Soonhye Park - US grants

The project is supported by the Education and Human Resource Core Research program, which supports fundamental research in STEM learning and learning environments. It is important to find new ways to support students' ability to construct, analyze, critique, and use models of STEM phenomena. Given that teachers are the main mediator of any educational innovation, it is imperative to support STEM teachers to effectively engage students in critical thinking skills. This project involves the research and development of MetaDash, a teacher dashboard that provides information regarding students' cognitive, affective, metacognitive, and motivational self-regulatory learning processes during STEM instruction. The dashboard is informed by multi-modal channels that synthesize information such as student facial expressions, eye gaze behavior, electrodermal activity, and verbalizations. MetaDash will impact current teacher training by providing real-time student data (both individual student and aggregated) to enhance instructional decision-making.

Research methodology centers around the design and testing of Metadash as an intelligent, multichannel data visualization tool that displays key aspects of students' learning processes and knowledge construction in real time. The research approach investigates (1) how and when to present the multi-channel input based on human-computer-interaction design principles and informed by teacher usability studies; (2) how to optimize statistical approaches to handle unstructured data from multiple sources; and (3) how to create behavioral signatures for constructs such as self-regulation, motivation and frustration using multi-modal measures such as eye-tracking and facial expression. The ultimate goal of MetaDash is to foster STEM learning by supporting teachers' and students' monitoring and control of CAMM SRL processes. As such, MetaDash will advance current dashboards by providing teachers with: (1) multichannel STEM learning and cognitive, affective, metacognitive, and motivational (CAMM) self-regulated learning (SRL) data collected from students; and (2) individual student and aggregate data to accelerate teachers' decision-making.

High school students in many rural school districts have limited access to advanced STEM coursework and advanced technologies, including high-speed Internet. Rural school districts face difficulties in recruiting and retaining STEM teachers. In many cases, rural STEM teachers need additional training and support. The project will identify these, and other barriers rural teachers face and create professional development for teachers. The training will be designed to increase their discipline specific knowledge and related skills in engaging students in using models to explore, analyze, assess, and improve their thinking about and knowledge of science. Participating teachers will receive 114 hours of formal professional development in the summer and sustained support from follow-up sessions and an innovative virtual mentoring throughout the academic year. The project will revise biology and chemistry curriculum and support 30-90 teachers annually in rural areas in implementing reform-oriented MI instruction benefiting approximately 25,000 rural students. The project will result in a network of leader teachers who can sustain project initiatives. Online STEM professional development courses and digital tools for rural teachers and teachers will be made widely disseminated. In addition, project resources and research findings will be disseminated via conference presentations and peer-reviewed research journals.

Project research is designed to generate knowledge about the development of rural science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and the supports needed as rural teachers implement an approach to teaching called Modeling Instruction (MI). PCK refers to knowledge of and how to teach discipline-specific science concepts. MI is a pedagogical approach where students are actively engaged in using conceptual models that are created and applied to concrete physical, biological, and chemical phenomena to promote their understanding of scientific/mathematical principles. Through longitudinal mixed-methods research, the project will add new knowledge about PCK and MI. The project will investigate the progression of teachers’ PCK associated with the high-level implementation of MI that engages students in science research practices. The research of discipline specific PCK will significantly inform the curriculum and design of preservice and in-service science teacher education programs. The project will also research how various aspects of mentoring (e.g., feedback, interactions, discourse, and the modes and quantity of mentoring activities) support teachers in the effective use of PCK in the classroom. Qualitative research tools will include analysis of videos of teacher implementation of lessons, interviews with teachers focusing on the lessons, focus groups and semi-structured interviews on mentoring experiences, and analysis of teacher mentor-teacher mentee sessions and activity. The Science Instruction Practices Survey will collect quantitative data that will be used to understand each teacher’s implementation of MI, looking at the science practices that teachers in the classroom such as investigation, data collection and analysis, explanation, modeling, and science communication. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.