Projects

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.

This project is designed to enhance an existing interdisciplinary high school science curriculum—Astrobiology in the Secondary Classroom (ASC)—in an innovative way and conduct research to determine the effectiveness of these materials in three different underrepresented student populations—African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americas—experiencing an achievement gap in STEM areas at five sites. Improvements will focus on program alignment and increased use of data sets made available by research scientists.

This project addresses middle school students’ learning of science through the improvement of their inquiry science skills. The main goal is to develop a rigorous, technology-based assessment system for standards-aligned assessment of inquiry skills in six physical science content areas (i.e., Properties of Matter; Elements, Compounds, and Mixtures; Motion of Objects; Forms of Energy; and Heat Energy). Assessments are aligned with the Massachusetts Curricular Framework and National Science Education Standards.

This project seeks to advance knowledge in K-12 STEM education and assessment practices by building capacity for Assessment for Learning, improving assessments and teacher preparation courses, and providing models for pre-service teacher preparation through enhanced teaching modules. Three goals are: (1) faculty from three centers form a learning community, (2) recruit 5 STEM research scholars to conduct research on measurement and evaluation, and (3) expose pre-service teachers to assessment models in their coursework.

This project develops an instrument to measure the content knowledge that teachers need to teach about energy in high school classroom instruction that focuses on mechanical energy. The project uses a framework that includes tasks based on instructional practices in the classroom that can identify the extent to which the teacher understands both the disciplinary knowledge and the appropriate teaching processes that support student learning.

This project develops an instrument to measure the content knowledge that teachers need to teach about energy in high school classroom instruction that focuses on mechanical energy. The project uses a framework that includes tasks based on instructional practices in the classroom that can identify the extent to which the teacher understands both the disciplinary knowledge and the appropriate teaching processes that support student learning.

This project develops an instrument to measure the content knowledge that teachers need to teach about energy in high school classroom instruction that focuses on mechanical energy. The project uses a framework that includes tasks based on instructional practices in the classroom that can identify the extent to which the teacher understands both the disciplinary knowledge and the appropriate teaching processes that support student learning.

This project develops an instrument to measure the content knowledge that teachers need to teach about energy in high school classroom instruction that focuses on mechanical energy. The project uses a framework that includes tasks based on instructional practices in the classroom that can identify the extent to which the teacher understands both the disciplinary knowledge and the appropriate teaching processes that support student learning.

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.

The mayor of Birmingham is making a two year loan of XO laptops to middle school students in the Birmingham City Schools in Alabama. The educational and social changes that will occur in classrooms and the effects on several student outcomes are studied in this Small Grant for Exploratory Research. It is expected that access to technology will change the educational and social environment in classrooms and affect student outcomes.

This project is assessing the capacities needed by elementary teachers for productive use of mathematics curriculum materials. The project is guided by the assumption that well-designed curriculum programs have the potential to contribute to improvement in mathematics learning opportunities in K-12 classrooms. Yet, minimal research has examined the kind of knowledge and capacities necessary for teachers to use these resources productively. The project will undertake such research and develop tools to assess these capacities.

This project is assessing the capacities needed by elementary teachers for productive use of mathematics curriculum materials. The project is guided by the assumption that well-designed curriculum programs have the potential to contribute to improvement in mathematics learning opportunities in K-12 classrooms. Yet, minimal research has examined the kind of knowledge and capacities necessary for teachers to use these resources productively. The project will undertake such research and develop tools to assess these capacities.

The project will use a comprehensive mixed methods design to develop theoretically-grounded measures of student engagement in middle school math and science classes that reflect a multidimensional construct within an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of urban youth. The project conceptualizes student engagement as a multidimensional construct including behavioral, emotional, and cognitive components. This multidimensional perspective of student engagement provides a rich characterization of how students act, feel, and think.

This collaborative project is developing instruments to assess secondary teachers' Mathematical Habits of Mind (MHoM). These habits bring parsimony, focus, and coherence to teachers' mathematical thinking and, in turn, to their work with students. This work fits into a larger research agenda with the ultimate goal of understanding the connections between secondary teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and secondary students' mathematical understanding and achievement.

This collaborative project is developing instruments to assess secondary teachers' Mathematical Habits of Mind (MHoM). These habits bring parsimony, focus, and coherence to teachers' mathematical thinking and, in turn, to their work with students. This work fits into a larger research agenda with the ultimate goal of understanding the connections between secondary teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and secondary students' mathematical understanding and achievement.

This collaborative project is developing instruments to assess secondary teachers' Mathematical Habits of Mind (MHoM). These habits bring parsimony, focus, and coherence to teachers' mathematical thinking and, in turn, to their work with students. This work fits into a larger research agenda with the ultimate goal of understanding the connections between secondary teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and secondary students' mathematical understanding and achievement.

This project’s researchers are determining individual teacher effect estimates and investigating their stability across models. This study also investigates the instructional practices of a subsample of 30 highly effective and 30 less effective sixth-grade mathematics teachers using videotaped classroom lessons, which are coded and analyzed by researchers who are blind to the value-added effectiveness of the teachers.

The goal of this project is to develop learning progressions and assessment items targeting computational thinking. The items will be used for a test of college-ready critical reasoning skills and will be integrated into an existing online assessment system, the Berkeley Assessment System Software.

The goal of this project is to develop learning progressions and assessment items targeting computational thinking. The items will be used for a test of college-ready critical reasoning skills and will be integrated into an existing online assessment system, the Berkeley Assessment System Software.

The main goal of this study will be to conduct exploratory-design work to produce both the design approach and the early-stage tasks that are critical inputs for creating a program of research and development to more fully develop a suite of innovative assessment tasks for the early grades. Specific goals of the effort will be: (1) to iteratively develop and refine a design approach that enables assessment designers to develop Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned tasks and rubrics that include a literacy component for the early grades; (2) to use this design approach to create two exemplar assessment tasks that are feasible for classroom use; and (3) to collect initial evidence that informs the promise of the design approach.

The main goal of this study will be to conduct exploratory-design work to produce both the design approach and the early-stage tasks that are critical inputs for creating a program of research and development to more fully develop a suite of innovative assessment tasks for the early grades. Specific goals of the effort will be: (1) to iteratively develop and refine a design approach that enables assessment designers to develop Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned tasks and rubrics that include a literacy component for the early grades; (2) to use this design approach to create two exemplar assessment tasks that are feasible for classroom use; and (3) to collect initial evidence that informs the promise of the design approach.

The main goal of this study will be to conduct exploratory-design work to produce both the design approach and the early-stage tasks that are critical inputs for creating a program of research and development to more fully develop a suite of innovative assessment tasks for the early grades. Specific goals of the effort will be: (1) to iteratively develop and refine a design approach that enables assessment designers to develop Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned tasks and rubrics that include a literacy component for the early grades; (2) to use this design approach to create two exemplar assessment tasks that are feasible for classroom use; and (3) to collect initial evidence that informs the promise of the design approach.

This project will study the design features of an experimental gaming environment called Arcadia: The Next Generation. Researchers working with a group of formal and informal educators to study the connections between scientific inquiry in Arcadia and STEM learning. The project provides a dynamic and evolving place where gamers, educators, parents, and citizen scientists can come together to share, rate, and build knowledge through a variety of fun science inquiry games.

This project is creating a suite of instruments for measuring fidelity of implementation of several science and mathematics instructional materials programs and a User's Guide for customizing those instruments to other programs. The instruments are grounded in a shared conceptual framework that organizes "critical components" that the programs share. The suite was piloted and field tested in over 50 schools in Chicago.

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.