This project is working to develop, implement, and research the introduction of data experiences and practices into a series of interdisciplinary, middle school project-based learning modules. The project examines how interdisciplinary data education can provide opportunities for students to take more control of their own learning and develop positive identities related to data, through integration with social studies and science topics. Curriculum modules and teaching resources produced by the project serve as guides for subsequent efforts at integrating data science concepts into teaching and learning in various subject areas.
Projects
This project builds on a successful introductory computer science curriculum, called Scratch Encore, to explore ways to support teachers in bringing together—or harmonizing—existing Scratch Encore instructional materials with themes that reflect the interests, cultures, and experiences of their students, schools, and communities. In designing these harmonized lessons, teachers create customized activities that resonate with their students while retaining the structure and content of the original Scratch Encore lesson.
This project aims to meet this need by developing PreK-5, equity-oriented, field-based, interdisciplinary curricular materials that support students' socioecological reasoning and sustainable decision making. The science learning experiences will be integrated across disciplines from literacy to civic and social studies lessons. The curricular materials will be part of a science education model that facilitates family engagement in ways that transform relations between educators, families, and students' science learning. The curricular activities will be co-designed with teachers while using local nature and culture as a resource.
Teachers’ beliefs influence their instructional decisions and these decisions shape the mathematical learning opportunities for all students. This is particularly important when considering the learning opportunities for groups that have historically been marginalized in mathematics, including girls and students of color. There are few validated, mathematics-specific instruments that measure teachers’ beliefs about mathematics learning related to race, ethnicity, and gender. This project seeks to investigate teachers’ beliefs related to how they explain the systemic racial and gender differences in mathematics education outcomes by developing and validating a survey instrument and to explore how those beliefs might impact their teaching.
Covariational reasoning, or the ability to reason about relationships as quantities change together, is one way of thinking that can provide a foundation for students to build their more abstract algebraic knowledge. This research builds a foundation for integrating education and research at the intersection of students’ developing algebraic knowledge, covariational reasoning, and new educational technologies to create a new path into algebra. This path can help remove barriers that have historically restricted access to mathematics and STEM coursework and careers.
This project examines the development of statistical literacy that combines statistical reasoning and thinking. The project will use professional learning communities for teachers to learn about statistical literacy and develop learning experiences for their students. The project will engage students and teachers in finding meaningful ways to use statistical reasoning to make data-based arguments and reason about patterns they observe in society.
Students of color must have access to robust and meaningful opportunities to learn science in classrooms that center their assets and humanity. This project aims to cultivate such spaces through designing and studying teacher professional learning focused on pedagogical practices that engage students of color meaningfully in science learning. These practices leverage students’ assets to foster growth in science and scientific habits of mind. This project will support pre-service and practicing teachers in developing tools for practice and reflection that focus on equity and highlighting the assets of students of color in secondary science.
This project seeks to understand how children learn about place value by studying different representations of multi-digit numbers (written number symbols, heard number names) and how prior knowledge of number influences children’s’ learning. Knowing more about multi-digit number learning will help to create teaching and curriculum resources that better support children’s learning.
This project aims to create and study an Equitable and Interactive Mathematical Modeling (EIM2) program that positions students as decision makers in their own learning. Despite the value of connecting students’ life experiences with their mathematical learning, the practical implementation of this strategy has proven challenging in a classroom setting. EIM2 addresses this issue by supporting students to engage in equitable mathematical modeling, a process of using mathematics to analyze and quantify scenarios through a lens of equity.
This project connects interdisciplinary researchers and experts from four tribal nation partners to develop and implement an in-service teacher professional certificate program that integrates Indigenous Knowledge into STEM teaching. This multi-sited teacher professional development model will enroll K-12 teachers in four different Native-serving regions of the rural West into a 12-month certificate program that combines Indigenous science, Coupled Human and Natural Systems, and Land education concepts into an experiential learning cycle with local and broad study of learning with the Land. The project will add knowledge about the transferability of local epistemologies and practices and national science standards within four specific Indigenous contexts and expand space for tribal-lead professional development to transform teacher classroom practice.
This project builds on a successful introductory computer science curriculum, called Scratch Encore, to explore ways to support teachers in bringing together—or harmonizing—existing Scratch Encore instructional materials with themes that reflect the interests, cultures, and experiences of their students, schools, and communities. In designing these harmonized lessons, teachers create customized activities that resonate with their students while retaining the structure and content of the original Scratch Encore lesson.
This project aims to meet this need by developing PreK-5, equity-oriented, field-based, interdisciplinary curricular materials that support students' socioecological reasoning and sustainable decision making. The science learning experiences will be integrated across disciplines from literacy to civic and social studies lessons. The curricular materials will be part of a science education model that facilitates family engagement in ways that transform relations between educators, families, and students' science learning. The curricular activities will be co-designed with teachers while using local nature and culture as a resource.
Understanding probability is essential for daily life. Probabilistic reasoning is critical in decision making not only for people but also for artificial intelligence (AI). AI sets a modern context to connect probability concepts to real-life situations. It also provides unique opportunities for reciprocal learning that can advance student understanding of both AI systems and probabilistic reasoning. This project aims to improve the current practice of high school probability education and to design AI problem-solving to connect probability and AI concepts. Set in a game-based environment, students learn and practice applying probability theory while exploring the world of probability-based AI algorithms to solve problems that are meaningful and relevant to them.
This project will design and study an online, portable mentor teacher professional development (PD) program that target mentors’ teaching and feedback skills in elementary mathematics. The project aims to (1) promote educator development by generating new knowledge about how to help mentors support teacher candidate learning; (2) broaden participation in mathematics by historically marginalized and minoritized youth, who are far more likely than their peers to be taught by a first year teacher; and (3) enhance infrastructure for research and education by generating PD materials and measures that can be used and studied at scale.
This project addresses a major educational barrier, namely that rural students are less likely to choose a major in STEM and have far less access to advanced STEM courses taught by highly qualified teachers. The LogicDataScience (LogicDS) curriculum and virtual delivery are expected to relieve the resource constraints significantly and thus reach rural students. The strategy behind this curriculum development for data science explores the utility of emphasizing how the foundations of data science in computing, mathematics, and statistics are unified by mathematical logic. The project is studying the impacts of the new curriculum on students’ learning of computing, mathematics, and statistics.
Understanding probability is essential for daily life. Probabilistic reasoning is critical in decision making not only for people but also for artificial intelligence (AI). AI sets a modern context to connect probability concepts to real-life situations. It also provides unique opportunities for reciprocal learning that can advance student understanding of both AI systems and probabilistic reasoning. This project aims to improve the current practice of high school probability education and to design AI problem-solving to connect probability and AI concepts. Set in a game-based environment, students learn and practice applying probability theory while exploring the world of probability-based AI algorithms to solve problems that are meaningful and relevant to them.
The project will design, develop, and test a research-based professional development (PD) approach that will ensure that teachers, and ultimately their middle-school students, have the knowledge to act in a way that promotes zero net loss of biodiversity in their communities. Through their participation in the PD, teachers will be equipped to plan for and implement NGSS-aligned instruction, facilitate student identification and understanding of biodiversity and environmental justice issues in their local community, and foster student capacity to take action. Students will come to understand that biodiversity is a global issue that they can influence at the local level, and will become empowered, in both their knowledge and their agency, to be leaders in solving biodiversity problems in their communities.
This project addresses a major educational barrier, namely that rural students are less likely to choose a major in STEM and have far less access to advanced STEM courses taught by highly qualified teachers. The LogicDataScience (LogicDS) curriculum and virtual delivery are expected to relieve the resource constraints significantly and thus reach rural students. The strategy behind this curriculum development for data science explores the utility of emphasizing how the foundations of data science in computing, mathematics, and statistics are unified by mathematical logic. The project is studying the impacts of the new curriculum on students’ learning of computing, mathematics, and statistics.
This project explores the effectiveness of two different versions of professional development (PD) designed to enhance middle school mathematics teachers’ understanding of fractions and proportions, and their teaching of these mathematical concepts to students. The PD uses an approach that engages teachers with web-based apps that allow them to test and experiment with their mathematical ideas. The apps, combined with guiding questions that challenge teachers’ thinking about fractions and proportions, serve both to promote critical thinking about the concepts and to further developing their understandings of the concepts. The researchers will use an innovative approach, topic modeling, to examine the effectiveness of each of version of the PD.
Teacher professional learning is a critical part of the mathematics education landscape. For decades, professional learning has been the primary strategy for developing the skills of the teaching workforce and changing how teachers interact with students in classrooms around academic content. Professional learning also can be expensive for districts, both financially and in terms of teacher time. Given these investments, most school leaders wish to spend their professional development dollars efficiently, making decisions about professional learning design that maximize teacher and student learning. However, despite more than two decades of rigorous research on professional learning programs, practitioners have little causal evidence on which professional learning design features work to accelerate teacher learning. This project seeks to identify features of teacher professional learning experiences that lead to better mathematics outcomes for both teachers and students.
The focus of this project is the design of learning experiences in different high school science courses to help students gain experience in computational thinking. The project uses a partnership between two universities and school district to develop and refine the units as a collaboration between researchers, teachers, and school leaders. The goal is to help all students have opportunities to learn about computational thinking in multiple science courses.
Teachers of mathematics engage in curricular reasoning as they design and interact with their students, choose curricular materials, and implement curriculum standards in the service of high-quality instruction. Currently, there is no shared measure of curricular reasoning of middle school teacher classroom decision making in mathematics. In this research project, the team develops and validates two measures of middle school teachers’ curricular reasoning in mathematics as practiced. The first measure looks at curriculum reasoning from the perspective of the teacher, the second measure attends to the perspectives of the mathematics education research community.
Teachers of mathematics engage in curricular reasoning as they design and interact with their students, choose curricular materials, and implement curriculum standards in the service of high-quality instruction. Currently, there is no shared measure of curricular reasoning of middle school teacher classroom decision making in mathematics. In this research project, the team develops and validates two measures of middle school teachers’ curricular reasoning in mathematics as practiced. The first measure looks at curriculum reasoning from the perspective of the teacher, the second measure attends to the perspectives of the mathematics education research community.
This project aims to deepen understanding of how to support and develop early childhood science learning by articulating science and engineering practices observed in children’s play. It also aims to develop early childhood educators’ abilities to identify and support nascent science and engineering practices with young children. Through this project early childhood educators will engage in professional learning using a refined version of the Science and Engineering Practices Observation Protocol (SciEPOP), an observation tool that allows researchers to identify and describe high-quality play-based engagement with science and engineering practices. Through video-rich professional learning along with peer-based coaching, early childhood educators will grow in their ability to prepare play environments, identify nascent science and engineering practices, enhance and extend investigations through play, and record and reflect upon this learning.
This project explores the effectiveness of two different versions of professional development (PD) designed to enhance middle school mathematics teachers’ understanding of fractions and proportions, and their teaching of these mathematical concepts to students. The PD uses an approach that engages teachers with web-based apps that allow them to test and experiment with their mathematical ideas. The apps, combined with guiding questions that challenge teachers’ thinking about fractions and proportions, serve both to promote critical thinking about the concepts and to further developing their understandings of the concepts. The researchers will use an innovative approach, topic modeling, to examine the effectiveness of each of version of the PD.