Projects

This project is developing inquiry-based, lab-focused, online Climate Change EarthLabs modules as a context for ongoing research into how high school students grasp change over time in the Earth System on multiple time scales. This project examines the challenges to high-school students' understanding of Earth's complex systems, operating over various temporal and spatial scales, and by developing research-based insights into effective educational tools and approaches that support learning about climate change and Earth Systems Science.

This project is developing inquiry-based, lab-focused, online Climate Change EarthLabs modules as a context for ongoing research into how high school students grasp change over time in the Earth System on multiple time scales. This project examines the challenges to high-school students' understanding of Earth's complex systems, operating over various temporal and spatial scales, and by developing research-based insights into effective educational tools and approaches that support learning about climate change and Earth Systems Science.

This project is developing, validating, and evaluating computer modeling-based formative assessments to improve student learning in chemistry. Activities include developing a series of computer models related to key topics in high school chemistry, developing questions to probe student understanding of matter and energy, identifying teaching and learning resources appropriate for different levels of student conceptual understanding, and developing professional development resources on integrating formative assessments into high school chemistry courses.

This project is developing Earth and Space Science multimedia educative curriculum materials (MECMs) and a system to facilitate teachers' learning and beliefs of scientific argumentation. The project is investigating the impact of the MECMs on teachers' beliefs about scientific argumentation and their related pedagogical content knowledge. The overarching research question focuses on how can multimedia educative curriculum materials provide support to middle school science teachers in implementing standards for constructing and critiquing arguments.

This five-year project investigates how to provide continuous assessment and feedback to guide students' understanding during science inquiry-learning experiences, as well as detailed guidance to teachers and administrators through a technology-enhanced system. The assessment system integrates validated automated scorings for students' written responses to open-ended assessment items into the "Web-based Inquiry Science Environment" (WISE) program.

This project is developing Core Math Tools, a suite of Java-based software including a computer algebra system (CAS), interactive geometry, statistics, and simulation tools together with custom apps for exploring specific mathematical or statistical topics. Core Math Tools is freely available to all learners, teachers, and teacher educators through a dedicated portal at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) web site.

This project will study a successful, ambitious mathematics reform effort in high-needs secondary schools. The goal is to develop resources and tools to support other high-needs schools and districts in transforming and sustaining  their mathematics programs. The model focuses on the resources required for change and the aspects of the organization that support or constrain change in mathematics teaching and learning.

This RAPID project is a cross-national comparative study of U.S. and Chinese instructional support systems, building from earlier data about mathematics teaching and learning in large urban school districts of both the United States and the People's Republic of China. The study uses quantitative methods to compare and contrast the effectiveness of supports (e.g., professional development, teacher networks, school leadership) in improving teachers' instructional practices and student achievement using comparable instrumentation.

This project will develop a cloud-based platform that enables high school students, teachers, and scientists to conduct original neuroscience research in school classrooms.

This project connects interdisciplinary researchers and experts from four tribal nation partners to develop and implement an in-service teacher professional certificate program that integrates Indigenous Knowledge into STEM teaching. This multi-sited teacher professional development model will enroll K-12 teachers in four different Native-serving regions of the rural West into a 12-month certificate program that combines Indigenous science, Coupled Human and Natural Systems, and Land education concepts into an experiential learning cycle with local and broad study of learning with the Land. The project will add knowledge about the transferability of local epistemologies and practices and national science standards within four specific Indigenous contexts and expand space for tribal-lead professional development to transform teacher classroom practice.

This project seeks to better understand how teachers' capacity and willingness to customize instructional approaches to meet standards and the needs of diverse student populations develops through initial practice and successive enactments of curriculum materials. This work will address current gaps in the literature and contribute to an overall understanding of how teachers develop the capacity to use curricula in ways that advance the goal of equitable science instruction.

This three-year early-stage design and development project will support a new teacher professional development and support model that builds the agency of 30 Miami-Dade County public high school science teachers to design, implement, and refine engineering instruction for their Latinx and Black students by partnering of high school teachers with Latinx and Black undergraduate engineering students in collaborative teams to co-design and implement inclusive, standards-aligned formal and informal engineering experiences. This work will generate new ways to support teachers’ roles as change agents in enacting engineering pedagogies centering those who have been historically excluded.

This Culturally Responsive Indigenous Science project seeks to advance this knowledge base through research and by catalyzing new approaches to Indigenous science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (ISTEM) learning. Using an ISTEM focused model, the project will develop, test, and implement a culturally responsive land-based curriculum that integrates Western science, multimodal technologies and digital tools, and Native American tribal knowledge, cultures and languages to investigate and address local environmental science and sustainability concerns.

This project will provide a field-based science and mathematics teacher education program that supports teaching focused on students’ affective development through culturally responsive practices. The project's teacher education program takes place over a two-year period and models how culturally responsive and affective instruction can occur in the STEM classroom to engage students.

This project is working to create a cyber infrastructure that supports development and documentation of additional interventions for teacher professional development using the video collection, as well as other videos that might be added in the future by teacher educators or researchers, including those working in other STEM domains.

This project explores the potential of information and communications technologies (ICT) as cognitive tools for engaging students in scientific inquiry and for enhancing teacher learning. A comprehensive professional development program of over 240 hours, along with follow-up is used to determine how teachers can be supported to use ICT tools effectively in classroom instruction to create meaningful learning experiences for students, reduce the gap between formal and informal learning, and improve student learning outcomes.

This project investigated the professional development needed to make teachers comfortable teaching with multi-user simulations and communications that students use every day. The enactment with OpenSim (an open source, modular, expandable platform used to create simulated 3D spaces with customizable terrain, weather and physics) also provides an opportunity to demonstrate the level of planning and preparation that go into fashioning modules with all selected cyber-enabled cognitive tools framed by constructivism, such as GoogleEarth and Biologica.

The Data Games project has developed software and curriculum materials in which data generated by students playing computer games form the raw material for mathematics classroom activities. Students play a short video game, analyze the game data, develop improved strategies, and test their strategies in another round of the game.

This project will address the need for engineering resources by applying an innovative pedagogy called Imaginative Education (IE) to create middle school engineering curricula. In IE, developmentally appropriate narratives are used to design learning environments that help learners engage with content and organize their knowledge productively. This project will combine IE with transmedia storytelling.

This project will address the need for engineering resources by applying an innovative pedagogy called Imaginative Education (IE) to create middle school engineering curricula. In IE, developmentally appropriate narratives are used to design learning environments that help learners engage with content and organize their knowledge productively. This project will combine IE with transmedia storytelling.

Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) are a structure for redefining the relationship between education research and development and practice so as to more effectively address real problems in order to produce knowledge that can meaningfully contribute to improvement. This project provides an opportunity to learn how best to implement NIC principles so as to realize their potential to support STEM initiatives.

This project will address the potential positive and negative impacts of using 360-degree video for bridging the gap between theory and practice in mathematics instruction by investigating how preservice teachers' tacit and explicit professional knowledge are facilitated using immersive video technology and annotations.

The project will establish a sustained community of practice for high school teachers skilled in the VisChem Approach and a group of new teaching and research scholars with expertise in building conceptual understanding through the effective use of visualization. The project will help students move from describing phenomena to explaining their causes from a molecular-level perspectives (e.g., carbon dioxide in climate change, DNA changes in genetically modified organisms).

This project explores how classroom conversations can engage children in making sense of the problems that they are addressing and foregrounding ethics while making design decisions. To provide children with opportunities to engage in rich classroom conversations, the project team uses a community-based engineering curricular approach, where students address problems that affect their local school communities.

This project explores how classroom conversations can engage children in making sense of the problems that they are addressing and foregrounding ethics while making design decisions. To provide children with opportunities to engage in rich classroom conversations, the project team uses a community-based engineering curricular approach, where students address problems that affect their local school communities.