Nancy B. Songer - US grants

The scope of work presented here is one attempt to work with existing structures (the One Sky, Many Voices program, the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools) to strengthen research and understanding of the value and challenges of reform programs such as ours, as we strive towards widespread adoption of our programs by the most diverse audiences possible through scaling. One Sky, Many Voices is one year old synergy of educators, atmospheric scientists, software developers, interface designers, and curriculum designers who have developed and researched one model of emerging and reliable technology-rich, inquiry-based programs for a very wide assortment of learners, including both in and out of traditional schooling. Our first goal is extensive investigations of the relationships, supports, and models of curriculum adoption necessary for widespread adoption of our programs. In this proposal, we outline a plan for design-experiment research which would allow us to study and evaluate models for curriculum adoption, teacher professional development, and technological tools which change with scaling. To implement widespread adoption, we aim to contrast two effective means of scaling, the Maverick and Distributed models, to be better understand best means of reaching many learning communities. We propose to use the cadre of returning teachers, students and schools who are regular subscribers to our programs (Mavericks), and the Detroit and Chicago Public Schools, through the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools, (Distributed) to scale our work and study scaling research. Our second goal is to directly confront accountability. While programs such as ours are sometimes characterized as "successful", the systemic characterizations of "success" in programs such as ours is far from understood. Continually, schools and others are asked for better definitions of the value of this work, and better justification for the widespread adoption of expensive and difficult techn ology-rich, inquiry-based programs. To confront accountability, we wish to use our many diverse sites, our experience developing accountability measures, and new technological opportunities to design and implement a new system which will provide a range of customized accountability measures which work with and expand ideas of accountability beyond standardized testing. In combining scaling rersearch on better accountability, we hope to simultaneously achieve adoption of our program by the widest possible audiences, as we provide a wider range of accountability measures demanded by the pressures on today's schools.

Building Capacity Among Junior Researchers in the Learning Sciences: A Request for Special Program Support for the International Conference of the Learning Sciences: 2000


This is a SGER proposal to support graduate students to attend the International Conference on the Learning Sciences to be held in Ann Arbor June 14-17, 2000. The funds would support the development of 3 workshops on methodology, would support junior faculty attending the meeting, and would provide support for graduate students to attend at a reduced price. Also, the conference will hold a consortium for graduate student research at which students would present summaries of their research in process and receive comments from nationally recognized faculty.

Between fourth and eighth grade, American students' achievement and understandings of complex science decline relative to their peers internationally. For urban students these declines are even more pronounced and, in many cities, standardized test scores remain among the nation's lowest. Through BioKIDS, late elementary students will embrace a coordinated curricular sequence that will support them as they grapple with complex science questions of their own design early, often, for multiple years, in multiple contexts and with the support of technologies tailored to their own needs and goals.

Student learning and beliefs in biodiversity and other topics will be tracked over multiple years to profile in-depth and sustained inquiry learning. Standards of evidence will be used to provide compelling examples of late elementary inquiry that can compliment high-stakes testing. Hybrid technologies will serve as change agents for learning and will be embedded into many aspects of the learning activities. Interdisciplinary teams will converge on effective means of representing complex science for inquiry activities at different ages. Existing multi-year relationships with urban Detroit and schools nationally will serve as essential partners in the study of teacher support for innovation and scaling towards large impact.

The Deep Think Project will use inquiry to examine students' thinking on concepts of biodiversity and ecology. The project will work in the Detroit Public Schools with 4-6 grade students and both preservice and inservice teachers. Assessments will be developed building on the Principled Assessment Development for Inquiry (PADI) project that provides design templates for the development of inquiry assessments. The implementation of the curriculum and assessments will be examined using a quasi-experimental research design exploring both professional development and instruction and will lead to new insights into the pathways in which content and reasoning knowledge develop.

This project is developing learning progression-driven visualization technologies, curricular units, and assessments towards realizing empirical evidence about middle and high school students' complex thinking about ecological impacts of global climate change. During the lifetimes of current middle and high school students, it is likely that our planet will undergo more anthropogenic change than it has during all of human history to date. With a national interest in complex thinking for globally competitiveness, a sense of urgency exists to build a solid, research-based foundation about a new, interdisciplinary focus area within precollege science education - students' complex reasoning about the impact of global changes on ecosystem dynamics. Recognizing the need for systematic development of resources, this project builds from existing resources and utilizes a learning progression approach for the systematic design of coordinated curricular, tool and assessment products. Quasiexperimental research studies on matched and consecutive cohorts are conducted to document learning outcomes and trajectories. Cross-sectional investigations are used to determine information on the effectiveness of curricular programs on student achievement. Growth curve analysis is used to descriptively examine students' complex reasoning growth trajectories throughout curricular programs. This work provides dynamic, age-appropriate visualization and modeling tools, and associated curricular units and assessment instruments to serve as foundational, empirically based information on teaching and learning about the impacts of global climate change. This work also provides an empirical and theoretical basis for content and inquiry reasoning progressions that articulate critical concept development in science and that explain how learning development is consistent with theories of learning. Data from middle and high school students coordinated with longitudinal data from 4-6th grade students provides information on student growth trajectories and achievement outcomes that will contribute to an understanding of possible learning progressions-driven outcomes over multiple units and years. Research results will also provide insights into the character and dynamics of learning trajectories and the challenges that occur as content and reasoning knowledge develops.