Projects

08/15/2024

Writing instruction in math and science is an essential area of research to ensure equitable K-12 and college experiences and to better prepare all students in ways that provide opportunities to pursue STEM career pathways. This project is a meta-analysis in the area of secondary (grades 6-12) math and science writing instruction.

07/01/2024

Over the years, researchers and practitioners have created and tested different ways to support students who struggle with learning mathematics. These methods include directly teaching various mathematics skills and strategies that affect mathematics performance, such as alleviating mathematics anxiety and fostering motivation and engagement in mathematics learning. The idea is that teaching mathematics using a mix of these skills or strategies might help students learn better than teaching just one skill or strategy at a time. However, it remains unclear which skills or strategies should be taught together and if mixing different skills or strategies leads to differential effects across different students or contexts. Understanding this is vital because it can help researchers and practitioners determine the best ways to address the need of struggling students in mathematics. A network meta-analysis will allow the field to examine different combinations of instructional skills/strategies as well as their interaction effects, which can provide more optimal information about different instructional approaches.

09/15/2023

This research synthesis systematically reviews and meta-analyzes the evidence on relationships between teacher support, student engagement, and mathematics achievement in the instructional–relational model framework. The researchers rigorously examine the consistency and variability of the relationships between the domains and constructs across studies.

09/01/2023

This research synthesis study reviews the effects of professional learning interventions and will advance STEM educators' understanding of the critically important relationships among teacher professional learning (PL), teacher knowledge and practice, and average student effects. Understanding these relationships will allow the field to design better PL experiences for teachers that truly benefit student learning.

08/01/2023

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.

10/01/2022

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.

02/15/2022

This project advances the understanding of teaching and learning of algebra in grades 6 through 12 by using a methodology that leverages the cumulative power of an analysis of many studies on a topic. This work will synthesize results aggregated from 40 years of research in the field of mathematics education and develop a unified framework to inform parents, students, teachers, other educators, and researchers.

06/01/2021

This project will synthesize research on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). The science of CSCL achieved advances in the past decade, including producing a research handbook—however, practitioners do not have easy access to research journals, nor time to sift through the latest findings to guide their practice. Further, conventional forms of research synthesis, such as research handbooks or long synthesis papers, serve narrow audiences and are rarely read by practitioners. The research team will investigate and develop a novel synthesis approach to provide educators and researchers with a novel form of synthesis organized around an interactive map of topics and subtopics.

08/01/2019

The purpose of this project is to fully explore the mathematics education literature to synthesize what validity evidence is available for quantitative assessments in mathematics education.

07/01/2019

The purpose of this project is to gather, analyze, and synthesize mathematics and science education research studies published from 1988 to the present that have investigated different approaches to supporting students in grades 6-14 in learning to analyze, interpret, and reason about data.

07/01/2019

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.

09/01/2018

This project will address two critical opportunities to improve the translation and connection of innovations and evidence across federally funded STEM education projects. First, the project will aim to build capacity and learning opportunities for STEM education research and development. Second, the project will synthesize evidence of discovery and innovation across NSF-funded work.

09/01/2016

This project will conduct a study to identify instructional practices and professional development approaches for teachers and the policies needed to support ELLs' accomplishments in science and math. The study will synthesize research relevant to improving ELLs' STEM learning, offer insight into how to support both English language development and science and math learning, and provide a framework for future research to help identify the most relevant and pressing questions for the field.

06/15/2015

This project will convene stakeholders in STEM and early childhood education to discuss better integration of STEM in the early grades. PIs will begin with a phase of background research to surface critical issues in teaching and learning in early childhood education and STEM.  A number of reports will be produced including commissioned papers, vision papers, and a forum synthesis report.

09/01/2014

This synthesis project will inform educators and policymakers about the cumulative evidence that exists on the impacts of a variety of contextual factors on a multitude of STEM outcomes (e.g., math and science achievement, self-efficacy, future goals). This project will provide new evidence regarding the significance of youth contexts on STEM outcomes that will assist policy makers and educators in evaluating productive educational environments.

09/01/2014

This project seeks to find ways to make the measurement sciences more useful to the production of intellective competence in diverse students of the STEM disciplines. A Study Group on Diversity, Equity and Excellence in Achievement and Assessment in STEM Education will be established to address a set of issues posed as critical to the future of assessment for education and will undertake a series of activities culminating in the production of a report.

07/01/2014

This project will address two obstacles that hinder elementary science instruction: (1) a lack of content-specific teaching knowledge (e.g., research on effective topic-specific instructional strategies); and (2) the knowledge that does exist is often not organized for use by teachers in their lesson planning and instruction. The project will collect existing empirical literature for two science topics and synthesize it with an often-overlooked resource -- practice-based knowledge. 

09/01/2011

This project is developing and testing a curricular learning progression of early algebra objectives and activities for students in grades 3 - 5. The goal of the work is to provide teachers with curricular guidance and instructional resources that are useful in preparing students for success in study of algebra at the middle grade level. The project is also developing and validating assessment tools for evaluating student progress toward essential pre-algebra mathematical understandings.

09/15/2010

This project will engage in a community-wide effort to synthesize the literature from a broad range of fields and to use the findings to create frameworks that will guide the planning, implementation, and scale-up of efforts to improve geographic education over the next decade. This will result in a set of publicly reviewed, consensus reports that will guide collaborative efforts and broaden awareness of the acute need for geographic literacy and geographic science education.

09/01/2010

This project is organizing and hosting a working conference on Response to Intervention (RtI) and related strategies in teaching and assessment in Mathematics. Goals of this work are: To build a community of researchers and practitioners to identify, expand and sustain research needs in this area; to identify and improve the research available related to teaching mathematics within an RtI model; and to develop resources to support teacher's understanding and application of RtI strategies.

09/01/2010

This synthesis project is a systematic review of experimental research evaluating programs and practices in elementary science. The systematic review addresses all areas of science in the elementary grades. The review uses an adaptation of best-evidence synthesis previously applied to elementary and secondary mathematics and reading, and includes experimental and quasi-experimental research on the outcomes of alternative approaches to elementary science.

08/15/2010

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.

07/15/2010

This project will synthesize existing literature on modeling-based instruction (MBI) in K-12 science education over the last three decades. It will rigorously code and examine the literature to conceptualize the landscape of the theoretical frameworks of MBI approaches, identify the effective design features of modeling-based learning environments with an emphasis on technology-enhanced ones, and identify the most effective MBI practices that are associated with successful student learning through a meta-analysis.

09/15/2009

This project provides visionary leadership to the education community by (a) identifying and analyzing the needs and opportunities for future STEM curriculum development and (b) recommending policy positions and actions by funding agencies and STEM educators regarding the development and implementation of STEM school curricula.

09/15/2009

This project is developing a two-year, intensive professional development model to build middle-grades mathematics teachers’ knowledge and implementation of formative assessment. Using a combination of institutes, classroom practice, and ongoing support through professional learning communities and web-based resources, this model helps teachers internalize and integrate a comprehensive understanding of formative assessment into daily practice.