DRK-12 Research and Products
Product for Educators | This online collection of transformative geoscience resources includes Earth system models, data visualization tools, and curriculum modules. Each module is designed for middle and high school students and is aligned with the…
Publication | School-based science inquiry tends to focus on already answered questions. We describe how we used the COVID-19 pandemic in a high school citizen science unit for students to witness and engage in real-time science. High school students…
Publication | The study reported in this article examined the ways in which new mathematics learning influences students’ prior ways of reasoning. Authors conceptualize this kind of influence as a form of transfer of learning called backward transfer. The…
Publication | This article elaborates a theoretical, methodological, and analytical approach intended to highlight the materiality and reciprocity of noticing in mathematics classrooms.
Publication | In this study, we explored second and fifth graders’ noticing of negative signs and incorporation of them into their strategies when solving integer addition problems. For both grade levels, the order of the numerals, the location of the…
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 | The global pandemic and climate change have led to unprecedented environmental, social, and economic challenges with interdisciplinary STEM foundations. Even as STEM learning has never been more important, very few pre-college programs prepare…
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 | 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…
Publication | This paper focuses on three simulation-based scientific argumentation tasks called Trap, Aquifer, and Supply. These tasks were part of an online science curriculum module addressing groundwater systems for secondary school students.
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 | This article focuses on discussion and preliminary findings from classroom testing of the prototype learning module: Investigating Income Inequality in the U.S.
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 | 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 | The Responsive Math Teaching project has been developing and refining a model for the development of mathematics instructional leadership in a network of 13 urban under-resourced elementary schools. This report summarizes the core elements of…
Publication | COVID-19 has thrust educators into a period of uncertainty, complicating conventional ways of teaching and learning. We suspect that the pandemic has magnified the challenges that some high school teachers already experience, particularly when…
Publication | The purpose of this study was to adapt and validate an instrument for assessing immersive 360 video use in an undergraduate preservice teacher university training program.
Publication | Examining a lesson in a high school biology unit that utilized noisy sensor data, we sought to understand the ways students engaged in active reasoning about the data and the factors that influenced this process. Video analysis centers on one…
Publication | In this study, our team developed and is studying the use of an Online Practice Suite (OPS) composed of a coordinated and scaffolded collection of three practice-based online simulations designed to support the development of preservice teachers…
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 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 | This article offers six suggestions for middle school principals to implement or strengthen mathematics intervention classes at their schools, based off the findings of the authors' NSF-funded research.
Publication | In this mixed method study, we analyse the effectiveness of two pedagogical approaches – one model-based and another non-model-based – for developing secondary students’ understanding of the phenomenon of increase in Earth’s average surface…
Publication | Humankind faces unprecedented environmental, social, and economic challenges. There is a critical need for STEM education to foster both science learning and the application of learning to problem solving. At the University of Utah, Professor…
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…