Projects

This project lays the foundation and framework for enabling digital, multimodal tactile graphics on touchscreens for individuals with visual impairments (VI). Given the low-cost, portability, and wide availability of touchscreens, this work promotes the use of vibrations and sounds on these readily available platforms for addressing the graphical access challenge for individuals with VI. An open-source vibration library has been created and fundamental perceptual building blocks (e.g.\ shapes, lines, critical points, line width and gaps, etc.) guiding how basic graphical components should be rendered on these platforms is being disseminated.

This project lays the foundation and framework for enabling digital, multimodal tactile graphics on touchscreens for individuals with visual impairments (VI). Given the low-cost, portability, and wide availability of touchscreens, this work promotes the use of vibrations and sounds on these readily available platforms for addressing the graphical access challenge for individuals with VI. An open-source vibration library has been created and fundamental perceptual building blocks (e.g.\ shapes, lines, critical points, line width and gaps, etc.) guiding how basic graphical components should be rendered on these platforms is being disseminated.

This project lays the foundation and framework for enabling digital, multimodal tactile graphics on touchscreens for individuals with visual impairments (VI). Given the low-cost, portability, and wide availability of touchscreens, this work promotes the use of vibrations and sounds on these readily available platforms for addressing the graphical access challenge for individuals with VI. An open-source vibration library has been created and fundamental perceptual building blocks (e.g.\ shapes, lines, critical points, line width and gaps, etc.) guiding how basic graphical components should be rendered on these platforms is being disseminated.

In this project, Student Reporting Labs will develop an online curriculum delivery platform called StoryMaker and a unique set of tools called Storymaker:STEM that will supply in-demand interdisciplinary, multi-modal, STEM-infused teaching and learning tools to classrooms across the country. The project aims to produce unique STEM stories from a teen perspective and partners with local public media stations to provide mentorship and amplify the voices of young people.

The goal of this project is to investigate the extent to which individual differences in informal fraction-related knowledge in first-grade children are associated with short- and longer-term fractions and math outcomes, and to see whether there is a causal link between level of informal fraction-related knowledge and the ability to profit from fractions instruction that directly builds on this knowledge.

The goal of this project is to investigate the extent to which individual differences in informal fraction-related knowledge in first-grade children are associated with short- and longer-term fractions and math outcomes, and to see whether there is a causal link between level of informal fraction-related knowledge and the ability to profit from fractions instruction that directly builds on this knowledge.

PATHWAYS has two primary objectives: (1) To develop mathematics teachers who approach classrooms with a researcher's mindset, making instructional decisions based on empirical data; (2) To engage aspiring mathematics teachers in systematic formal mathematics education research, thereby providing foundations for participation in mathematics education graduate programs.

The goal of this project is to develop and study a mathematics partnership that engages multilingual children, their teachers, and their parents in mathematical experiences together. The project will design professional learning opportunities for parents, teachers, and students, and study the ways in which the professional learning opportunities influence teacher beliefs, quality of instruction, parent beliefs, and teacher and parent understanding of positioning.

The goal of this project is to develop and study a mathematics partnership that engages multilingual children, their teachers, and their parents in mathematical experiences together. The project will design professional learning opportunities for parents, teachers, and students, and study the ways in which the professional learning opportunities influence teacher beliefs, quality of instruction, parent beliefs, and teacher and parent understanding of positioning.

The goal of this project is to develop and study a mathematics partnership that engages multilingual children, their teachers, and their parents in mathematical experiences together. The project will design professional learning opportunities for parents, teachers, and students, and study the ways in which the professional learning opportunities influence teacher beliefs, quality of instruction, parent beliefs, and teacher and parent understanding of positioning.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across much of the U.S. have been closed since mid-March of 2020 and many students have been attempting to continue their education away from schools. Student experiences across the country are likely to be highly variable depending on a variety of factors at the individual, home, school, district, and state levels. This project will use two, nationally representative, existing databases of high school students to study their experiences in STEM education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study intends to ascertain whether students are taking STEM courses in high school, the nature of the changes made to the courses, and their plans for the fall. The researchers will identify the electronic learning platforms in use, and other modifications made to STEM experiences in formal and informal settings. The study is particularly interested in finding patterns of inequities for students in various demographic groups underserved in STEM and who may be most likely to be affected by a hiatus in formal education.

This project addresses the fundamental challenge of how to support teachers to improve their practice. The approach uses a "live mathematics classroom" as a common text for working on practice, where participants are not only watching and discussing but are engaged in developing and learning practice. The project will generate new knowledge regarding ways in which elementary teachers of mathematics can be supported to learn effective teaching practice.

This project will develop, pilot, and refine a set of coordinated and complementary activities that teacher education programs can use in both online and face-to-face settings to provide practice-based opportunities for preservice teachers to develop their ability to facilitate argumentation-focused discussions in mathematics and science.

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 study targets elementary schools with a documented achievement gap between White American and African American students and investigates: (a) the ways K-2 teachers draw upon their current knowledge (mathematical, cultural, pedagogical) to make sense of African American students' conceptions; (b) how teachers might advance their practice through understanding of the relationship between students' cultural experiences and mathematical conceptions; and (c) to what extent this advancement brings forth solid foundations in mathematics among all students.

This workshop aimed to develop a consensus on the best methods for selecting the most important outcomes of NSF’s mathematics and science education funding over the past few decades and for assessing the impacts of these outcomes. Issues addressed included how to select the NSF programs to be assessed; which persons should be interviewed; which methodologies should be used to assess program impact; and how data would be gathered, organized, reported, and disseminated.

This conference will combine the annual meetings of three North Dakota organizations that focus on the development of a STEM-literate workforce to foster positive interaction and support for math and science educators in preparing their students for the workforce of tomorrow. The program will involve a statewide collaboration of higher education faculty and staff, state government and local community leaders, K-12 administrators and teachers, informal educators, and representatives of local STEM-related business and industry.

This project will develop, test, and refine a curriculum supplement (a hands-on technology) that (1) promotes childrens' understanding of number (counting, comparing, and ordering) and fair sharing (equipartitioning); (2) uses interactive media on an emerging handheld platform (touch screen tablets), integrating new multi-touch activities with existing hands-on activities; (3) enhances opportunities for learning with interactive media through shared use with adult guides and peers; and (4) provides professional and technical support materials for preschool educators.

The Conference Board for the Mathematical Sciences (CBMS) is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Education to host a forum in Washington, DC designed to launch action for change in mathematics education based on the recommendations of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. This forum will focus specifically on the following four areas: teachers and teacher education, learning processes, instructional material, and standards of evidence—research policies and mechanisms.

This conference uses Student Evaluation Standards, published by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, to engage a broad array of educational organizations in improving student achievement in STEM education through better evaluation practices that assess for learning. Participants learn more about the Student Evaluation Standards and use them together with a benchmarking process - distributed to them in the form of a toolkit - to enhance student evaluation processes.

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 recruited high school African American males to begin preparation for science, technology, engineering and mathematics teaching careers. The goal of the program was to recruit and prepare students for careers in secondary mathematics and science teaching thus increasing the number of African Americans students in STEM. The research will explore possible reasons why the program is or is not successful for recruiting and retaining students in STEM Teacher Education programs  

This project is conducting a comprehensive study of professional development models designed for mathematics teachers in grades K-12. The research team will identify key constructs and frameworks within professional development programs and identify types of professional development models. The goals of the project are to encourage researchers and professional developers to reconceptualize mathematics professional development, develop a shared language, and renew discussions on effective professional development for teachers of mathematics.

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.

In this project, we examine middle-school students’ understandings of coordinate systems and frames of reference prior to examining their graph construction and interpretation. This focus allows us to design instructional materials that can support students’ graphing understandings in ways that avoid or mitigate how persistent challenges in students’ graphing understandings identified in the research literature.