DRK-12 Research and Products

Publication | We explored how various contextual resources accumulated over multiple years operated together to facilitate a team of high school teachers' sustained and agentive learning after a 4-year research–practice partnership (RPP) grant concluded.…
Publication | Engineering projects, such as designing a solar farm that converts solar radiation shined on the Earth into electricity, engage students in addressing real-world challenges by learning and applying geoscience knowledge. To improve their designs…
Publication | To better understand integrated STEM education, this work explored scores on the STEM Observation Protocol (STEM-OP), a newly developed observation protocol for use in K-12 science and engineering classrooms. The goals of this work were to…
Publication | This article presents results from a design experiment intended to develop students’ understanding of linear functions and rates of change in a linguistically diverse ninth grade classroom. The intervention focused on fostering classroom…
Publication | Teaching science to elementary school students is complex, and teacher preparation programs must support preservice teachers’ learning to communicate science content and practices with children. Science teachers bring the experiences they have…
Publication | This article presents a tool that teachers can use to support children in planning science investigations. Using an extended example from a second-grade investigation into seed dispersal, we describe strategies for structuring conversations that…
Publication | Studying moths is an excellent way to include students in science practices by introducing them to a ubiquitous but under-appreciated animal group that can be found in their local places, including urban, suburban, agricultural, forested, and…
Publication | In this paper, we examine traditional psychosocial approaches to the study of student agency in science education, emphasizing the importance of incorporating sociocultural and critical perspectives.
Product for Educators | The ASET Toolkit is a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) planning toolkit designed to help science educators plan lessons and units that integrate the 3 dimensions outlined in the Framework (NRC, 2012). The toolkit includes: 1)…
Product for Educators | These professional learning modules are designed for use by teacher educators, professional development facilitators, teacher leaders, school or district leaders, family engagement coordinators, and those in similar roles in schools…
Product for Educators | The Spiral Notebook app is a digital portfolio tool that enables teachers to efficiently capture multiple representations of classroom practice via documents, images, and videos, and organize, share, and discuss evidence of student…
Product for Educators | This resource collection offers practical measures and guidance for instructional improvement in mathematics teaching. These include measures for use in classrooms, collaborative professional learning, and one-on-one coaching.
Product for Educators | Seeds of Algebraic Thinking are sub-conceptual resources coming from life experience that students call upon when responding to mathematical prompts. This site includes resources students could activate when thinking about groups and…
Product for Educators | This site provides three online activities focused on covariational reasoning as a foundation for middle school students to build more abstract algebraic knowledge. These tasks provide students with opportunities to understand static…
Publication | In conversations about pedagogy, researchers often overlook how physical space and movement shape teacher sensemaking. This article offers a comparative case study of classroom videos using a dynamic visual method to map embodied interaction…
Publication | Thoughtful and purposeful displays can support students’ participation in argumentation. This report addresses how displays are used within collective argumentation. We examined a secondary mathematics teacher’s and her students’ use of displays…
Publication | Evaluation of plausible alternative explanations of scientific phenomena is an authentic scientific activity. Instructional scaffolding can facilitate students’ engagement in such evaluations by facilitating their reflections on how well various…
Publication | This study investigated upper elementary teachers’ framings of their students’ mathematical thinking in written across the three component skills of noticing. Drawing on a situated perspective, the research examines the influences of teachers’…
Publication | This 2-year qualitative case study focuses on one emergent mathematics teacher leader, Mr. Miller, and his conceptualization of Social Justice Mathematics (SJM). SJM is a justice-oriented pedagogical approach where students simultaneously learn…
Publication | Children who live in under-resourced communities and attend under-resourced schools deserve access to high-quality teachers and educational opportunities to support their success and well-being. This study emerged from a professional development…
Publication | From the experiential learning perspective, this study investigates middle and high school students (n = 1009) who used an online module to learn about wildfire hazards, risks, and impacts through computational simulations of wildfire phenomena…
Publication | Mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) is a professional knowledge crucial for effective mathematics instruction, encompassing both content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The purpose of this study is to investigate…
Publication | Young children are naturally interested in light and shadows, thus providing a meaningful context to introduce preschool science investigations. As children explore how shadows are made and change, they also have opportunities to develop math…
Publication | With a decade passing since the release of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), it is timely to reflect and consider the extent to which the promise of science teaching and learning that values and centers learners’ varied…
Publication | Mathematics education research tends to center on what Mathematics Teacher Educators-Researchers (MTERs) work on or the people (teachers and students) they work with. Rarely, research in mathematics education focuses on MTERs working with…