Reading List: Recent DRK-12 Project Publications

This research focuses on ways in which balance scales mediate students’ relational understandings of the equal sign.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how teachers understand one specific aspect of proportional reasoning - the extent to which practicing teachers were able to make sense of reasoning that involved the fixed number of variable-sized parts perspective.

This article discusses the implementation of innovative teaching approaches in mathematics.

This study investigated the efficacy of the Precision Mathematics Level 1 (PM-L1) intervention, a Tier 2 print- and technology-based mathematics intervention designed to increase first-grade students’ conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills around the areas of measurement and data analysis.

The production of the first-grade Precision Mathematics intervention was grounded in the Curriculum Research Framework (CRF), which involves a series of iterative cycles of development, implementation field-testing, analysis, and revision. Results from initial implementation studies suggest that teachers and students can feasibly implement the first-grade Precision Mathematics intervention in authentic education settings. Challenges faced in developing technology-based mathematics interventions are discussed.

In The Price of Nice, an interdisciplinary group of scholars explores Niceness in educational spaces from elementary schools through higher education to highlight how this seemingly benign quality reinforces structural inequalities.

This article describes one effort to strengthen early childhood teaching in schools on the Navajo Nation that centers the work of two teachers within a program attempting to support teachers in the development of academically rigorous, culturally responsive curriculum across the Navajo Nation.

This Science Scope article discusses how to foster critical-thinking skills in middle school science.

A cluster randomized trial design was used to examine the effectiveness of a Grades 3 to 5 early algebra intervention with a diverse student population.

This article describes opportunities for primary and secondary ecology education in formal and informal settings.

This article describes the 4‐Dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) framework. Developed by a task force of ESA members who solicited input from a variety of groups, the framework takes a fresh and innovative approach toward the teaching of ecology.

In this paper, authors present a design narrative of our experience developing dashboards to support middle school mathematics teachers’ pedagogical practices, in a multi-university, multi-school district, improvement science initiative in the United States.

This sample document contains 1) an overview of the module lessons and learning objectives and 2) the team data investigation for the module Investigating Immigration to the U.S.

This sample document contains 1) an overview of the module lessons and learning objectives, 2) the teacher guide for Lesson 6, titled How much income inequality exists between males and females in the U.S.?, and 3) the team data investigation for the module Investigating Income Inequality in the U.S.

This study explores the pathways to K–12 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics instruction among Black/African American males in the Discovery Research Education for African American Men in STEM to Teach (DREAMS to Teach) program at Morehouse College

In this study, authors examine the consequences of within-school churn for the pedagogical content knowledge of elementary teacher participants in an NSF-funded science PD program.

This resource contains advice from CAREER awardees in the DRK-12 portfolio about how to develop a competitive proposal and successfully manage a CAREER project based on their experience.

In this article, we describe an example of differentiating instruction (DI) involving middle school students from a five-year project funded by the National Science Foundation.

In this paper, using written responses of 37 PSTs preparing to teach grades 1-8 mathematics, authors examined explanations they constructed to support their problem solutions and explanations they provided in support of their critiques of student-generated explanations.

This article describes an identity-based curriculum, Mathematics for Justice, Identity, and meta-Cognition (or MaJIC), that provides a form of mathematics therapy through a restorative justice framework.

This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching.

In the article, the authors locate how mathematics instruction may actively respond to the influence of the discipline of mathematics and exemplify how obligations to other stakeholders may participate in the practical rationality of mathematics teaching as those influences are incorporated into instruction.

The LEAP program is the first early algebra curriculum for students in grades 3-5. The program includes 18-20 one-hour lessons at each grade level and teacher support and assessment. Professional development  is also available. 

In this paper we describe a qualitative study in which we examine individual student engagement during implementation of an instructional scaffold for critical evaluation of scientific models during Earth and space science lessons. We coded dialogic interactions of one student group in a sixth grade science classroom across three observations, wherein we analyzed the trajectory of engagement for a single student - Ray (a pseudonym), within the co-constructed learning of the group. The first of these observations involved implementation of a preconstructed scaffold, called the Model-Evidence Link (MEL) diagram, on the topic of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). With the MEL, students use evidence to compare a scientific model to an alternative model. In the second two observations, students used a more agentic variation of the activity called the build-a-MEL, to study the topics of fossils and freshwater resources respectively. After three observations, we transcribed and coded each interaction of students in the group. We then categorized and identified emerging patterns of Ray’s discourse and interactions with group members by using both a priori engagement codes and open coding. This paper was prepared for the 2020 AERA Annual Meeting. 

Strategies and strategic processing within science education are designed to help students learn not only what scientists have come to understand about the world but also how they learn it. Although many domain-general strategies can be implemented in science classrooms, some strategies are either specific to science or are encouraged within science. Historically, concept development and conceptual change approaches and empirical investigations dominated science’s strategies and strategic processing. More recently, argumentation, science as modeling, and the incorporation of socio-scientific topics dominate the strategies and strategic processing within science teaching and learning. Challenges to more widespread use of these approaches include lack of teacher experience and pedagogical knowledge around the strategies, as well as time and curricular limitations. Teacher education and professional development programs should seek to explicitly implement contemporary science strategy interventions to improve upon their use in K-12 classrooms and other learning environments. Doing so effectively will require well-researched and validated instructional scaffolds to facilitate the teaching and use of contemporary science learning strategies. This paper was prepared for the 2020 AERA Annual Meeting.

This study compares web usage data with interviews from 41 participants, who are members of an online professional development site called the Everyday Mathematics Virtual Learning Community (VLC), to explore how elementary school teachers learn from classroom video.

This chapter describes curricula that use WorldWide Telescope in teaching key topics in Astro 101 and K–12 science, including parallax, Hubble’s Law and large-scale structure in the universe, seasons, Moon phases and eclipses, and life in the universe.

In this article, authors propose a framework that centers the investigation as a key locus for constructing alignments among phenomena, data, and explanatory models and makes visible the work that scientists engage in as they develop and stabilize alignments.

This article investigates whether teachers’ subject matter knowledge (SMK) and knowledge of students’ misconceptions (KOSM) in high school life science are associated with students’ posttest performance on multiple-choice test items designed to reveal student misconceptions.

In this paper, authors offer a framework for teacher monitoring routines—a consequential yet understudied aspect of instruction when teachers oversee students’ working together.

This study is a case of using second-order models of students’ mathematical thinking to differentiate instruction, and it reveals that inquiring into research-based knowledge and inquiring responsively into students’ thinking are at the heart of differentiating mathematics instruction.

Informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics and Latent Dirichlet Allocation analyses, this study utilizes an innovative bilingual (Spanish–English) constructed response assessment of science and language practices for middle and high school students to perform a multilayered analysis of student responses.

Using findings from a 4‐year research and development effort, we propose an updated model of sheltered instruction for science classrooms that leverages the opportunities provided by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to better support multilingual learners in middle and high school science.

In this study, analyzing lesson plans using the rubrics provided opportunities for suggestions and feedback for improvement to developers and it informs the development of new lessons by the project team.

This paper describes how the design canvas of Kline et al. was adopted and implemented in our workshop and investigates its benefits.

This paper analyzes teaching practices that successfully integrate robotics in middle school science and math classrooms.

This paper describes a program to engage teachers to learn about mechatronics, robotics, and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) through hands-on activities and collaborative research.

This paper will describe the process and result of developing a LEGO robotics, NGSS, and 5E aligned middle school curriculum during a three-week summer PD program for teachers who teach urban students-of-color.

This paper investigates classroom-related factors such as pedagogical strategies and management of robotics-based educational content that contribute to the formation of student perceptions in robotics-enhanced classes.

Drawing upon a social practice theory analytical lens with a focus on power and using critical participatory ethnography methods, this study investigated the ways middle school students restructured power hierarchies as they worked to complete the design challenge of making their classroom community more sustainable, and how power hierarchy restructuring impacted students' opportunities to enact critical science agency (CSA).

In this paper, authors focus on the design of assessments of mathematics teachers’ knowledge by emphasising the importance of identifying the purpose for the assessment, defining the specific construct to be measured, and considering the affordances of particular psychometric models on the development of assessments as well as how they are able to communicate learning or understanding.

This study explored how teachers interpreted and responded to their own student work during the process of formative assessment.

In this chapter, the authors present the design rationale for and empirical results from a predominantly synchronous three-part online model for the professional development of mathematics teachers in rural contexts.

This article describes online video coaching model used with middle-grades, rural mathematics teachers.

Authors investigate ways to support students in integrating their understanding of density concepts through a graph that is linked to a simulation depicting the relationship between mass, volume, and density.

In this article, authors use meta-analysis to analyze 42 design and comparison studies involving data from 7699 students spanning over 35 years.

We describe an experience within mathematics teacher preparation that engages pre-service teachers of mathematics (PMTs) in Making and design practices that we hypothesized would inform their conceptual, curricular, and pedagogical thinking.

The purpose of this study was to describe how families utilize science activity packs at home.

In this editorial, authors discuss the first of the five overarching problems: defining and measuring learning opportunities precisely enough to study how to maximize the quality of the opportunities experienced by every student.

Authors discuss the possibilities of retaining and sharing professional knowledge as a way of addressing the problem of always starting over.

The purpose of this study is to characterize teachers’ orientations toward using student mathematical thinking as a resource during whole-class instruction.

Presented in this paper are the results from analyzing a discussion between five high school chemistry teachers as they generated a set of best practices for inquiry assessments.

The present report summarizes the analyses of the calibration data for the electronic Test of Early Numeracy (e-TEN), an adaptive, iPad-based test of early numeracy achievement.

Drawing on a situated perspective on learning, authors analyzed written, open-ended journals of 52 pre-service teachers (PSTs) concurrently enrolled in mathematics and pedagogy with field experience courses for elementary education majors.

This article looks at the 2017 STEM for All Video Showcase, a multimodal environment, that enabled educational researchers to share and discuss short videos depicting their federally-funded work to improve STEM education. In a mixed methods study, authors investigate the forms of participation that took place and the benefits that accrued to those who presented.

From 2012–2015, Advanced Placement (AP) science courses underwent a large-scale curricular reform to include more scientific inquiry and reasoning, reduce emphasis on broad content coverage, and focus on depth of understanding, with corresponding changes in high-stakes AP examinations. In this study, authors explore how teachers prepared for and adapted to this reform over a three-year period.

In this study, authors examined middle-school students’ naturally occurring design conversations in small design teams and their learning of science as a result of engaging in an engineering and science unit.

In this article, authors examined classroom videos of nine experienced teachers of elementary, middle, and high school science, aiming to create a model of FA enactment that is useful to teachers.

In this paper, authors describe the design and implementation of Getting Unstuck, a 21-day, email-based learning experience for K-12 teachers interested in developing greater familiarity and fluency with Scratch.

This manuscript focuses on longitudinal research with four primary inservice teachers’ learning and engagement in model-based teaching about water over three years, investigating teachers conceptualizations and practice modelling water related phenomena over time. Findings from the study indicate while each teacher had individual trajectories in conceptualising and enacting scientific modelling in the classroom, we observed unique approaches within teachers.

This article describes how diagrams can be a powerful tool to develop and communicate mathematical understanding for English language learners.

This conversion mixed method study analyzed student work samples and teacher lesson plans from seven exemplary inclusive STEM high schools to better understand at what level teachers at these schools are engaging and developing student 21st Century skills.

In this article, authors explore a variety of types of responsive teaching and elaborate a specific type of responsive teaching—epistemologically responsive science teaching.

This case study investigates U.S. eighth-grade (age 13) mathematics students’ conceptions about the validity of a direct argument after the students received instruction on the eliminating counterexamples (ECE) framework.

This paper investigates how one elementary school child with specific visual motor integration differences constructed a unit fraction concept.

This mixed-method study was designed to examine whether middle school students’ in-game actions are likely to promote certain types of learning engagement (i.e., content and cognitive engagement).

This study analyzes the engineering design behaviors of 108 ninth-grade U.S. students using principal component analysis and cluster analysis.

This study investigates a formative feedback system integrated into an online science curriculum module teaching climate change.

This article reports an efficacy study of an elementary engineering curriculum, Engineering is Elementary, that includes a set of hypothesized critical components designed to encourage student engagement in practices, connect engineering and science learning, and reach diverse students.

This article reports on how three prospective teachers had differing opportunities to demonstrate their skills in the context of the field assessment, but similar opportunities in the context of the simulation assessment.

This brief describes how to support equity for students, teachers, and communities through place-based science education strategies.

In this article, authors explain how 114 years of Hawaiian-language newspapers starting in 1834 extend our knowledge of natural disasters into the nineteenth century and to precontact times.

In this Journal of Science Teacher Education article, Jarod Kawasaki and William Sandoval report on one teachers’ efforts to re-design an entire instructional unit as a coherent storyline about forces and motion as a part of a multiyear professional development project around the NGSS.

This article discusses supporting inquiry in an online learning environment.

The purpose of this report is to sketch a tentative theoretical structure with the potential to anchor curricular decisions and inform further research on early probability learning.

This paper discusses the extent to which one case study elementary school child with identified learning disabilities (LDs) made sense of composite units and unit fractions.

In this article, authors present a comparative case study examining the epistemological framing dynamics of two novice urban teachers and argue that the stances that novice teachers adopt toward engineering learning and knowledge are consequential for the opportunities they create for students.

This study offers a critical exploration of how to design instruction that simultaneously supports students' science and graph understanding within complex inquiry contexts.

Authors report on the use of bilingual constructed response science assessments in the context of a research and development partnership with secondary school science teachers.

In this study, the authors propose and validate a model of adaptive expertise needed for teachers to successfully deliver NGSS-informed computer-supported complex systems curricula in high school science classrooms.

In this replication and extension study, we explore these issues, drawing on evidence from a multi-year study of over 200 fourth- and fifth-grade US teachers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of these data suggested a single dimension for teacher knowledge.

Authors share results from a quasi-experimental study that examines growth in students’ algebraic thinking practices of generalizing and representing generalizations, particularly with variable notation, as a result of an early algebra instructional sequence implemented across grades 3–5.

The purpose of this study was to identify affordances and limitations of using order and value comparison tasks versus number placement tasks to infer students’ negative integer understanding and growth in understanding.

Authors investigate ways to support students in integrating their understanding of density concepts through a graph that is linked to a simulation depicting the relationship between mass, volume, and density.

In this article, authors demonstrate that line following via multimodal feedback is possible on touchscreens and present guidelines for the presentation of such non-visual graphical concepts.

This paper illustrates how the combination of teacher and computer guidance can strengthen collaborative revision and identifies opportunities for teacher guidance in a computer-supported collaborative learning environment.

The purpose of the current study was to explore different ways for teachers to engage in Professional learning experiences (PLEs) and how these approaches might enable the field to scale up these efforts in a sustainable manner.

Authors describe a complementary way of studying the connections between different aspects of noticing, one that stresses the content of teachers noticing. They report on a study in which participants were shown depictions of students reacting to the launch of a complex task. Participants then chose among a variety of possible interpretations and teacher responses.

The aim of this study was to assess evidence for the validity of General Mindset (GM) and Engineering Mindset (EM) surveys that we developed for fifth-grade students (ages 10-11).

In this article, authors discuss an online Earth science curriculum module called, “Will there be enough fresh water?” designed to engage students in thinking about uncertainty as part of writing scientific arguments.

This article looks at context-based approaches to science instruction. Authors studied the effects of changes to a set of secondary science teacher education programs, all of which were redesigned with attention to the Secondary Science Teaching with English Language and Literacy Acquisition (SSTELLA) instructional framework, a framework for responsive and contextualized instruction in multilingual science classrooms.

In this article, authors argue for deliberate attention to clarifiable ambiguity as a critical aspect of attending to meaning and as a necessary precursor to productive use of student mathematical thinking.

Authors discuss how teachers used MECMs and whether that use impacted their beliefs about the practice of scientific argumentation.

Authors describe the design principles of iPlan, a web-based tool provides access to educative curriculum materials in an online interactive learning platform, and discuss implications for designing educative and online systems for teacher learning.

Authors describe an alternative model of online math videos that feature unscripted dialogue of secondary school students, who convey sources of confusion and resolve the dilemmas that arise during problem solving.

Authors discuss student dimensions of expertise when engaged in modeling and simulation practices and describe how students used their cognitive and metacognitive knowledge to approach a computational challenge.

The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ experimentation strategies while they work on a design challenge.

This article describes the effect of simulation-enabled Learning by Design learning experiences on student-generated heuristics that can lead to solutions to problems.

This article focuses on the impacts of a program designed to prepare elementary classroom teachers to mentor preservice teachers for effective science instruction.

This article describes key features of a hybrid professional development (PD) program that was designed to prepare elementary classroom teachers to mentor preservice teachers for effective science instruction.

This article describes how research-based learning progressions can be used to enhance the analysis and response to student work.

In this paper, the author theorizes reciprocal noticing as a relational practice through which teachers and students exchange roles as knowers by reciprocating each other’s noticing as they study mathematics concepts.

Linear Algebra and Geometry is aimed at preservice and practicing high school mathematics teachers and advanced high school students looking for an addition to or replacement for calculus. The materials are organized around carefully sequenced problems that help students build both the tools and the habits that provide a solid basis for further study in mathematics. Requiring only high school algebra, it uses elementary geometry to build the beautiful edifice of results and methods that make linear algebra such an important field.

This study is focused on engineering for sustainable communities (EfSC) in three middle school classrooms.

In this article, it is argued that the construct of rightful presence, and the coconstructed “making present” practices that give rise to moments of rightful presence, is 1 way to consider how to make sense of the historicized and relational nature of consequential learning.

This paper describes HASbot, an automated text scoring and real‐time feedback system designed to support student revision of scientific arguments.

Use these ideas to diagnose and address common conceptual obstacles that inhibit students’ success.

This study uses a mixed-method sequential exploratory design to examine influences on urban adolescents’ engagement and disengagement in school.

A school-wide and multi-contextual perspective on student engagement in school.

Preschoolers investigate force and motion with a digital journal.

Based on a mixed methods study of a statewide survey and interviews of district professional development directors, we found that district requirement of lesson study, funding provision, and future sustainability plan were significantly and positively associated with a broader implementation of lesson study within the district. Implications for educational leaders at local educational agencies are discussed.

Based on a teacher survey of lesson study, this study found that facilitators’ focus on student thinking, the quality of materials, and duration of lesson study were significantly associated with teacher participation in an effective inquiry process, which in turn is associated with perceived positive changes in teacher knowledge, self-efficacy, and expectation.

Shifting people’s judgments toward the scientific involves teaching them to purposefully evaluate connections between evidence and alternative explanations.

This study explores how teachers describe, or frame, expectations for classroom discussions pertaining to the science practice of argumentation. Authors use the theoretical lens of a participation framework to examine how teachers emphasize particular actions and goals for their students' argumentation.

Authors investigate in-service teachers’ scientific engagement in a blended online science inquiry course. A key implication of this study is the importance of instructional attention to epistemology and affect to create online learning environments that promote productive framings of scientific inquiry.

This study utilized the methodology of Improvement Science “Plan, Do Study, Act” cycles in order to design a Three-Dimensional Mapping Tool (3D Map) as a visual scaffold for use in science teaching methods courses to support preservice teachers in unpacking the components of NGSS and to promote discourse related to the three-dimensionality of planning instruction.

In this study, we investigated how high school credit recovery students worked in small groups and used computer-based scaffolds to conduct scientific inquiry in a problem-based learning unit centered on water quality.