Projects

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.

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.

This project aims to (1) determine ways in which Evidence-Centered Design enhances the quality of large-scale, technology-based science assessments for middle school grades and high school equivalency; (2) implement resulting procedures in operational test development; (3) evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness and generalizability of these procedures, and (4) disseminate findings to the assessment community.

This project uses Antarctic pack-ice penguins to hook students into exploring how science investigates changes in Earths biota and climate. The project builds on a pilot effort, called Penguin Science, and will develop PowerPoint presentations, short video \"webisodes,\" background reading material, and live and interactive website components to engage students in ongoing field research. Students, K-14, will be involved in climate-change research that will include ecology, sedimentology, paleontology, glaciology and oceanography.

Through the integration of STEM content and literacy, this project will study the ways teachers implement project practices integrating literacy activities into STEM learning. Teachers will facilitate instruction using scenarios that present students with everyday, STEM-related issues, presented as scenarios, that they read and write about. After reading and engaging with math and science content, students will write a source-based argument in which they state a claim, support the claim with evidence from the texts, and explain the multiple perspectives on the issue.

This project assists teachers in analyzing their own science inquiry skills as well as those of their students via the development of an inquiry skill analyzer (iSA); and to assist teachers in selecting, designing, developing, implementing and evaluating technology-supported learning activities to develop science inquiry skills, especially in identified weak areas through the development of an inquiry activity portal (iAP).

This project will conduct an in-depth analysis of instructional coaching by analyzing archived video-recorded coaching sessions with middle and high school science teachers. The goal of the project is to analyzing the videos and previously collected quantitative outcome data to create descriptive profiles of instructional coaching and identify which key coaching elements lead to desired teacher and student outcomes.

This project aims to create a web-based STEM Career Exploration and Readiness Environment (CEE-STEM) that will support opportunities for youth ages 16-24 who are neither in school nor are working, in rebuilding engagement in STEM learning and developing STEM skills and capacities relevant to diverse postsecondary education/training and employment pathways.

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.

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.

This project uses classroom and individual teaching experiments, along with numerous and extensive interviews, to investigate: (a) the nature of teachers' understandings of students' mathematical thinking before and after instruction on that thinking, (b) the processes by which teachers learn about students' mathematical thinking while participating in instruction, (c) factors affecting teachers' learning of this material and (d) effects of learning this material on teachers' conceptualizations of mathematics learning, teaching and assessment .

The ability to express scientific ideas in both written and oral form is an important 21st century skill. This project would help teachers help students achieve these skills through automating an effective feedback process, in ways that are customized to particular disciplines and local classroom needs, particularly in high needs districts. The project will contribute to knowledge about how students learn to write and how computer assisted systems can support this learning.

This research and development project is focused on accelerating both student science understanding and reading comprehension proficiency at the primary level (grades 1-2). The project is being implemented in diverse classrooms and addresses age-appropriate content from the areas of the physical, earth/environmental, and life sciences.

This project will study if, how, and under what circumstances an integration of literacy strategies, hands-on inquiry-based investigations, and planetarium experiences supports the development of science practices (noticing, recognizing change, making predictions, and constructing explanations) in early elementary level students. The project will generate knowledge about how astronomy-focused storybooks, hands-on investigations, and planetarium experiences can be integrated to develop age-appropriate science practices in very young children.

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City, in partnership with New York University, and in collaboration with five high-needs schools, is developing, implementing, and researching a five-year pilot Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program in Earth Science. The program is delivered by the Museum's scientific and education teams and its evaluation covers aspects of the program from recruitment to first year of teaching.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The project team will conduct an efficacy study of a new comprehensive science curriculum for middle grades 6-8 called Amplify Science Middle School (ASMS). This school science curriculum integrates disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts. The overarching aim of the study will be to understand the impact of the curriculum on student achievement, classroom implementation, and teacher practice in relation to the recommendations of "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" and the Next Generation of Science Standards.

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 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 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.