Projects

CAST, the University of Michigan, and EDC are collaborating to create heuristics for universally designed middle and high school science materials; to build an open-source UDL Inquiry Science System (ISS) that enables science curricula to be transformed into digitally supported versions that incorporate UDL features, to use the ISS to produce four UDL exemplars from tested instructional materials, and to evaluate the benefits of these exemplars for grades-5–12 students with and without learning disabilities.

This project is developing and testing comprehensive science curricula for the middle school and high school. Project partners are creating heuristics for universally designed materials; building an open source UDL Inquiry Science System (ISS) that enables science curricula to be transformed into digitally supported versions incorporating UDL features; and using the ISS to produce exemplars of units from tested instructional materials and evaluate the benefits of these exemplars for students with and without learning disabilities.

This project is implementing a program of professional development for teachers and web interface that links scientists with urban classrooms. Scientist mentors work with students and teachers through the web to carry out an original "authentic" inquiry project in plant science. The classroom intervention involves high school biology students working in assigned teams to generate their own research questions in plant science centered on core biology concepts from the National Science Education Standards.

This project augmenting the traditional professional development model with an online professional development platform—the Active Physics Teacher Community—that provides just-in-time support for teachers as they are enacting targeted units of the Active Physics curriculum. Teachers are helped in preparing lessons by providing them with formal instruction related to the lessons they are teaching in the classroom. In addition, teachers can participate in a moderated forum where they can share experiences.

This project partners high school science teachers and students with particle physicists working in experiments at the scientific frontier. These experiments are searching for answers to fundamental questions about the origin of mass, the dimensionality of spacetime and the nature of symmetries that govern physical processes. Among the experimental projects at the energy frontier with which the project is affiliated is the Large Hadron Collider, which is poised at the horizon of discovery.

This project researches the use of cyberinfrastructure to implement a strategy for using online telescopes as a laboratory to engage middle and high school students in cutting edge science research while providing them with significant new opportunities to apply STEM concepts, practice inquiry, and design and learn about the nature of scientific discovery.  

This project has two goals:

1) to discover methods that can efficiently obtain information about the effects of high school programs on eventual college success. Methods we are considering include obtaining transcripts from post-secondary institutions, surveying high school graduates, and obtaining information from the National Student Clearinghouse.

2) to explore how students who studied Contemporary Mathematics in Context (Core Plus) or the Integrated Mathematics Program (IMP) fare in post secondary institutions.

SPRINTT uses an innovative, live, online training format to train hundreds of teachers in how to teach life, Earth, and physical science content in a polar context. Polar scientists directly inform the content and participate in the training. SPRINTT provides teachers with existing and adapted, high-quality, standards-based curriculum materials and collaborates with science and education partners to simplify research data and create a user-friendly interface from which students perform their own authentic polar research projects.

This project improves science learning by students who are not achieving their potential in high quality inquiry-based programs. The project aims to achieve its goal by developing a computer program, My Science Tutor, which students will use immediately following classroom science investigations to reinforce and extend concepts embedded in the investigations. The program uses a lifelike animated character to engage students in guided learning activities and conversational tutorial dialogs that stimulate scientific reasoning.

This project develops mixed-initiative dialog and speech recognition technologies to encourage students to speak and reason about science concepts. It is part of a larger collaboration to help fourth and fifth grade students who are not achieving their potential in high quality inquiry-based programs. The larger collaboration develops and evaluates a computer program, MyST, to interactively engage students in spoken tutorial dialogs of four science investigations to reinforce and extend their understanding of science concepts.

This project develops resources to facilitate the involvement of college and university physics departments in the professional development of K-12 teachers of physics and physical science. Research investigates how students and teachers learn content and reasoning skills for applying concepts to real world situations; how teachers can learn content in a way that helps them promote student learning; and how teachers can learn to assess student understanding in a way that promotes student learning.

This project is developing and testing digital versions of science materials for middle school and high school. Project partners are creating guidelines for universally designed materials; building an open-source authoring tool (Inquiry Science System,ISS) that enables transformation of science curricula into digitally supported versions incorporating UDL features; using the ISS to produce exemplars of units from tested instructional materials, and evaluating the benefits of these exemplars for students with and without learning disabilities.

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.

A collaboration among educators, engineers, and mathematicians in three universities, this project is creating, implementing, and evaluating a one-year curriculum for teaching a non-calculus, fourth-year high school mathematics course and accompanied assessment instruments. The curriculum will draw on decision-making tools that include but go well beyond linear programming, to enhance student mathematical competence (particularly solving multi-step problems), improve students' attitudes toward mathematics, and promote states' adoption of the curriculum (initially NC and MI).

In response to the critical need for scholars with deep content knowledge in chemistry and the specialized training to conduct CER, this capacity building project prepares scholars whose research marries expertise in instrument design with extensive literature on chemistry misconceptions, resulting in the development of concept inventories as reliable and valid measures of student learning for use by chemistry teachers (both high school and post-secondary) and chemistry education researchers.

This project examines the nature of adaptive expertise in mathematics education, exploring relationships between this concept from cognitive psychology and effective middle school mathematics instruction. One goal of the project is to operationalize adaptive expertise in mathematics classroom using three dimensions: cognitive models of professional competence, instructional practices, and professional learning. Then, researchers seek to determine whether teachers who are more effective at raising student achievement are more or less adaptive.

This project aims to (1) investigate whether or not it is possible to successfully scale-up and adapt the Capacity Building Systems Model used in the Gadsden Mathematics Initiative and improve mathematics achievement for all students in a larger school district, and (2) replicate success in broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in entering STEM field by closing the achievement gap and raising the achievement level of underrepresented students in mathematics.

Researchers are developing a practice-based curriculum for the professional education of preservice and practicing secondary mathematics teachers that focuses on reasoning and proving; has narrative cases as a central component; and supports the development of knowledge of mathematics needed for teaching. This curriculum is comprised of eight constellations of activities that focus on key aspects of reasoning and proving such as identifying patterns; making conjectures; providing proofs; and providing non-proof arguments.

The primary purpose of this international conference was for participants in the US to exchange views and discuss the latest research findings on (primary) science assessment. The conference focused on research around building assessment systems that help teachers diagnose student learning in the classroom but also link meaningfully to large-scale accountability systems (in districts or national levels). The project resulted in a report, proceedings, journal publications.

This conference, convened in May 2008, produced a conceptual framework, a research agenda, and an instructional unit for elementary mathematics methods classes. A total of 35 participants were invited to attend, and participating faculty members were asked to bring a graduate student. The conference was scheduled for 2.5 days supplemented with significant pre-conference and post-conference activities.

This study is aimed at exploring the components and impact of a teacher professional development model on teacher performance and student achievement and motivation in STEM disciplines at schools serving large numbers of minority students. It also aims to research and evaluate the impact of teachers who provide students with school experiences that are geared toward fostering high academic achievement.

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.

The PuM project develops and conducts research on a learning continuum for seamless instruction in middle school physical science and high school physics. The ultimate goal is to use physics as the context to develop mathematics literacy, particularly with students from underrepresented populations and special needs students. The research component analyzes the effects of the curriculum on students' learning while simultaneously investigating teachers' pedagogical content knowledge in a variety of forms.

This curriculum development and professional development program includes residential summer institutes with academic-year online communication for in-service teachers involved in professional development of their colleagues. During each summer institute, teachers will be introduced to sets of STEM Polar Connections Modules that will emphasize the process of scientific inquiry and will explore a variety of proven techniques for effective teaching, including inquiry-based teaching, cooperative learning, and methods for formative assessment of student learning.

This project creates eight half-year units in two subject areas—Force and Motion, and Energy Systems— for three grade bands, pre-K–1, 2-3 and 4–6. These projects integrate engineering, science, math literacy and art in the context of design, construction and testing of toys using inexpensive or recycled materials.