Projects

Science in the Learning Gardens (SciLG) designs and implements curriculum aligned with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and uses school gardens as learning contexts in grade 6 (2014-2015), grade 7 (2015-2016) and grade 8 (2016-2017) in two low-income urban schools. The project investigates the extent to which SciLG activities predict students’ STEM identity, motivation, learning, and grades in science using a theoretical model of motivational development.

This project will develop and evaluate a module for use in a 7th grade classroom that promotes student development of 21st Century skills with a particular focus on student development of scientific reasoning. The technology-enhanced curriculum will be designed to engage learners in deep and meaningful investigations to promote student learning of content in parallel with 21st century skills.

This project  will develop a video recording and analysis system called VideoReView (VRV) that allows grade four science teachers to record, tag, and analyze video in their classroom in real time. The investigators will then study and enhance the system in the context of professional learning communities of teachers. 

This project will develop and investigate the opportunities and limitations of Focus on Energy, a professional development (PD) system for elementary teachers (grades 3-5). The PD will contain: resources that will help teachers to interpret, evaluate and cultivate students' ideas about energy; classroom activities to help them to identify, track and represent energy forms and flows; and supports to help them in engaging students in these activities.

This project will develop curricula for environmental/geoscience disciplines for high-school classrooms. The Model My Watershed (MMW) v2 app will bring new environmental datasets and geospatial capabilities into the classroom, to provide a cloud-based learning and analysis platform accessible from a web browser on any computer or mobile device, thus overcoming the cost and technical obstacles to integrating Geographic Information System technology in secondary education.

This project will research the knowledge and supervision skills principals' and other instructional leaders' need to support teachers in successfully integrating scientific practices into their instruction, and develop innovative resources to support these leaders with a particular focus on high-minority, urban schools. The project will contribute to the emerging but limited literature on instructional leadership in science at the K-8 school level. 

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.

This project will research the development and application of new Next Generation curriculum exemplars for middle school science that align with the expectations of NGSS by (1) constructing diagnostic tools to assess the alignment of curricula; (2) using the tool for existing curricula in order to field test it; and (3) systematically investigating the effectiveness of the tool.

Despite the tremendous growth in the availability of mathematics videos online, little research has investigated student learning from them. The goal of this exploratory project is to create, investigate, and provide evidence of promise for a model of online videos that embodies a more expansive vision of both the nature of the content and the pedagogical approach than is currently represented in YouTube-style lessons.

This project will address widespread misunderstandings related to evolution by developing and testing a new high school curriculum unit and assessment measures focusing on biological evolution.  The new curriculum will integrate the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards, the Common Core Mathematics standards on reasoning abstractly and quantitatively, and an English Language Arts standard for writing arguments focused on discipline-specific content. 

To prepare the country's youth more broadly for a globalized world, the U.S. National Commission on Mathematics Instruction (USNCMI) will engage with the international community and assist in improving the state of mathematics education in the country by implementing international education programs, participating in international benchmarking activities, and working closely with other countries and multilateral organizations. 

Education researchers, practitioners, industry representatives, and policymakers are increasingly committed to making engineering education accessible to all K-12 students and teachers. This project is designed to learn what type of collaborative infrastructure would best support NSF awardees in engaging in the innovative, synergistic research, development, and dissemination activities that will enable engineering to fulfill this important role in K-12 teaching and learning. 

This project utilizes existing citizen science programs as springboards for professional development for teachers during an intensive summer workshop. The project curriculum helps teachers use student participation in citizen science to engage them in the full complement of science practices; from asking questions, to conducting independent research, to sharing findings.

This project will work with middle school mathematics teachers in San Francisco Unified School District to develop their capacity to conduct professional development for the teachers in their schools. A central goal of this project is to develop models and resources for effective professional development and preparation of professional development leaders in mathematics with special attention to students who are English language learners.

This project will develop a Web-based set of instructional materials and resources that will use the recent Ebola outbreak as the overarching narrative for educating middle and high school students about the disease, its causative agent, how it is spread, and approaches for responding to it and controlling the epidemic.

This pilot project aims to begin to organize the world's digital learning resources to make personalized recommendations to learners that are engaging and effective in increasing mathematics learning outcomes. The project accomplishes this goal by developing crowdsourcing techniques to organize learning resources and by analyzing the online learning activities of the student. Teachers are an integral part of this project. The target audience for this pilot is 7th grade mathematics students and teachers.

This project will develop and disseminate an online educational resource called Understanding Ebola Virus Disease (UEVD). The objective is to provide users with an interactive learning experience that helps them acquire a basic understanding of factors that influence infection, transmission, and management of Ebola virus disease. 

This pilot project aims to begin to organize the world's digital learning resources to make personalized recommendations to learners that are engaging and effective in increasing mathematics learning outcomes. The project accomplishes this goal by developing crowdsourcing techniques to organize learning resources and by analyzing the online learning activities of the student. Teachers are an integral part of this project. The target audience for this pilot is 7th grade mathematics students and teachers.

This pilot project aims to begin to organize the world's digital learning resources to make personalized recommendations to learners that are engaging and effective in increasing mathematics learning outcomes. The project accomplishes this goal by developing crowdsourcing techniques to organize learning resources and by analyzing the online learning activities of the student. Teachers are an integral part of this project. The target audience for this pilot is 7th grade mathematics students and teachers.

Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) are a structure for redefining the relationship between education research and development and practice so as to more effectively address real problems in order to produce knowledge that can meaningfully contribute to improvement. This project provides an opportunity to learn how best to implement NIC principles so as to realize their potential to support STEM initiatives.

This project will develop resources for teachers and administrators that will provide instructional guidance for teaching about the Ebola virus and other epidemics of infectious diseases that may arise. The resources developed will include guidelines for administrators and teachers, as well as policy briefs related to teaching and learning about Ebola.

This project will convene two workshops, held in 2015 and 2016, which will focus on developmental mathematics and other critical issues in mathematics education. The workshop will frame critical issues; draw attention to issues of diverse participation and success in mathematics; and provide images of productive engagement for participants to draw upon as they return to their professional communities.

This project will develop and study two sets of instructional materials for K-2 teacher professional development in mathematics and science that are aligned with the CCSS and NGSS. Teachers will be able to review the materials online, watch video of exemplary teaching practice, and then upload their own examples and students' work to be critiqued by other teachers enrolled in professional learning communities as well as expert coaches.

Identifying with engineering is critical to help students pursue engineering careers. This project responds to this persistent large-scale problem. The I-Engineering framework and tools address both the learning problem (supporting students in learning engineering design) and the identity problem (supporting students in recognizing that they belong in engineering). 

This project aims to build elementary age students' content knowledge in robotics and computer science more broadly by fostering their disciplinary engagement and participation within a humanoid robots-programming environment. Fourth and fifth grade students will participate in a semester long course with a final project that involves bringing the robot to classrooms of first and second grade students to demonstrate the robot's capabilities and promote their disciplinary engagement with robotics and computer science.