Projects

The goal of the project is to understand the current conditions, challenges, and resources that pertain to mathematics education in rural areas in the United States.

The goal of the project is to understand the current conditions, challenges, and resources that pertain to mathematics education in rural areas in the United States.

The goal of the project is to understand the current conditions, challenges, and resources that pertain to mathematics education in rural areas in the United States.

Understanding of algebra concepts is necessary for students to gain access to STEM pathways. However, recent efforts in education have failed to improve algebra outcomes for many students, especially those with learning disabilities and persistent difficulties in mathematics. The primary goal of this project is to develop a supplemental intervention that intentionally develops students' concept of variable as they learn to (a) interpret and evaluate expressions, (b) represent real-life mathematical word problems using algebraic notation, and (c) solve linear equations. A focus on clarifying common misconceptions about variables will be interwoven throughout the program.

This project examines how Latine, bilingual teachers' dispositions to teach science and engineering to bilingual learners change as they enter the teaching profession. Specifically, it explores bilingual teachers' transition from a period of strong social support to one of scarce social support, i.e., from being Bilingual Teacher Candidates to Novice Bilingual Teachers (NBTs) as they plan and teach bilingual science and engineering lessons.

The purpose of this project is to develop a home mathematics environment (HME) intervention for preschool-aged children with developmental delays (DD). The project includes caregivers of children with DD as collaborators in the iterative design process to develop feasible and sustainable HME intervention activities.

The project addresses the historic marginalization of women and minoritized racial/ethnic (MRE) groups in physics. The aim of the project is to co-design, test, and disseminate professional learning for high school physics teachers, specifically targeting the implementation of inclusive and equitable practices that support physics identity development and persistence of women and MRE groups.

This research synthesis systematically reviews and meta-analyzes the evidence on relationships between teacher support, student engagement, and mathematics achievement in the instructional–relational model framework. The researchers rigorously examine the consistency and variability of the relationships between the domains and constructs across studies.

This project contributes to advancing knowledge on STEM education focusing on societal challenges by harnessing the convergence of STEM subjects, including data science and computer science, to empower a minoritized student group—multilingual middle-school learners.

The project addresses the historic marginalization of women and minoritized racial/ethnic (MRE) groups in physics. The aim of the project is to co-design, test, and disseminate professional learning for high school physics teachers, specifically targeting the implementation of inclusive and equitable practices that support physics identity development and persistence of women and MRE groups.

This RAPID project responds to the Buffalo blizzard of 2022 (Buffalo, NY) by developing, with and for the community, a science education curriculum framework focused on disaster justice and resilience. This project will document the science education human and social impact of the blizzard by capturing the experiences, reflections, and needs of science teachers, Black and Brown community leaders, and families who were directly affected.

The project addresses the historic marginalization of women and minoritized racial/ethnic (MRE) groups in physics. The aim of the project is to co-design, test, and disseminate professional learning for high school physics teachers, specifically targeting the implementation of inclusive and equitable practices that support physics identity development and persistence of women and MRE groups.

This project is an innovative exploratory research study focused on developing a high school environmental engineering curriculum that addresses the challenges posed by climate change. The curriculum follows a model-validate-iterate design paradigm, where students model dynamic real-world systems, validate their models using data, and create multiple iterations to explore changes in the system over time. The project aims to cultivate a new generation of environmental engineers who possess the necessary skills to analyze complex systems, collaborate with diverse communities, and develop creative solutions.

This project will build an interactive and integrated curricular and professional development technological system: the Building Blocks Toolset (BBToolset). The BBToolset is designed to benefit all early childhood educators and their students. Young children will learn from engaging, effective digital educational games and face-to-face activities. Teachers will receive just-in-time professional development related to their students' development and guidance on curricular choices and culturally sensitive pedagogical strategies.

This project establishes a statewide teacher-researcher alliance of mathematics teachers and teacher leaders in Idaho, who will work with teacher educators at two universities with expertise in professional development and school-based research. The research focuses on two research-based strategies for improving students’ mathematics achievement. The first, Explicit Attention to Concepts, draws students’ attention specifically to the meaning of mathematical ideas while making connections between different ways to represent the content. The second, Students’ Opportunities to Struggle, helps students make sense of graspable new concepts through supported problem solving with peers, highlighting ways to overcome confusion, stimulate personal sense-making, build perseverance, and promote openness to challenge.

This exploratory study aims to design, implement, and test climate science and history professional learning materials and experiences for high school teachers. By leveraging existing science and history/social science materials, the program will develop curricular planning tools and lessons to help teachers integrate climate literacy into their instructional units. The goal is to provide students with the knowledge to understand and respond to the social and environmental issues associated with the climate crisis.

This research synthesis study reviews the effects of professional learning interventions and will advance STEM educators' understanding of the critically important relationships among teacher professional learning (PL), teacher knowledge and practice, and average student effects. Understanding these relationships will allow the field to design better PL experiences for teachers that truly benefit student learning.

This project seeks to better understand how teachers' capacity and willingness to customize instructional approaches to meet standards and the needs of diverse student populations develops through initial practice and successive enactments of curriculum materials. This work will address current gaps in the literature and contribute to an overall understanding of how teachers develop the capacity to use curricula in ways that advance the goal of equitable science instruction.

Early childhood educators (ECEs) understand that effective science teaching and learning requires content knowledge related to science concepts and practices and pedagogical knowledge. However, ECEs, especially in rural communities, express a lack of science content knowledge and confidence in incorporating science-related conversations in their early care and education settings, and they believe this might be a result of limited professional training relevant to science content. This project aims to strengthen key capabilities in ECEs, including the ability to (1) build science content knowledge and confidence in guiding young children's scientific investigation, (2) closely observe children's interactions with science materials, and (3) use those observations in the reflection, planning, and practice of science teaching.

There is a need for resources for teacher education programs to help pre-service teachers learn about equitable mathematics approaches to teaching and learning. This project will develop modules, resources, and tools for exploring how teachers' understanding of equity changes from their last year of the preparation program into their first year of teaching. The tools and resources can be shared with other teacher education programs.

There is a need for resources for teacher education programs to help pre-service teachers learn about equitable mathematics approaches to teaching and learning. This project will develop modules, resources, and tools for exploring how teachers' understanding of equity changes from their last year of the preparation program into their first year of teaching. The tools and resources can be shared with other teacher education programs.

There is a need for resources for teacher education programs to help pre-service teachers learn about equitable mathematics approaches to teaching and learning. This project will develop modules, resources, and tools for exploring how teachers' understanding of equity changes from their last year of the preparation program into their first year of teaching. The tools and resources can be shared with other teacher education programs.

This project aims to create and test an innovative educational approach for bringing STEM learning experiences to underserved youth. It will co-create and study an outdoor robotic-augmented playground called the “Smart Playground” and a corresponding series of classroom lessons. The Smart Playground will be co-designed with Latinx families and educators to engage children in developing computational thinking skills and learning about robotics in a physical environment using a culturally sustaining approach. Research and evaluation will examine whether exposure to the Smart Playground and corresponding classroom activities have an impact on the development of computational thinking in young children.

This project will contribute new knowledge on two aspects of participation in mathematics education. First, this research aims to understand how perceptions of race influence how teachers, future teachers, and researchers assess how bilingual children use their languages and movement to participate in mathematical activity. Second, it will explore ways to counter deficit views that influence teachers’, preservice teachers’, and researchers’ perceptions of these multiple ways of participating as inferior to what is traditionally considered as meaningful participation.

The goal of this project is to study how secondary students come to understand better an underlying logic of natural sciences—the relation between construction of new ideas and critique of them. Science education has traditionally focused mostly on how students construct models of natural phenomena. However, critique is crucial for iterative refinement of models because in professional science, peer critique of explanatory models motivates and guides progress toward better understanding. This project engages students in this process and helps them understand the relation of critique to better explanations, by focusing students on the criteria by which critique and understanding develop together through classroom discussions.