DRK-12 Research and Products
Tool | Printable NSF Grant Proposal Guide(Part I: Proposal Preparation & Submission Guidelines)and Award & Administration Guide(Part II: Award & Administration Guidelines)
Publication | The purpose of this compendium is to provide an overview on the current status of STEM instrumentation commonly used in the U.S and to provide resources for research and evaluation professionals. Part 2 of a two-part series, the goal to provide…
Publication | “Providing a richness of resources unavailable in any classroom, informal science institutions across the country have developed exemplary partnerships with public schools—and have room for more.” Read this brief to explore how out-of-school…
Publication | “When students from non-mainstream backgrounds receive equitable learning opportunities, they are capable of attaining science outcomes comparable to their mainstream peers. The same is true for mathematics and, presumably, for other STEM…
STEM Smart Brief: Improving STEM Curriculum and Instruction: Engaging Students and Raising Standards
Publication | “For effective K–12 STEM instruction to become the norm, schools and districts must be transformed.” Read this brief to learn more about curriculum and instructional methods that engage students in the learning process.
Publication | “Specialized schools still represent a tiny fraction of U.S. public education. However, they may not only produce better results than traditional programs; they also can serve as models for schools seeking to improve.” Read this brief to…
Publication | “Recent research emphasizes that teacher quality alone cannot improve student achievement at scale. School leadership, staff collaboration, and a positive climate are among essential organizational elements that contribute to meaningful change…
Publication | An essay detailing the purposes, functions and benefits of academically productive talk including the Talk Goals and Moves chart.
Tool | A brief overview of teacher tools that promote student discourse in the classroom. A summary of why spend your time on talk in the science classroom and its functions.
Tool | Every Learning Experience in Foundation Science Begins with a brainstorming activity. This six minute video explains how brainstorming can be used to determine prior knowledge of your students, introduce new content, and establish a safe classroom…
Publication | The Oceans of Data project has made an attempt to define and confront what is “hard” for students and teachers who attempt to use large, online professional data sets. We feel passionately that it’s important for us to do this to prepare today’s…
Publication | The “Science Literacy Through Science Journalism” (SciJourn) project explores how the practices of good science journalism can inform high school science education. As high school students report science news, they learn to gather and…
Publication | In this study, we examine how a professional science news editor and high school teachers respond to student writing in order to understand the values and priorities each bring to bear on student work. These questions guided our work:
• How…
Publication | Like citizen journalists, your students can get to the heart of science literacy—and challenging questions like these—with the “learn by doing” methodology in this innovative book. Front-Page Science uses science journalism techniques to help…
Publication | This article describes The Concord Consortium's High-Adventure Science Project, which brings frontier science into the classroom, allowing students to explore questions in Earth and space science that scientists are currently investigating.…
Publication | This article describes an online climate change curriculum that incorporates dynamic computer models that enable students to visualize the complex interactions related to climate change science. Students learn how adjusting variables in a…
Publication | Due to the rapid advancements of information and communication technologies (ICTs), educational researchers argue that multimodal and new literacies should become common practices in schools. As new ICTs emerge and evolve, students need the new…
Publication | A four-year research project funded by NSF examines the efficacy of an approach to high school geometry that utilizes dynamic geometry (DG) software and supporting instructional materials to supplement ordinary instructional practices. It…
Publication | One of the most rewarding accomplishments of working with preservice secondary school mathematics teachers is helping them develop conceptually connected knowledge and see mathematics as an integrated whole rather than isolated pieces. The NCTM…
Publication | Science education reforms, such as the introduction of inquiry into the classroom, represent second order educational changes (12,13). Although first order changes require small alterations of existing practices, second order changes challenge…
Publication | Many of us learned about dominant and recessive genes in a humdrum high school biology class. Some of us may still recognize the terms and symbols twenty or thirty years later—are your eyes bb or Bb? But, as it turns out, a very small number of…
Publication | Throughout my career, I have collaborated with dedicated and hard-working teachers who have opened their classrooms so that others could learn from them. Yet, one teacher, Sara, stood out from all the others. From the first time I visited Sara's…
Publication | A middle school mathematics teacher taught native English speakers for the first fifteen years of her career. As immigrants from other countries moved into the community and student demographics began to change, she realized that she was not…
Publication | Research in student knowledge and learning of science has typically focused on explaining conceptual change. Recent research, however, documents the great degree to which student thinking is dynamic and context-sensitive, implicitly calling for…
Publication | The second law of thermodynamics is typically not a central focus either in introductory university physics textbooks or in national standards for secondary education. However, the second law is a key part of a strong conceptual model of energy…