Projects

This project brings together teams of teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and researchers to inquire into the development of ambitious and equitable practices that support learning the scientific practices and creating scaffolds for the special language demands of the scientific practices, particularly for English Language Learners.

Partnership development between universities and school districts requires an understanding that each organization has a distinct institutional point of view that must be considered in defining and shaping collaborative work. The goals and objectives of each organization may not always align, and at times may compete or conflict with each other. With the understanding that successful partnerships are those where practitioners and researchers achieve high levels of trust, commitment, transparency, interdependence, and mutual benefit, this project centers on building a partnership between a university that serves a largely Hispanic student population and a rural school district that also serves a community that has long been underrepresented in STEM education and career opportunities. The partners will jointly focus on how to respond to three negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic: 1) limited access to quality learning opportunities, 2) increased student learning gaps in STEM subjects, and 3) a local teacher shortage.

This project will bring locally relevant virtual reality (VR) experiences to teachers and students in areas where there is historically low participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM. This exploratory project will support the professional growth and development of current middle and high school STEM teachers by providing multiyear summer training and school year support around environmental sciences themed content, implementing VR in the classroom, and development of a support community for the teachers.

This project will address widespread misunderstandings related to evolution by developing and testing a new high school curriculum unit and assessment measures focusing on biological evolution.  The new curriculum will integrate the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards, the Common Core Mathematics standards on reasoning abstractly and quantitatively, and an English Language Arts standard for writing arguments focused on discipline-specific content. 

The University of Utah will develop a plan for a model curriculum and associated assessments project that integrates science practices, crosscutting concepts, and core disciplinary ideas through the integration of mathematics and science and the application of appropriate educational technologies. The unit plan and prototype lessons will model ways in which quantitative literacy and the Common Core Standards of Mathematics can be addressed in the biology curriculum.

This project will use visualizations from an easily accessible tool from NOAA, Science On a Sphere, to help students develop critical thinking skills and practices required to effectively make meaning from authentic scientific data. The project will use arts-based pedagogies for observing, analyzing, and critiquing visual features of data visualizations to build an understanding of what the data reveal. The project will work with middle school science teachers to develop tools for STEM educators to use these data visualizations effectively.

This project will develop and test the impact of heredity and evolution curriculum units for middle school grades that are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The project will advance science teaching by investigating the ways in which two curriculum units can be designed to incorporate science and engineering practices, cross-cutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas, the three dimensions of science learning described by the NGSS. The project will also develop resources to support teachers in implementation of the new modules.

The goal of this planning grant is to explicitly focus on broadening participation in the K-12 STEM teaching workforce, with the theory of action that diversifying the K-12 STEM teaching workforce would in the long term help more students see STEM as accessible to them and then be more likely to choose a STEM degree or career.

This project will focus on a networked improvement community (NIC) model of professional learning that shifts K-5 science instruction from traditional approaches to a three-dimensional design as outlined in the Next Generation Science Standards. The project will feature a multi-level model involving university educators and researchers and school district practitioners in an effort to co-defined problems of practice valuable to both parties. A mixed methods research design will examine how the NIC model develops professional capital through changes in implementation over multiple iteration.

This project augments an NCES data collection effort for the High School Longitudinal Study by including 150 additional schools in up to 10 selected states to create state representative samples of at least 40 schools in each state. The purpose of this augmentation is to provide support for additional schools to create state samples. NSF will also be involved in planning for future surveys of these students as they reach college age.

This project develops tools and materials that address the need schools have to implement results-oriented teacher learning programs that ensure highly qualified science teachers in every classroom. The project will (1) develop and disseminate the Building Systems for Quality Teaching and Learning in Science Simulation and Facilitator Guide, and (2) develop and disseminate three Building Systems for Science Learning Modules.

The primary purpose of this international conference was for participants in the US to exchange views and discuss the latest research findings on (primary) science assessment. The conference focused on research around building assessment systems that help teachers diagnose student learning in the classroom but also link meaningfully to large-scale accountability systems (in districts or national levels). The project resulted in a report, proceedings, journal publications.

This project has pioneered simulation-based assessments of model-based science learning and inquiry practices for middle school physical and life science systems. The assessment suites include curriculum-embedded, formative assessments that provide  immediate, individualized feedback and graduated coaching with supporting reflection activities as well as summative end-of-unit benchmark assessments. The project has documented the instructional benefits, feasibility, utility, and technical quality of the assessments with over 7,000 students and 80 teachers in four states.

This project covers participants' costs to attend a national conference series focusing upon supporting incipient science education research projects. A primary objective is to provide a venue in which researchers can describe their lines of inquiry and to then receive guidance and input about refining those ambitions. The other primary objective is to promote an innovative conference design in which a structured presentation format serves as an incubator for scholarly work.

Teachers are extraordinarily important to student learning, but researchers have surprisingly little data about what teachers do moment-to-moment with students. What are the instructional moves and improvisational responses that characterize highly effective practice? To better understand and support U.S. K-12 STEM teachers, this Incubator project will develop a network of "tutor observatories." Tutor observatories are learning environments that record teacher engagements with students along with information about the context of the interaction. From these data, researchers will be able to gain a deeper understanding of STEM teacher practice, identify highly effective practices, and develop training data that can inform a new generation of artificially intelligent tools to support teachers and student learning.

STEM learning is a function of both student level and classroom level characteristics. Though research efforts often focus on the impacts of classrooms level features, much of the variation in student outcomes is at the student level. Hence it is critical to consider individual students and how their developmental systems (e.g., emotion, cognition, relational, attention, language) interact to influence learning in classroom settings. This is particularly important in developing effective models for personalized learning. To date, efforts to individualize curricula, differentiate instruction, or leverage formative assessment lack an evidence base to support innovation and impact. Tools are needed to describe individual-level learning processes and contexts that support them. The proposed network will incubate and pilot a laboratory classroom to produce real-time metrics on behavioral, neurological, physiological, cognitive, and physical data at individual student and teacher levels, reflecting the diverse dynamics of classroom experiences that co-regulate learning for all students.

This project will investigate whether six urban middle schools are implementing highly effective science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs based on factors identified through relevant research and national reports on what constitutes exemplary practices in 21st century-focused schools.

This project examines the empirical nexus between ELL students' language identity and science identity development. The project addresses the pressing need for empirical studies that combine theoretical perspectives from second language education, linguistics, and science education to understand science identity development among ELLs.

This project investigates how to use new touch technologies, like touchscreens, to create graphics and simulations that can be felt, heard, and seen. Using readily available, low-cost systems, the principal investigator will investigate how to map visual information to touch and sound for students with visual impairments.

This project will aim to investigate how to increase equitable and active participation of diverse students' science learning in middle schools. The central premise of this study will be that building upon and integrating diverse students' funds of knowledge into their learning opportunities would contribute to create equitable access to effective participation.

The goal of this project is to improve the quality of middle school science in a select number of schools and to gain insight into effective science professional development practice more generally. The project will focus on the following objectives: (1) increasing the quantity and quality of inquiry-based instruction; (2) facilitating the development and implementation of inquiry-based instruction; and (3) improving student achievement in middle school science classrooms.

There have been prominent and widespread calls for high school science students to work with data in more complex ways that better align with and support the work of professional scientists and engineers. However, high school students' analysis and interpretation of scientific data is often limited in scope, complexity, and authentic purpose. This project aims to support and advance students' work with ecological data in high school biology classrooms by embracing a new approach: Bayesian data analysis methods. Such methods involve expressing initial ideas or beliefs and updating them quantitatively with data that students access or record. This project will empower 20 high school teachers and their approximately 1,200 students to make sense of data within and beyond classroom contexts. It also will involve sharing research findings, an educational technology tool for Bayesian data analysis, and curricular resources in open and accessible ways.

Environmental issues like wildfires can serve as effective science learning contexts to promote scientific literacy and citizenship. This project will partner with teachers, teacher educators, and disciplinary experts in data science, fire ecology, public health, and environmental communication to co-design a data-driven, justice-oriented, and issue-based unit on wildfires. In the unit, student will engage in various data practices to gain insights into the issue of wildfires and how it affects their lives and communities. The project seeks to theorize how learners can leverage disciplinary knowledge and practices in environmental and data science as a foundation for making data-informed actions towards a more just and sustainable society.

This CAREER award aims to study the construct of "epistemic empathy" and examine how it can be cultivated in science and mathematics teacher education, how it functions to promote responsive teaching, and how it shapes learners' engagement in the classroom. In the context of this project, epistemic empathy is defined as the act of understanding and appreciating another's cognitive and emotional experience within an epistemic activity aimed at the construction, communication, and critique of knowledge.

Students of color must have access to robust and meaningful opportunities to learn science in classrooms that center their assets and humanity. This project aims to cultivate such spaces through designing and studying teacher professional learning focused on pedagogical practices that engage students of color meaningfully in science learning. These practices leverage students’ assets to foster growth in science and scientific habits of mind. This project will support pre-service and practicing teachers in developing tools for practice and reflection that focus on equity and highlighting the assets of students of color in secondary science.