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.

Geometry instruction offers unique opportunities for students to apply design thinking to authentic problems. This project supports teachers in designing and implementing lessons using a human-centered design (HCD) approach. Geometry teachers will participate in lesson study for two years to plan problem-based geometry lessons and to observe student thinking during those lessons. The project investigates how teachers learn about and apply a human-centered framework for teaching geometry.

This project builds capacity for middle school teachers to enact and adapt integrated STEM curriculum units with their students. The units will focus on biomimicry—examining structures and functions found in nature and applying these to solve human problems, which combines science, engineering, and technology. The project enables teachers to design activities that are personally authentic to their students by supporting teachers to examine their students' assets, needs, and interests and center these during unit design.

A long-standing challenge for education and learning sciences is sharing the distinct knowledge bases of researchers and teachers with each other. The goal of this project is to support teachers, STEM coaches, and researchers in sharing that knowledge so that they can learn from one another.

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.

Today’s schools are experiencing increasing cultural and linguistic diversity and facing the challenge of creating meaningful connections between school science and student lived experiences outside of school. Middle school is a critical time to provide fundamental knowledge and encourage interest in STEM careers. In order to best impact learners during this critical period, science teachers need improved models to support the development and delivery of relevant curriculum materials to better serve all students in their classrooms. Highly supported design teams consisting of researchers, teachers, and both school and district science specialists will co-adapt existing district-generated science units to integrate socially and culturally relevant science practices and draw on students' diverse cultural and language practices as strengths.

This project will investigate the potential of a novel approach to mathematics intervention that leverages the affordances of technology and evidence-based pedagogy to improve mathematics learning for middle school students. The mathematics intervention entitled EMPIRES is a collaborative activity set in Ancient Mesopotamia that offers a multifaceted approach in which (1) rich, narrative math problems increase conceptual comprehension; (2) animated representations of mathematics concepts support mathematical understanding; (3) multiplayer collaboration leads to peer instruction and modeling; (4) simulations offer exciting challenges that increase mathematics resiliency; and (5) a bridge curriculum aids transfer of learning to multiple contexts, including traditional standardized tests.

This project will provide rural STEM middle school teachers and career counselors professional development and the support needed to collaborate with each other and local community assets in designing, integrating, and implementing effective STEM content and career development activities. Local teams will co-develop project-based learning units that incorporate a place-based education perspective involving STEM assets, careers, and stakeholders from the local communities for middle school rural youth that intentionally infuse STEM careers in their area with STEM content.

Promoting equity-focused mathematics education requires models that will prepare and support mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs) who will question existing norms and advocate for all their students. This project will develop a model of support for middle and high school mathematics PSTs to support them in becoming critical mathematics teachers (CMTs), teachers who address the needs of diverse students, are mindful of achievement disparities, and aware of their own biases. The main objective of the project is to develop a cohesive system of support for middle and high school PSTs to become CMTs.

This project will develop, enact, and study a critical climate technology journalism curriculum to support multilingual sixth grade students’ knowledge and practices in engineering. Synthesizing expertise in climate technology, communication, and multilingual education, the project will engage students in investigating, designing, and communicating critical engineering knowledge about community-based technological systems. Students will learn engineering as they construct and convey messages about climate technology in their community for an audience of family members, community groups, and civic leaders.

Videos of teaching have become a popular tool for facilitating teacher learning, with the potential to powerfully impact teacher practice. However, less is known about specific mechanisms through which teachers learn from video. The goal of this study is to build foundational knowledge about teacher learning by using video clips of science instruction within a professional development (PD) context. 

This project examines middle school students’ graph literacy from an asset-based perspective, documenting the ways in which students think about graphs (i.e., their cognitive strategies and intuitive insights), and the ways in which instruction can build upon that thinking in order to support the development of graph literacy. Drawing from students’ graphical representations of real-life contexts (e.g., population growth) that span various mathematical domains, this program of research will develop a holistic theoretical framework that can inform mathematics instruction in multiple content areas.

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.

This project will develop and test a learning progression for middle school physical science that incorporates the three dimensions identified in Next Generation of Science Standards (NGSS): the Disciplinary Core Ideas of matter, interaction, and energy; the Science and Engineering Practices of constructing explanations and developing and using models; and the Crosscutting Concepts of cause and effect and systems and system models. Bringing together all three NGSS dimensions is an innovation that allows for the project to explore the variety of learning pathways that students may follow as they apply scientific knowledge and practices to make sense of compelling phenomena or solve complex problems.

This project supports the development of a collaborative digital learning environment that embeds rich middle school mathematics tasks. The project aims to understand how students' individual and collaborative engagement in learning mathematics is enhanced by the digital platform, and how student engagement and learning is affected over the course of a year-long seventh grade course.

This project addresses tools to support students in reading and evaluating a variety of sources to compare various claims addressing socioscientific issues. It draws on literacy concepts from science education and social studies to develop and implement scaffolding tools that can support students' understanding of the links among data, evidence, and claims while considering the trustworthiness and plausibility of sources. The project will design and test such instructional scaffolds with the goal of helping middle and high school science and social studies students to deepen their evaluation skills as they make reasoned evaluations as expected of citizens in a functional democratic society.

This project addresses tools to support students in reading and evaluating a variety of sources to compare various claims addressing socioscientific issues. It draws on literacy concepts from science education and social studies to develop and implement scaffolding tools that can support students' understanding of the links among data, evidence, and claims while considering the trustworthiness and plausibility of sources. The project will design and test such instructional scaffolds with the goal of helping middle and high school science and social studies students to deepen their evaluation skills as they make reasoned evaluations as expected of citizens in a functional democratic society.

To act on energy issues, students need a strong understanding of energy flow and energy efficiency. However, students rarely have opportunities to learn about how buildings, such as their own school, drive about 40% of energy use and global carbon emissions. Addressing this gap in science education, this project will design, pilot, and evaluate a 6-week middle school curriculum called Build it Green! (BIG!). Blending classroom experiences and interactive digital learning tools, the researchers will work with rural middle schools in Missouri to implement and test how following the story of energy flow in and out of a hypothetical school building enhances students’ understanding of energy systems in the science of green buildings.

This project addresses tools to support students in reading and evaluating a variety of sources to compare various claims addressing socioscientific issues. It draws on literacy concepts from science education and social studies to develop and implement scaffolding tools that can support students' understanding of the links among data, evidence, and claims while considering the trustworthiness and plausibility of sources. The project will design and test such instructional scaffolds with the goal of helping middle and high school science and social studies students to deepen their evaluation skills as they make reasoned evaluations as expected of citizens in a functional democratic society.

This project addresses tools to support students in reading and evaluating a variety of sources to compare various claims addressing socioscientific issues. It draws on literacy concepts from science education and social studies to develop and implement scaffolding tools that can support students' understanding of the links among data, evidence, and claims while considering the trustworthiness and plausibility of sources. The project will design and test such instructional scaffolds with the goal of helping middle and high school science and social studies students to deepen their evaluation skills as they make reasoned evaluations as expected of citizens in a functional democratic society.

In this project, the research team will create a computer-mediated design environment that enables students in grades 7-10 to collaboratively explore, make connections, generate, and evaluate design ideas that address environmental science challenges. A unique feature of the project is its use of an artificial intelligent (AI) design mentor that relies on Design Heuristics, a research-based creativity tool that guides students through exploration of ideas and “learns” from students’ design processes to better assist them. The project will examine students’ perceptions of science and engineering, their ability to integrate academic and personal or community knowledge, their confidence for engaging in engineering, and their design thinking.

This project considers how teachers’ engagement in scientific sensemaking as an opportunity for teachers’ learning to support more expansive science learning environments. It seeks to address two ongoing challenges in science teacher education: the need for teachers to learn (1) to recognize, value, and integrate students’ diverse ways of knowing, communicating, and relating with one another and phenomena and (2) to acknowledge and disrupt restrictive narratives that shape what counts as science in schools and who is seen as a scientist. This project will provide new models for science teacher education to engage teachers in expansive scientific sensemaking, seeking to develop more humanizing relationships between teachers, students, and science. More broadly, the project will produce a new structure for professional learning and resources for supporting more heterogeneous and equitable forms of science in teacher education. 

This project addresses tools to support students in reading and evaluating a variety of sources to compare various claims addressing socioscientific issues. It draws on literacy concepts from science education and social studies to develop and implement scaffolding tools that can support students' understanding of the links among data, evidence, and claims while considering the trustworthiness and plausibility of sources. The project will design and test such instructional scaffolds with the goal of helping middle and high school science and social studies students to deepen their evaluation skills as they make reasoned evaluations as expected of citizens in a functional democratic society.

Familial presence in school supports children’s learning. However, few models exist that illustrate forms of familial presence in STEM learning that center familial cultural knowledge and practice. The project will produce a model for familial engagement in STEM along with instructional tools and illustrative case-studies that can be used by teachers and school districts nationally in support of increasing students’ STEM learning. This three-year study investigates new instructional practices that support rightful familial presence in STEM as a mechanism to address the continued racial and class gaps in STEM achievement for historically marginalized students.

This project addresses tools to support students in reading and evaluating a variety of sources to compare various claims addressing socioscientific issues. It draws on literacy concepts from science education and social studies to develop and implement scaffolding tools that can support students' understanding of the links among data, evidence, and claims while considering the trustworthiness and plausibility of sources. The project will design and test such instructional scaffolds with the goal of helping middle and high school science and social studies students to deepen their evaluation skills as they make reasoned evaluations as expected of citizens in a functional democratic society.