Projects

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 project is focused on creating, testing, refining, and studying a computer-based, individualized, interactive learning system for intermediate/middle school students or by teachers in classrooms. This learning system is called Individualized Dynamic Geometry Instruction and will contain four instructional modules in geometry and measurement that reflect the recommendations of the Common Core State Standards.

This development and research project designs, develops, and tests a digital game-based learning environment for supporting, assessing and analyzing middle school students' conceptual knowledge in learning physics, specifically Newtonian mechanics. This research integrates work from prior findings to develop a new methodology to engage students in deep learning while diagnosing and scaffolding the learning of Newtonian mechanics.

LOCUS (Levels of Conceptual Understanding in Statistics) is an NSF Funded DRK12 project (NSF#118618) focused on developing assessments of statistical understanding. These assessments will measure students’ understanding across levels of development as identified in the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE). The intent of these assessments is to provide teachers and researchers with a valid and reliable assessment of conceptual understanding in statistics consistent with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

This is an exploratory study to identify critical aspects of effective science formative assessment (FA) practices for English Language Learners (ELLs), and the contextual factors influencing such practices. FA, in the context of the study, is viewed as a process contributing to the science learning of ELLs, as opposed to the administration of discrete sets of instruments to collect data from students. The study targets Spanish-speaking, elementary and middle school students.

This project will develop and test a cyberlearning professional-development model that builds on the successful Curriculum Customization Service model implemented in Denver with EarthComm. The cyberlearning system is tested with the Project Based Inquiry Science (PBIS) curriculum - a proven comprehensive middle school science curriculum. The cyberlearning system is evaluated for scalability, affordability, flexibility, and effectiveness for changing teacher practice and student learning.

This project uses green school buildings as an opportunity to involve students in STEM activities in their environment. The goal is to produce an action plan for transforming the middle school science and mathematics curriculum by rethinking the content that is taught, the ways in which students and teachers can engage effectively with that content, and the role that technology can play to ensure wide access to the data and to the new curriculum.

This project is connecting mathematicians and mathematics teachers in middle schools by offering summer workshops and continued communication throughout the year. The workshops focus on mathematical problem solving and include activities that offer multiple entry points. The goal of the workshops is to increase teachers' knowledge of mathematics for teaching and to help teachers use their knowledge to improve student learning of mathematics.

This project is designing digital games for middle school students that will help them prepare for success in Algebra. The games are intended to help students gain a deep understanding of measurement and fraction concepts that are critical as they begin to learn algebra. The project studies students' development of fraction concepts, their engagement in the tasks, and the use of hand-held devices as a useful platform for games.

This project is developing a model for integrating best practices in technology-supported instructional design and formative assessment for genetics instruction in upper elementary, middle and high school. Using the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment platform, the project is developing school curriculum that scaffold and model scientific practices, enable students to interface with real-world problems, provide opportunities for students to make connections between visible phenomena and underlying genetic processes, and promote student monitoring and reflection on learning.

This project is supporting and investigating the implementation of reformed mathematics instruction at the middle school level in two large school districts. The primary goal of the project is to develop an empirically grounded theory of action for implementing reform at school and district levels. The researchers are investigating reform within a coherent system that focuses on leadership and school-based professional development.

This project explores the use of cyberinfrastructure to significantly enhance the delivery and quality of professional development for grades 8-12 engineering, technology, and design educators. The goal of the project is to study whether the use of highly interactive cyberinfrastructure increases the educator's teaching competencies and how to effectively teach. Student achievement is measured by comparing state assessments in: the curriculum's technology, engineering, and design assessment, end-of-grade mathematics assessment, and end-of-grade science assessment.

This is a four-year project that is producing materials designed to help teachers see how the mathematical practices described in the Common Core State Standards for mathematics can be implemented in mathematics instruction. The goal of the improved instruction is to help students adopt and value these critical mathematical practices.

This project will build and validate learning trajectories (LTs) in mathematics for fraction, ratio, and for decimal and percent to represent learning by grades 3-7 students. A system will be developed to automate data collection for field testing assessment items to determine students' attainment of proficiency levels. Three LTs will be produced and validated along with over 125 assessment items for each of these three trajectories. These assessment items will be useful for diagnosing student learning.

This project recruited high school African American males to begin preparation for science, technology, engineering and mathematics teaching careers. The goal of the program was to recruit and prepare students for careers in secondary mathematics and science teaching thus increasing the number of African Americans students in STEM. The research will explore possible reasons why the program is or is not successful for recruiting and retaining students in STEM Teacher Education programs  

This study is investigating the classroom factors and teacher characteristics that contribute to Latino English Language Learners' (ELL) gains in mathematics learning in the eighth grade. In addition to looking for key characteristics that influence mathematics learning, the researchers are measuring teachers' knowledge of mathematics for teaching, quality of instruction, and knowledge about English learners.

This project will develop STEM spatial thinking skills of middle school learners by equipping teachers with earth science investigations and support materials. This project will design, develop, and test curriculum materials that use Web Geospatial Information Systems that includes advanced visualization and geospatial analysis capabilities. The project will analyze how educative curriculum materials can prepare teachers to implement Web-based geospatial science pedagogical approaches to teaching, and document the impacts on student learning.

This project investigates the outcomes of a teacher education model designed to foster prospective mathematics teachers' abilities to notice and capitalize on important mathematical moments in instruction. The project engages prospective teachers in research-like analysis of unedited teacher-perspective classroom video early in their teacher education coursework in order to help them learn to identify, assess the mathematical potential of, and respond to important student ideas and insights that arise during instruction.

This project is designing and implementing a professional development model that uses data from the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) to improve mathematics instruction at the high school level.

This workshop developed a new, comprehensive, research-based framework for assessing environmental literacy. By bringing together, for the first time, experts in research, assessment, and evaluation from the fields of science education, environmental education, and related social science fields, this project accessed and built its work on the literature and the insights of many disciplines.

This study examines ways that teacher-level factors (including teacher background variables and instructional practices) and student-level factors (such as self-rated mathematics interest and proficiency), and interactions among these factors, are associated with American Indian/Alaska native (AI/AN) student academic achievement in middle grades mathematics. The ultimate goal is to identify malleable factors that, if changed, could improve teachers' practices and AI/AN student achievement in mathematics.

This project builds on prior efforts with learning progressions, and is focused on key carbon-transforming processes in socio-ecological systems at multiple scales, including cellular and organismal metabolism, ecosystem energetics and carbon cycling, carbon sequestration, and combustion of fossil fuels. The primary project outcomes will be coordinated instructional tools that are useful to professionals at all levels in the science education system--classroom teachers, professional developers, and developers of curricula, standards and assessments.

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.

This project builds on current learning progression research to study the effects of teaching Tools for Reasoning on development of middle school students' capacities to understand the Earth's hydrologic systems. The project applies a design-based research approach using iterative cycles of Tool design/revision, teacher workshops, and small-scale pilot tests of Tools through classroom experiments with teachers and students in Montana and Arizona.

This is an efficacy study to determine if partnerships among formal and informal organizations demonstrate an appropriate infrastructure for improving science literacy among urban middle school science students. The study aims to answer the following questions: How does participation in the program affect students' science knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward science; teachers' science knowledge, skills, and abilities; and families engagement in and support for their children's science learning and aspirations?