STEM Education Research and Development at the National Science Foundation What are we learning

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STEM Education Research and Development at
theNational Science FoundationWhat are we
learning?

• Janice Earle
• Division of Research on Learning in Formal and
  Informal
• Settings (DRL)
• Triangle Coalition, February 23, 2009

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About the National Science Foundation (NSF)

• VISIONARY
• Imagining the future, working at the frontier,
  realizing the full potential of people,
  furthering promising ideas wherever and whenever
  they arise, and encouraging creativity and
  initiative.

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• DISCOVERY
• Foster research that will advance the frontiers
  of knowledge, emphasizing areas of greatest
  opportunity and potential benefit and
  establishing the nation as a global leader in
  fundamental and transformational science and
  engineering
• LEARNING
• Create a world-class, broadly inclusive science
  and engineering workforce and expand the
  scientific literacy of all citizens

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• NSFs Education and Human Resources Directorate
  (EHR) is the principal source of federal support
  for strengthening STEM education through
  education research and development (RD).
• Presidents 2009 Budget Request, February 2008

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Science The Endless Frontier

• The Government should accept new
  responsibilities for promoting the flow of new
  scientific knowledge and the development of
  scientific talent in our youth. These
  responsibilities are the proper concern of the
  Government, for they vitally affect our health,
  our jobs, and our national security.

Vannevar Bush, 1945
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DRL Programs

• Discovery Research K-12 (DR-K12)
• Frontier Challenge How can the impact of K-12
  STEM classroom learning be enhanced by effective
  integration with local and global resources and
  systems?
• Assessment, opportunity to learn STEM content,
  teacher enhancement, scaling and sustaining
  innovations

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DRL Programs, continued

• Research and Evaluation on Education in Science
  and Engineering (REESE)
• Emerging issues neuroscience and STEM, learning
  and cognition, cyberlearning, new methods and
  measures
• Contextual issues learning and teaching, system
  and policy studies, evaluative research

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DRL Programs, continued

• Innovative Technology Experiences for Students
  and Teachers (ITEST)
• Strategies, scale-up, studies that link in-school
  and out-of-school learning
• Informal Science Education (ISE)
• Media, informal institutions, public
  understanding of science

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What have we learned A Sampler

• From International Studies
• US curricula repetitive and less challenging and
  coherent than that of high achieving nations
• Video Analysis of Science Teaching Developing a
  Shared Words-to-image Analytical Tool
• Mathematics knowledge of US future middle school
  teachers is weak compared to future teachers in
  Taiwan and Korea and covers fewer advanced
  mathematics topics and relevant pedagogy
  development of new measures of policy and cost

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What we have learned A Sampler

• From Learning and Cognition Studies
• Young children are capable of learning far more
  complex and abstract ideas if theyre properly
  scaffolded
• Students misconceptions must be taken into
  account when teaching complicated topics
• Learning progressions can provide empirical
  evidence on ways to sequence important ideas
  across grades
• From Studies on Teaching and Learning
• The teacher shortage may be due to early exits
  because of conditions of schooling rather than a
  lack of teachers with STEM backgrounds
• Identifying the mathematical knowledge teachers
  need for teaching and focusing on that in
  preservice and inservice programs can improve
  student learning

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What we have learned A Sampler

• From Measurement Studies
• Its not appropriate to use one assessment for
  multiple purposes
• To accurately assess what students know, the
  instruments must have a model of how students
  develop competence in a particular domain, tasks
  that allow one to observe students performance,
  and an interpretation method for drawing
  inferences from the performance

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What we have learnedA Sampler

• From Curriculum Studies
• R D in Curriculum Development includes (1) a
  theoretical framework, (2) an iterative
  development process from pilot tests that obtains
  feedback from scientists (is it accurate?),
  teachers and students (does it work in selected
  classrooms?), (3) field tests that provide data
  from a number of different schools or districts,
  and (4) an evaluation that includes student
  comparison data

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What we have learnedA Sampler

• From STEM neuroscience studies
• The majority of mathematics cognitive
  neuroscience research has focused on numerosity
  concepts comparing two numbers (magnitude
  comparison, either as dot arrays or numerals),
  estimation, and basic arithmetic (e.g.,
  multiplication, etc.). Researchers have
  identified three brain regions involved with
  mathematical thinking, all within the parietal
  cortex area of the brain. Researchers have been
  able to map these three regions with specific
  mathematical tasks, such as counting, performing
  basic mathematical operations, and comparing
  numbers.

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What we have learned A Sampler

• Researchers are now investigating the effects of
  schooling on brain maturation and extending
  cognitive neuroscience studies into other
  mathematical topics such as negative numbers and
  linear equation solving.