DRK-12 Research and Products

Publication | In this article, it is argued that processes of co-production can support teachers and students in organizing resources for justice through science learning. Drawing upon a critical justice conceptual framework, critical ethnographic data from…
Tool | The research team developed the Student Argument and Reasoning Assessment (SARA) to measure students’ abilities to construct viable arguments and critique others’ arguments. The SARA was originally developed and validated in the LAMP pilot study (NSF…
Publication | Scientists spend a substantial amount of their time engaging with the primary literature: reading, constructing, reviewing and revising it. Yet, the role of primary literature is generally absent from the development of scientific inquiry skills…
Publication | We introduce and illustrate three principles for designing secondary mathematics classrooms in which multilingual students can benefit from participating in mathematical discussions. Drawing from the Academic Literacy in Mathematics (ALM)…
Tool | This web-based portal offers free, technology-enhanced science assessment tasks for Grades 3-5. Designed for use by educators, researchers, and the public, the tasks are aligned to the NGSS performance expectations and have been developed with…
Publication | Describes a scaffolded claims-evidence-reasoning (CER) argumentation framework that is embedded within a new eight-week, freely available curriculum unit developed by the Genetic Science Learning Center – Evolution: DNA and the Unity.
Publication | This study examined and compared teachers’ perceived affordances of 360 video as a representation of practice and their professional noticing of students’ mathematics in 360 videos. Results from this study suggest that referencing teacher…
Publication | The present study focuses on examining transitions in elementary pre-service teachers (PSTs)’ understanding of, and skills in, leading argumentation-focused discussions in mathematics during participation in a sequence of three different…
Product for Educators | The Wildfire Module asks students to consider the question, "How will wildfire risks and impacts change over the next 100 years?" This five-activity module helps students build an understanding of the variables that influence fire…
Publication | This week is Global Goals week — an annual week of action, awareness, and accountability for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, which are aimed at addressing global challenges like poverty and hunger. In North Carolina, two…
Publication | This article presents lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence about classroom argumentation as it happens.
Publication | This department explores the concept of disciplinary literacy—the conceptual understandings and ways of reading, thinking, and writing involved in critiquing and constructing knowledge in a discipline—and its intersections with aspects of…
Publication | This study used an easy-to-implement prompting intervention in the context of collaborative (pair) programming with upper elementary students to demonstrate the potential of Epistemic Network Analysis to understand the impact of the intervention…
Publication | Diagnostic classification models (DCMs) are restricted latent class models with a set of cross-class equality constraints and additional monotonicity constraints on their item parameters, both of which are needed to ensure the meaning of classes…
Publication | There is strong empirical evidence in support of learning from comparisons in mathematics education research. The Animated Contrasting Cases in Geometry project seeks to extend this research and transform the learning of geometry for middle…
Publication | Museums are local-to-global organizations operating in a digitized, distributed, and diverse 21st century world. Museums leaders face significant challenges in achieving broader relevance, meaningful engagement, and equitable outreach. This…
Publication | In a project designed to help create the next generation of problem-solvers, North Carolina State University researchers challenged a group of 11th graders to investigate and find solutions to a global problem: that billions of people lack…
Publication | This study explores design strategies used by experienced designers in Energy3D, a computer-aided design (CAD) simulation environment designed for learning settings, to provide insight into supporting students' use of CAD simulation environments…
Publication | The process of modeling a complex phenomenon often requires working across representational systems of differing scales, modalities, and purposes. When put into contact, entities across multiple representational systems can become related or “…
Presentation | AERA symposium presentation on accessible distance learning in science during COVID.
Product for Educators | The Fraction Activities and Assessments for Conceptual Teaching (FAACT) instructional program is designed to support teachers’ insights into students’ conceptual understandings of fractions. The overall program goal is to…
Publication | Productive use of student mathematical thinking is a critical yet incompletely understood dimension of effective teaching practice. We have previously conceptualized the teaching practice of building on student mathematical thinking and the four…
Publication | The resources that multilingual students bring to school mathematics are often ignored. During a teacher-researcher collaborative project focused on creating more equitable learning environments in high school math classrooms, we noted an…
Publication | This study explores disciplinary literacy instruction integrated within an elementary engineering unit in an urban classroom.
Publication | Socially relevant and controversial topics, such as the climate crisis, are subject to differences in the explanations that scientists and the public find plausible. Scaffolds can help students be evaluative of the validity of explanations based…