Hannah Sevian, Ph.D. - US grants

PROJECT SUMMARY

Teacher-Fellow teams in seven Middle Schools (Harbor, McCormack, Woodrow Wilson, Lewis, and Gavin Middle Schools in the Boston Public Schools; Pierce Middle School in the Milton Public Schools; Dedham Middle School in the Dedham Public Schools) located within the Neponset River watershed are adapting existing instructional materials such as FOSS kits to use a study of the local watershed as a unifying theme for middle school science. Data is being gathered from the school playground, the students' backyards and the larger community surrounding the participating schools. Inter-school information exchange enables the students at each school to relate their situation to the larger picture and the community of schools can collaborate to gain a sense of conditions within the entire watershed. Quantitative examples and activities are being emphasized in order to hone students' mathematics skills, reinforce the existing mathematics curriculum, and demonstrate mathematics' relevance to science and everyday life. Fellows receive a Summer Teacher Training workshop in pedagogy, state and national frameworks, and effective classroom management. Each Fellow is then teamed with a middle school Teacher in a weeklong Summer Environmental Science Content Institute that uses specific examples and hands-on activities within the watershed to strengthen the Teachers' and Fellows' science content knowledge and concept understanding. In addition to their classroom duties, Fellows are required to take a specially developed course, Teaching Environmental Sciences and Technology. (TEST), that provides continuing pedagogical and content training. Five daylong workshops are held for all Fellows and Teachers during the school year to exchange information and experiences and provide additional content and pedagogical material. A 1-credit spring seminar is used as a base to allow one cohort of Fellows to pass on their experiences and knowledge to the next. Special events such as canoe trips, river cleanups, Boston Harbor cruises, and citizen science activities help foster a sense of connectedness across municipal boundaries. WISP will be evaluated internally by a science pedagogy faculty member and externally by the Educational Development Center, Inc. of Newton, MA. The broader benefits of the program accrue to the Fellows, the teachers, the middle school students and the institutions involved. The Fellows are developing the interest, skills, and commitment necessary to be actively engaged in K-12 education throughout their scientific careers. Teachers are gaining environmental science content knowledge and enhancing their ability to teach science curricula and to reflect on their teaching practices. Middle school students are gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation for science and mathematics. A set of school districts diverse in size, ethnicity and socio-economics and the University of Massachusetts, Boston are developing a shared learning community focused on common needs and shared resources.

Title: A Watershed-Integrated Sciences Partnership (WISP)
Institution: The University of Massachusetts--Boston
PI/co-PI: Robert F. Chen, William E. Robinson, Michael Shiaris, Clara Jennings, and Marilyn Decker,
Partner School Districts: Boston Public, Milton Public, Dedham Public
Funding: $1,497,458 total for 3 years
Number of Fellows/year: 10 Graduate and 3-5 Undergraduate
Grade Band: Middle School
Setting: Urban, suburban
Disciplines: Geosciences, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Sciences

The Boston Science Partnership (BSP) is comprised of the following core partners: the Boston Public School (BPS) System, Northeastern University (NEU) and the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB), as the lead organization. The Harvard Medical School and the College Board participate as supporting partners. This Partnership comes together to significantly enhance student achievement and teacher quality in grades 6-12 science. The BSP vision is that challenging science courses will be taught by highly qualified teachers; advanced science courses will be accessible to all BPS students; university faculty will work side-by-side with K-12 teachers in science education reform; and structures will be in place to promote student achievement in grade 6 through graduate level in science and engineering. The goals of the Partnership are to raise BPS student achievement in science, significantly improve the quality of BPS science teachers, increase the number of students who succeed in higher-level courses in science and who are admitted to and retained in university science and engineering programs, improve science teaching both in BPS and at the universities, and institutionalize these changes so that the Boston Science Partnership and its work will be sustained.

Distinctive strategies that support BSP in obtaining its goals include:
--Combining the College Board's vertical teaming approach with BPS' own Collaborative Coaching and Learning (CCL) model, which requires teachers to inquire into their own and each other's teaching practices in an effort to improve student achievement;
--Collaboration by science professors and BPS science teachers to develop graduate courses that contextualize content in support of the specific curriculum that teachers are expected to deliver in BPS classrooms; and
--Joining together of engineering faculty and BPS science teachers to interpret the technology/engineering strand of the Massachusetts Science Frameworks in light of the national technology frameworks, and to create a graduate course in engineering that prepares teachers to teach this material as part of the science curriculum.

Evaluation measures associated with project implementation will be complemented by research efforts intended to answer questions such as: What are the institutional capacities and barriers of UMB and NEU that will advance or inhibit the sustainability of the innovations they have initiated within their own institutions through the BSP? What are the institutional capacities and barriers that explain the abilities of UMB and NEU to achieve authentic and sustainable collaborations with each other in order to improve science teaching and learning within BPS? How do the strategies that UMB and NEU use to manage their capacities and barriers to change enhance the field's understanding of and ability to achieve sustainable change within institutions of higher education? What are the roles that vertical teaming, contextualized courses, and the use of the CCL model play in the development of high quality teachers? In what ways does science instruction in university science courses improve as a result of science professors' a) increased knowledge about how students learn and K-12 science education including the National Science Education Standards, and b) observations of high-quality K-12 science teachers and participation in debriefing discussions about inquiry-based teaching practices based on how students learn? The BSP research agenda will be carried out jointly by UMB and the Education Development Center (EDC) with the Program Evaluation and Research Group (PERG), Lesley University, providing leadership for project evaluation.

The work of the BSP has the potential of impacting 14,759 students in grades 6-8, 18,305 students in grades 9-12, 186 full-time science teachers, and 256 teachers who teach science part of the day.

This proposal describes a Track 2 GK-12 project developed by the University of Massachusetts and three Boston-area public school districts. The program would support 8 to 12 Fellows each year to work in partnership with master teachers in the Boston, Dedham, and Milton public school districts to bring science to K-12 students. The program, known as Watershed-Integrated Sciences Partnership-2 (WISP-2) remains focused on individual partnerships between science Fellows and middle school teachers who work together to modify and implement high quality inquiry-based science instruction within the context of the local Neponset River Watershed. The watershed provides a common experiential framework for classes and field/laboratory modules covering fundamental concepts in life sciences, physical sciences and earth sciences. Partners also include the Environmental Business Council of New England and the Massachusetts Insight Education and Research Institute.

Members of the Math and Science Partnership (MSP) community are engaged throughout the year in partnerships aimed at increasing K-12 student success in STEM, and in research, evaluation and technical assistance projects that are studying and supporting this work. The MSP program's annual Learning Network Conference (LNC) brings together teams of STEM faculty and administrators from higher education institutions and K-12 schools, education researchers and evaluators, and personnel from supporting partners including community groups, non-profits, government labs, and informal science education organizations. Through this project, a team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is organizing the January 2012 LNC, in close collaboration with MSP program staff and a national planning committee consisting of members of various projects representing the wide variety of projects in the MSP program. The project has two primary outcomes. First, it is designing and organizing the LNC. During the seven months leading up to the conference, the project team is bringing together members of a national planning committee and facilitating the committee's development of the conference theme and strands, orchestrating the conference paper abstract submission and peer review process, and developing traditional and creative, interactive activities to occur during the conference to achieve the conference goals. Second, the project is providing technical assistance to a subset of the papers being presented at the LNC, with the goal of readying these for publication in national STEM journals. During a pre-conference session, the organizing committee is helping the authors organize their papers around common themes for submission to special issues of mathematics and science education journals; papers not fitting a common theme are being encouraged to pursue other STEM education journals or peer-reviewed conference venues for publication.

ABSTRACT

In this two-year exploratory project, science educators at the University of Massachusetts Boston collaborate with those at the University of Arizona to develop and test a learning progression for the study of chemistry. Likely pathways are investigated for how grade 8-13 student's implicit assumptions develop on five major threads of chemical design - chemical identity, structure-property relationships, chemical causality and mechanism, chemical control and cost-benefit-risks. A focus on chemical design - the identification and synthesis of chemical compounds - facilitates the coherent integration of scientific and engineering practices, cross-cutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. This approach should make chemistry more engaging to a greater variety of students including those in Career and Technical Education.

The project investigates the core implicit assumptions that can be expected to characterize and constrain novice and sophisticated student reasoning about each of the five major threads of chemical design. It also suggests the hypothetical "stepping stones" that characterize the progression from novice to sophisticated reasoning in chemical design. Existing research literature on student ideas and on related developmental psychology and cognitive science research is reviewed. Project staff together with twelve master high school and middle school science teachers in the Boston Public Schools develop a framework that can be used to compare and contrast more or less sophisticated ways of thinking about foundational ideas for the understanding of chemical design and from them derive hypotheses about "stepping stones" in understanding the implication of chemical design. Questionnaires and interview protocols similar to those employed in previous projects are used with students in grades 8, 10, 12 and college freshmen and their teachers to refine and enrich initial hypotheses about the evolution of core implicit assumptions along the five threads. The research is evaluated by an advisory board of science educators and educational researchers using a written protocol. Content is reviewed by practicing chemists.

A concise and clear summary of the learning progression is produced with an intended audience of teachers, curriculum developers and publishers who are implementing or revising curriculum. The dissemination of this summary includes a brief market research survey of teachers, curriculum developers and publishers of high school chemistry materials. Versions of validated open-response instruments that can be easily implemented by teachers as formative assessments of student understanding in the areas targeted by the study are also published. An understanding is gained of some of the challenges associated with implementing the Next Generation Science Standards in a way that meaningfully integrates science and engineering practice, important content and cross cutting themes in the context of learning about chemical design.

PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS:
University of Massachusetts Boston (Lead)
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

CORE AREA(s):
STEM Learning/STEM Learning Environments - Undergraduate Education


PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The project is studying the abstraction capacity in problem solving among undergraduate students in two STEM disciplines. The three-year project involves faculty and students in electrical engineering at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and in chemistry at University of Massachusetts Boston. The study is examining two courses in each discipline (that typically occur in the sophomore and junior years) for evidence of an abstraction threshold - the gap in reasoning ability that can be crossed by students. The project is seeking to characterize reasoning applied to problem solving using a cognitive processing model, Representation Mapping.

The study tests two hypotheses:
1) Many students do not have fully mature processes for abstraction, i.e., cognitive supply, and it is possible to measure what their processes are and the degree to which they are capable of reasoning using abstraction.
2) Somewhere in each undergraduate STEM curriculum, cognitive demand increases to the point where a typical students current capacity for abstraction is not matched to the complexity of problems posed, and this impacts student performance.

The research questions being studied are:
RQ1: How can students problem solving processes and degree of abstraction in two different STEM disciplines - electrical engineering and chemistry - be characterized using Representation Mapping?
RQ2: What evidence is there that abstraction thresholds exist in undergraduate electrical engineering and chemistry curricula?
RQ3: What are discipline-specific nuances of abstraction in electrical engineering and chemistry education?

This theory-driven project involves a rigorous interdisciplinary study that has the potential to significantly advance the understanding of how students reason when solving problems associated with deep concepts in STEM disciplines. The effort is in direct alignment the report from the National Academies on Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER), which includes "Interdisciplinary studies of cross-cutting concepts and cognitive processes" as one of its four overall recommendations for promising directions in studying undergraduate STEM education. The project is making significant contributions to the knowledge base on how to increase students' problem solving approaches and is helping to uncover how domain-general and discipline-dependent cognitive processing interact in two STEM disciplines.


BROADER SIGNIFICANCE
As manifest by its strong alignment with the DBER report, the project is an area of national interest. The project is uncovering commonalities of abstraction in two STEM disciplines and clarifying differences in abstraction between the disciplines. This effort is providing fundamental insights to support how instructors can capitalize on commonalities and deliberately provide avenues for students to practice discipline-dependent reasoning strategies in problem solving.

Situating the data collection in two very different universities - a traditional research university in the Midwest and a majority minority non-traditional university in the Northeast - lends greater potential relevance to the findings, which is being widely disseminated at high profile conferences in both science and engineering education. An interdisciplinary study is producing results that are more readily transferred to other STEM disciplines, thus enhancing their potential for broad adoption.

This is a design and development study submitted to the teaching strand of the Discovery Research PreK-12 (DRK-12) program; responsive to Program Solicitation NSF 15-592. The DRK-12 program 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 STEM education innovations and approaches. 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. The fundamental purpose of this project is to develop, implement, and study a professional development (PD) model for improving chemistry teachers' formative assessment practices to foster teaching focused on chemical thinking. The PD model seeks to refocus and enhance teachers' abilities to notice, interpret, and respond to students' ideas. Building on previous exploratory work through which a Chemical Thinking Framework was developed, the proposed effort will work with 8th-12th grade teachers in Boston Public Schools and the New England Region to assist them (a) to recognize tools that are useful in eliciting students' chemical thinking, and adapt or design formative assessments; (b) to make sense of students' chemical thinking based on data collected using formative assessments that elicit students' thinking; and (c) to strategize responsive actions that better foster learning chemistry. The research questions will be: (1) How does chemistry teachers' assessment reasoning change through engagement in PD that focuses on formative assessment as a transformative lever?; and (2) How does engagement in the proposed PD activities influence the ideas and practices that teachers emphasize in their classrooms?

In order to address the research questions, the project will develop a yearlong PD model with four cohorts of 8th-12th grade teachers, including one cohort with teachers from the New England region in a hybrid format (face-to-face and online); each having six teachers (N=24). The model development will be conducted in three phases. In Phase 1, the research team will develop a detailed plan for the PD program by designing and testing conceptualized activities. During Phase 2, the project will study the model with Cohorts 1 and 2 teachers. Phase 3 will focus on positioning the model for scaling up purposes with Cohorts 3 and 4. This phase will test the resources developed, and make comparisons to assess the scalability of the model. Data gathering strategies will include: (a) focus groups to collect data on teachers' assessment reasoning while collectively analyzing students' written work and videos of assessment practice; (b) assessment portfolios to gather individual data on teacher assessment reasoning and practice; (c) assessment snapshots to capture individual teachers' interactions with students; and (d) follow-up sessions to observe and videotape teachers during the year. Data interpretation strategies will include: (a) analysis of domain-neutral factors to characterize changes in how teachers frame and approach assessment of student understanding; and (b) analysis of domain-dependent factors to characterize changes in teachers' attention to the disciplinary ideas of students' work according to the Chemical Thinking Framework. The project will include an external evaluator to address both formative and summative components of this process. The outcome of the proposed scope of work will be a research-informed and field-tested PD model focused on the use of formative assessment to improve chemistry teaching and learning.

University of Massachusetts, Boston (UMB) will implement an ADVANCE Catalyst project to conduct an institutional self-assessment to understand the status of women faculty in STEM disciplines on the main campus. The three goals for the project are: 1) examining the systemic barriers and facilitators of gender and racial equity among STEM faculty through an intersectional lens in the realms of hiring, tenure, promotion, differential service burdens, and faculty sense of belonging, 2) piloting a strategy to address the systemic causes of gender and racial inequities for faculty, and 3) empowering faculty and administrators to promote gender and racial equity. The project will focus on the intersections of faculty gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, different abilities, family status, and faculty appointment type and rank.
This two-year project will prepare the university for future data collection and data analyses of faculty equity which can be used by institutional leadership to inform decision-making. The Catalyst work will also prepare the institution to implement evidence-based strategies to enhance the university climate for all faculty which will be outlined in a five-year faculty equity strategic plan that will be produced as part of this project.
The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers that impede the full participation and advancement of diverse faculty in academic institutions. Organizational barriers that inhibit equity may exist in policies, processes, practices, and the organizational culture and climate. ADVANCE "Catalyst" awards provide support for institutional equity assessments and the development of five-year faculty equity strategic plans at an academic, non-profit institution of higher education.

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.

Research literature in STEM education related to teacher effectiveness, persistence, and retention is extremely inadequate. This project serves the national interest by fostering additional research projects related to these three important areas. The overarching objective of the Persistence, Effectiveness and Retention Studies in STEM Teaching (PERSIST) project is to bolster the rigor and creativity of Noyce Track 4 research proposals through participation in community-building that leverages and shares resources and forms mutually beneficial collaborations that further the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program's agenda. The pool of teachers who have participated in various Noyce Track 1, 2, and 3 projects includes over 10,000 individuals, whose collective experiences and knowledge could generate a wealth of understanding about improving STEM education in high-need schools. Yet, this potential is largely untapped due to the structure of typical Noyce scholarship and fellowship projects. The PERSIST project will be conducted in two phases. During the first phase, project leaders will invite current NSF Noyce Track 4 Research Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs to participate in a 1-day meeting immediately preceding the Annual Noyce Summit. Following the Noyce Track 4 PI meeting, the ideas generated will be synthesized and resources will be collected. These will be compiled into a published magazine-style brochure intended for use in guiding discussions and dissemination efforts during the second phase of project. During the second phase, the outreach phase of PERSIST, half-day pre-conference workshops will be developed to take place at three national STEM education conferences in 2020. By encouraging researcher partnerships to design research projects related to STEM teacher recruitment, preparation, and effectiveness in high-need school districts, this project will help move the field forward in ways that will help broaden STEM participation.

Three goals guide this project. First is to familiarize participants with the NSF Noyce program, particularly the recently added Track 4, which focuses on research related to STEM teacher preparation, effectiveness and persistence. Second, the project seeks to create and foster a collaborative community among Noyce Track 4 projects. Third, the PIs will generate synergy across Noyce-funded research with the intent to extend knowledge of highly effective approaches to recruiting and retaining effective K-12 mathematics, science, engineering, and computer science teachers in high-need local education agencies. Pursuit of these goals will lead to four outcomes. First, the meetings will connect workshop participants (researchers not currently engaged in Noyce) to one another and to the Noyce community, as a basis for potential future collaboration. Second, interactions at the meetings will enable participants to discuss and disseminate critical areas for research in STEM teacher preparation and retention. Third, participants will find opportunity to discuss and disseminate methodological approaches for the study of STEM teacher effectiveness and persistence. Finally, meeting attendees will share with the NSF Noyce program, the Noyce community, and other interested STEM teacher education researchers the leading-edge questions and needs that emerge from the collected Noyce Track 4 program's research arena. By helping to generate additional research into STEM teacher preparation, effectiveness, and persistence, and by broadening the pool of researchers engaged in pursuing important research in these areas, this project ultimately has the potential to advance STEM teaching and learning, especially related to teacher effectiveness, persistence and retention in high-need school districts. Thus, the potential to broaden participation in STEM of underrepresented groups in STEM is high.

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.

This project seeks to serve the national interest in excellent undergraduate STEM education by providing a model to enhance equity for students in general chemistry courses. Previous studies have shown that remediation and deficit-based approaches to supplemental general chemistry instruction do not provide significant long-term benefits to students. This lack of impact is particularly noticeable for students in groups underrepresented in STEM. This project will develop and study a novel asset-based supplemental course that leverages the students? many strengths to help them succeed in general chemistry. This one-credit supplemental chemistry course will run alongside the General Chemistry I course. Students who are at risk of failing the general chemistry course will be invited to participate. The new supplemental course will seek to support student success by providing opportunities to practice key skills needed for success in general chemistry, such as mathematical and study skills. It will simultaneously recognize and rely on strengths that students have developed in other areas of their lives, to channel these strengths toward their own and each other's academic success in chemistry. The intended project outcomes include reducing failure rates in General Chemistry I, characterizing the asset-based supplemental chemistry course, and developing resources to support replication of the course by other institutions. The research goal is to contribute to understanding how and why at-risk students at a diverse university can succeed in general chemistry, and the role of the institution in supporting this success.

This project will develop and study an asset-based supplemental chemistry course for students at risk of attrition from General Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts Boston, a public, urban, primarily commuter campus with an undergraduate population that is among the country?s most diverse. Design of the supplemental course will follow an asset model based on activity theory, with four design principles: (a) adopt the perspective of the student; (b) provide structure that lowers the activation barrier for students to increase their agency; (c) encourage collaborative and social engagement in culturally and personally relevant activity; and (d) support dialogue, chemical literacy, and resourcefulness. The impact of the course will be studied using a mixed methods approach based on the Anti-Deficit Achievement Framework for Research on Students of Color in STEM, and will address the following research questions: (1) Which elements of the supplemental course design are productive in supporting student success in general chemistry, and how so? (2) What are the lasting impacts of the intervention on student success in academic work for two semesters beyond general chemistry? (3) How does the University's system of supports function toward participants' negotiation of challenges and cultivation of meaningful relationships that support their academic success? and (4) How do the experiential realities of the supplemental chemistry students empower them to succeed as they intersect with the processes of support that surround them in the course, at the university, and in their lives? Student interviews and counter narratives will be the primary data sources to understand student success and experiences. These data will be supplemented by instructor diaries as well as interviews with faculty and staff involved in institutional support, including instructors, advising staff, and care counselors. The project?s success will be assessed through cycles of questioning and review by an external advisory board. Through two cycles of implementation improvements and one year of fidelity testing, the research will define the critical components of the course that relate to its successful implementation in the context of a highly diverse university. Products developed by the project will include modules that may be adapted by other higher education institutions, a facilitation guide for instructors, and resources for undergraduate learning assistants. This project is supported by the NSF IUSE: EHR Program, which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

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.

This project aims to serve the national interest by characterizing the ways in which facilitation practices of instructional assistants contribute to the scientific literacy of students in large enrollment introductory chemistry and physics lectures. In this project, instructional assistants are defined as undergraduate learning assistants and graduate teaching assistants who support student learning during problem solving in interactive lectures. Integrating instructional assistants into introductory gatekeeper courses contributes to increased student achievement and a decrease in failure rates in these courses and can be particularly beneficial for students from marginalized groups. However, not every instructional assistant-student interaction is effective. This foundational research will characterize interactive dynamics that are effective for student learning.

The project will use a sociocultural perspective to model four dimensions of instructional assistants? facilitation practices: the nature of instructional assistant-student interactions, their purposes, in-the-moment learning that occurs, and the integration of the interactions into the whole class. The research will adapt the formative assessment enactment model that was developed to characterize K-12 teaching practices to model instructional assistant-student interactions. Practical epistemology analysis will be used to model students? in-the-moment learning during interactions. The integration of interactions into the whole class will be characterized using cultural historical activity theory to relate instructional assistant-student interactions and whole class discussions. Multiple strands of data will be collected and qualitatively analyzed, including videos of instructional assistant-student interactions and interviews with professors, instructional assistants, and students. Results from this project will provide a theoretical basis to inform professional development for IAs and further systematic study of their practices. This project is supported by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.

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.