusing on improving mathematics discourse practices in K-2 classrooms, with particular attention to emergent multilingual learners. Building on two prior NSF-funded projects, the All Included in Mathematics K-2 New Extensions professional learning program will develop and research the impact of an augmented model for mathematics professional development on K-2 student learning through the addition of supports for coaches and leaders to the existing professional development model.
The project continues and completes the development and refinement of an electronic Test of Early Numeracy (e-TEN) in English and Spanish, focused on number and operations for young learners. The assessment incorporates a learning trajectory approach that describes students' development of the understanding of numbers. The electronic assessment allows for the test to adapt to students' responses and incorporate games increasing children's engagement with the tasks.
Three-dimensional figures can now be represented as diagrams that appear to extend into space in ways that are free of material or physical constraints. They can be rendered at any size, in any orientation, and at any position in space, and can thereby realize a far more varied set of mathematical concepts than what is possible with physical models. The goal of this project is to investigate the transformative educational potential of these representations and to generate a knowledge base that teachers, teacher educators, and researchers can use to reimagine the learning and teaching of geometry.
The project is designing a web-based, district-led professional development implementation, focusing on improving mathematics discourse practices in K-2 classrooms, with particular attention to emergent multilingual learners. Building on two prior NSF-funded projects, the All Included in Mathematics K-2 New Extensions professional learning program will develop and research the impact of an augmented model for mathematics professional development on K-2 student learning through the addition of supports for coaches and leaders to the existing professional development model.
This project will explore how children in grades K-2 understand visual representations of algebraic concepts. For instance, children might create tables or graphs to organize information about the relationship between two quantities. They might use graphs and diagrams to explain their mathematical thinking and develop their understanding of relationships in numbers and operations. The project will use data gathered in K-2 classrooms and via interviews with children to describe their use of the visual representations. This exploratory project aims to develop learning trajectories as cognitive models of how children in grades K–2 understand visual representations for algebraic relationships.
This project supports the development of a collaborative digital learning environment that embeds rich middle school mathematics tasks. The project aims to understand how students' individual and collaborative engagement in learning mathematics is enhanced by the digital platform, and how student engagement and learning is affected over the course of a year-long seventh grade course.
This project focuses on developing anti-racist mathematics teaching and learning practices that have led to inequitable school experiences for Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students. This study is a partnership with school and central office leaders from one district and educational researchers from three universities with expertise in both educational leadership and mathematics education. Partnership activities include documenting how leaders learn and develop anti-racist leadership practices and then measuring the impact on teachers’ instruction and students’ experiences.
This project focuses on developing the Adapted Measure of Math Engagement (AM-ME), a culturally sustaining self-report measure of Black and Latina/o middle school students’ mathematics engagement. By developing a measure of mathematics engagement that centers Black and Latina/o students’ experiences, this project offers insight into creating inclusive mathematics learning environments and culturally sustaining understandings of what it means to be engaged in mathematics.
This project focuses on developing the Adapted Measure of Math Engagement (AM-ME), a culturally sustaining self-report measure of Black and Latina/o middle school students’ mathematics engagement. By developing a measure of mathematics engagement that centers Black and Latina/o students’ experiences, this project offers insight into creating inclusive mathematics learning environments and culturally sustaining understandings of what it means to be engaged in mathematics.
This project aims to elaborate a structure for practice-oriented, collaborative professional development that increases the capacities for collaborative learning by facilitating teacher-to-teacher interactions within and across cultural contexts. By convening international groups of teachers to design lessons and provide and respond to commentaries on their lesson designs, the project introduces possibilities for surfacing and disrupting common experiences, assumptions, and norms in US mathematics teaching.