Projects

This project explores how secondary mathematics teachers can plan and enact learning experiences that spur student curiosity, captivate students with complex mathematical content, and compel students to engage and persevere (referred to as "mathematically captivating learning experiences" or "MCLEs"). The study will examine how high school teachers can design lessons so that mathematical content itself is the source of student intrigue, pursuit, and passion. To do this, the content within mathematical lessons (both planned and enacted) is framed as mathematical stories and the felt tension between how information is revealed and withheld from students as the mathematical story unfolds is framed as its mathematical plot.

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 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.

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 study seeks to describe trajectories that describe the ways in which Black learners develop as particular kinds of mathematical learners. The study takes place in the context of an established, multi-year college bridge program that has as its goals to increase the representation of historically marginalized groups in the university community.

This project will contribute new knowledge on two aspects of participation in mathematics education. First, this research aims to understand how perceptions of race influence how teachers, future teachers, and researchers assess how bilingual children use their languages and movement to participate in mathematical activity. Second, it will explore ways to counter deficit views that influence teachers’, preservice teachers’, and researchers’ perceptions of these multiple ways of participating as inferior to what is traditionally considered as meaningful participation.

The aim of this project is to enact and study a process in which middle school teachers of mathematics and visual arts co-design and teach activities that combine math and art to teach data science.

The aim of this project is to enact and study a process in which middle school teachers of mathematics and visual arts co-design and teach activities that combine math and art to teach data science.

This project aims to enact and study the co-design of classroom activities by mathematics and visual arts teachers to promote middle school students' data literacy.

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 workshop provides minority serving institutions with an opportunity to engage in dialogue about effective ways to create, implement, and evaluate models of intervention that will advance knowledge about retaining underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. It will advance knowledge in life science and the biosciences for K-12 and undergraduate students attending local schools or eligible minority-serving institutions. The workshop will focus on assisting minority serving institutions with use of research designs, and review of best practices for intervention shown to be effective in helping underrepresented student cope with chronic stresses that interfere with their retention in STEM fields and careers.

This project will address the pressing national need to generate shared, practice-based knowledge about how to implement freely available, high-quality instructional resources (mathematics formative assessment lessons) that have been shown to produce significant gains in student learning outcomes. It will expand a professional development model (Analyzing Instruction in Mathematics using the Teaching for Robust Understanding Framework (AIM-TRU)) that supports teacher learning about effective lesson implementation.

This project will address the pressing national need to generate shared, practice-based knowledge about how to implement freely available, high-quality instructional resources (mathematics formative assessment lessons) that have been shown to produce significant gains in student learning outcomes. It will expand a professional development model (Analyzing Instruction in Mathematics using the Teaching for Robust Understanding Framework (AIM-TRU)) that supports teacher learning about effective lesson implementation.

This project will address the pressing national need to generate shared, practice-based knowledge about how to implement freely available, high-quality instructional resources (mathematics formative assessment lessons) that have been shown to produce significant gains in student learning outcomes. It will expand a professional development model (Analyzing Instruction in Mathematics using the Teaching for Robust Understanding Framework (AIM-TRU)) that supports teacher learning about effective lesson implementation.

The purpose of this project is to develop and conduct initial studies of a multi-grade program targeting critical early math concepts. The project is designed to address equitable access to mathematics and STEM learning for all students, including those with or at-risk for learning disabilities and underrepresented groups.

The purpose of this project is to rigorously test the efficacy of the Precision Mathematics First-Grade (PM-1) intervention on the mathematics outcomes of English learners (ELs) who face mathematics difficulties (MD). The PM-1 intervention is designed to support students with or at risk for MD in developing a robust understanding of the underlying concepts, problem-solving skills, and vocabulary of early measurement and statistical investigation. This study will examine student response to the PM-1 intervention based on variables such as students' initial mathematics skill levels and proficiency in English, and explore how the rate and quality of mathematics discourse opportunities for ELs may predict gains in mathematics outcomes.

The project will use a comprehensive mixed methods design to develop theoretically-grounded measures of student engagement in middle school math and science classes that reflect a multidimensional construct within an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of urban youth. The project conceptualizes student engagement as a multidimensional construct including behavioral, emotional, and cognitive components. This multidimensional perspective of student engagement provides a rich characterization of how students act, feel, and think.

This project will study if, how, and under what circumstances an integration of literacy strategies, hands-on inquiry-based investigations, and planetarium experiences supports the development of science practices (noticing, recognizing change, making predictions, and constructing explanations) in early elementary level students. The project will generate knowledge about how astronomy-focused storybooks, hands-on investigations, and planetarium experiences can be integrated to develop age-appropriate science practices in very young children.

This project will study the activities of a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) as a vehicle to bridge gaps across four identified steps along the science teacher training and development pathways within local contexts of 8 participating universities. The overarching goal of the project is to strengthen the capacity of universities and school districts to reliably produce teachers of science who are knowledgeable about and can effectively enact the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), although prepared in varied organizational contexts.

This project will scale up, implement, and assess the efficacy of interventions in K-12 mathematics education based on the well-established Algebra Project (AP) pedagogical framework, which seeks to improve performance and participation in mathematics of students in distressed school districts, particularly low-income students from underserved populations.

This project will examine how partnerships among state science leaders, education researchers and education practitioners cultivate vertical coherence and equity in state science education.

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 involves designing, facilitating, and studying professional development (PD) to support equitable mathematics education. The PD will involve grades 4-8 mathematics teachers across three sites to support the design of a two-week institute focused on enhancing access and agency in relationship to important math practices, followed by ongoing interactions for the math teachers to engage in systematic inquiry of their practice over time to facilitate equitable mathematics teaching and learning in their classrooms.

The purpose of this project is to develop and refine an innovative Google-platform based application called CORGI for use with middle school students in physical, life, and earth science classrooms. The new version, CORGI_2, will include supports for content learning and higher order thinking and will pair with the cloud-based applications of the Google environment to offer multiple means of representation, response and engagement as well as videos, models, supports for decoding, and supports for background knowledge.