Projects

This project leverages the role of mentor teachers to support novices’ development of pedagogical reasoning and increase the likelihood that they will be prepared to engage in responsive mathematics teaching. Mentor teachers in three differently structured teacher education programs will receive professional development aimed at making their pedagogical reasoning visible and supporting them in engaging collaboratively with novices in this type of teacher thinking. The researchers will study mentor teachers’ development of collaborative pedagogical reasoning (Co-PR) and its relationship to responsive teaching.

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.

This project leverages the role of mentor teachers to support novices’ development of pedagogical reasoning and increase the likelihood that they will be prepared to engage in responsive mathematics teaching. Mentor teachers in three differently structured teacher education programs will receive professional development aimed at making their pedagogical reasoning visible and supporting them in engaging collaboratively with novices in this type of teacher thinking. The researchers will study mentor teachers’ development of collaborative pedagogical reasoning (Co-PR) and its relationship to responsive teaching.

This project will build an interactive and integrated curricular and professional development technological system: the Building Blocks Toolset (BBToolset). The BBToolset is designed to benefit all early childhood educators and their students. Young children will learn from engaging, effective digital educational games and face-to-face activities. Teachers will receive just-in-time professional development related to their students' development and guidance on curricular choices and culturally sensitive pedagogical strategies.

Early childhood educators (ECEs) understand that effective science teaching and learning requires content knowledge related to science concepts and practices and pedagogical knowledge. However, ECEs, especially in rural communities, express a lack of science content knowledge and confidence in incorporating science-related conversations in their early care and education settings, and they believe this might be a result of limited professional training relevant to science content. This project aims to strengthen key capabilities in ECEs, including the ability to (1) build science content knowledge and confidence in guiding young children's scientific investigation, (2) closely observe children's interactions with science materials, and (3) use those observations in the reflection, planning, and practice of science teaching.

The purpose of this project is to develop a home mathematics environment (HME) intervention for preschool-aged children with developmental delays (DD). The project includes caregivers of children with DD as collaborators in the iterative design process to develop feasible and sustainable HME intervention activities.

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.

Young children thrive when strong relationships exist between their home and school environments. Early home and school experiences support the development of mathematical skills. Often, schools and teachers struggle to establish these strong relationships; therefore, Math Partners will work with teachers and teaching assistants in classroom design teams to help teachers establish healthy, positive relationships with families that center families’ knowledge and experiences in the context of mathematics.

Although science is increasingly recognized as a key dimension of early learning, findings to date indicate that young children, especially those enrolled in public preschool programs serving historically excluded communities, have limited opportunities to engage in high quality science investigations. The lack of professional learning resources available to teachers makes it challenging for them to feasibly and effectively promote science in their classrooms. To address this need, this four-year design and development project brings together public preschool teachers, families from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, early learning and STEM researchers, and designers of media to co-design a Professional Learning Hub for Early Science.

High-quality early educational experiences, particularly in mathematics, are crucial for students’ success in K-12 schooling. To create these foundational experiences for young children, early childhood educators need opportunities to enhance their mathematics teaching through job-embedded, sustained professional learning. This partnership development project establish a collaboration among early childhood mathematics educators, school and district leaders, the state department of education, and university faculty in Delaware that aims to enhance children’s early mathematics learning by collaboratively designing support systems for strengthening their teachers’ professional learning.