Projects

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 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 brings together education researchers, high school science teachers, research scientists, and community-based organizations as co-design teams to modify science curriculum materials to be justice- and community-oriented. Building on existing partnerships between education researchers and 11 science teachers in two districts in Illinois, project teams will engage in cycles of curriculum analysis and adaptation over the course of 3 years. These professional learning cycles will develop pedagogically relevant content expertise, such as deepened understanding of locally relevant science phenomena, as well as infrastructure for community-engaged science instruction.

This project will investigate how NGSS has been implemented in California schools during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Through a state-wide survey, analysis of administrative data, interviews and case studies, this project will assess the impact of COVID-19 on NGSS implementation on a large scale, and more importantly, the extent to which high minority, high-poverty districts are disproportionately affected. It will also identify policy options available to state and school districts. By collecting critical and timely data, this project will contribute new knowledge to understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on NGSS implementation.

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 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.

This project augmenting the traditional professional development model with an online professional development platform—the Active Physics Teacher Community—that provides just-in-time support for teachers as they are enacting targeted units of the Active Physics curriculum. Teachers are helped in preparing lessons by providing them with formal instruction related to the lessons they are teaching in the classroom. In addition, teachers can participate in a moderated forum where they can share experiences.

This project builds upon the prototype Physics Teaching Web Advisory (Pathway), which was designed to demonstrate the ability to address issues related to the lack of preparation of many physics teachers, and to provide resources that can enliven even the most expert physics teachers' classrooms. Pathway combines state-of-the-art digital video library technology, pedagogical advances and materials contributed by master teachers.

This project extends the Physics Teaching Web Advisory (Pathway) to the full curriculum. Pathway's Synthetic Interviews and related video materials provide pre-service and out-of-field in-service teachers with much needed professional development and well-prepared teachers with new perspectives on teaching physics. Pathway combines state-of-the-art digital video library technology, developed pedagogical advances and materials contributed by master teachers. This dynamic digital library provides continuous assistance and expertise for teachers.

This project will examine how partnerships among state science leaders, education researchers and education practitioners cultivate vertical coherence and equity in state science education.

EarthX is a design-based research project that supports the integration of Earth science into high school biology, chemistry, and physics courses in Baltimore City Public Schools, while also supporting the district’s transition to three-dimensional (3D), ambitious and equitable science teaching aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). EarthX builds on the success of the Integrating Chemistry and Earth Science (ICE) DRK-12 project, which developed innovative chemistry course curriculum materials and PD strategies, to support Earth science integration into biology and physics course curriculum development and 3D teaching. EarthX will develop, test, and refine embedded and unit assessments for all three courses, along with providing an online system for assessment administration; real-time reporting to teachers and students; and provision of data to PD leaders, administrators, and researchers for multiple purposes. Assessments will be 3D, featuring core concepts from both Earth science and the course discipline combined with a science or engineering practice and a crosscutting concept.

This project supports up to eight fellows per year to participate in the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows Program. This program provides opportunities for teachers to work on educational issues and/or programs in a federal agency or congressional office. It promotes professional growth; fosters the exchange of ideas that are relevant to STEM education at the national and state levels through conferences, workshops, and presentations; provides opportunities for teachers' input; and awards outstanding teachers.

This project will scale up, implement, and assess the efficacy of interventions in K-12 mathematics education based on the well-established Algebra Project (AP) pedagogical framework, which seeks to improve performance and participation in mathematics of students in distressed school districts, particularly low-income students from underserved populations.

The project is a longitudinal assessment of the prerequisite (e.g. fractions), cognitive (e.g. working memory), and non-cognitive (e.g. math anxiety) factors that dynamically influence 7-9th grade students' algebraic learning and cognition, with a focus on students with learning disabilities in mathematics. The study will provide the most comprehensive assessment of the development of algebra competence ever conducted and is organized by an integrative model of cognitive and non-cognitive influences on students' engagement in math classrooms and on the learning of procedural and spatial-related aspects of algebra.

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.

This project will test the efficacy of using agent-based simulation and visualization models to identify the factors that predict mathematics achievement for students from the 8th grade to the 12th grade and beyond. The team is using data that includes 14 years of data on student grade reports, coursework, demographics, teacher variables such as years of service, professional development courses taken, years of service, and other artifacts.

This project will test the efficacy of using agent-based simulation and visualization models to identify the factors that predict mathematics achievement for students from the 8th grade to the 12th grade and beyond. The team is using data that includes 14 years of data on student grade reports, coursework, demographics, teacher variables such as years of service, professional development courses taken, years of service, and other artifacts.

This project is carrying out a research and development initiative to increase the success rates of our most at-risk high school students—ninth-grade students enrolled in algebra classes but significantly underprepared for high school mathematics. It will also result in new understandings about effective approaches for teaching mathematics to struggling students and about effective ways for implementing these approaches at scale, particularly in urban school districts.

This study will examine the impact of the Learning and Teaching Geometry (LTG) professional development for secondary mathematics teachers on the teachers' knowledge and classroom instruction, as well as on their students' learning. As the nation invests vast resources in the professional development of teachers to meet new curriculum and instruction challenges, exploring the efficacy of professional development is important to understand how best to direct those resources.

This project will determine the viability of an engineering concept-based approach to teacher professional development for secondary school science teachers in life science and in physical science. The project refines the conceptual base for engineering at the secondary level learning to increase the understanding of engineering concepts by the science teachers. The hypothesis is that when teachers and students engage with engineering design activities their understanding of science concepts and inquiry are also enhanced.

Using an experimental design, this project examines the effects of online professional development courses on high school biology teachers' content and pedagogical knowledge, and on their students' knowledge. The project is testing the impact of using digital resouces and is using hierarchal linear modeling techniques to analyze data. It will contribute to the knowledge base of what impacts student achievement by testing the efficacy of online professional development for science teachers.

In this project, investigators are developing and testing a learning progression for the study of chemistry. Likely pathways are investigated for how grade 8-13 student's implicit assumptions develop on five major threads of chemical design. A focus on chemical design facilitates the coherent integration of scientific and engineering practices, cross-cutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. This approach should make chemistry more engaging to a greater variety of students.

In this project, investigators are developing and testing a learning progression for the study of chemistry. Likely pathways are investigated for how grade 8-13 student's implicit assumptions develop on five major threads of chemical design. A focus on chemical design facilitates the coherent integration of scientific and engineering practices, cross-cutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. This approach should make chemistry more engaging to a greater variety of students.

The overriding goal of this project is to strengthen the “T” and “E” components of STEM in high school courses taken by a majority of students. Our hypothesis is that increasing the presence of engineering and technological design at the high school level, specifically by incorporating engineering activities in high school biology and chemistry classes, will improve students’ understanding of science concepts and strengthen students’ 21st century skills more than traditional methods.

The project will create a system of online mathematics teacher professional development modules for middle and high school teachers. Teachers will engage in online, asynchronous, high-quality mathematics learning experiences that mirror research-based productive classroom practices and models of instruction that feature active learning and student collaboration, explanation, and discussion.