| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 31, 2019 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | December 7, 2022 |
| Award Number: | 1920616 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Michael Steele
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2019 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $499,818.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $499,818.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3 CAMBRIDGE MA US 02138-5366 (617)495-5501 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
6 Appian Way, Gutman 445 CAMBRIDGE MA US 02138-3846 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | ECR-EDU Core Research |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
The long-term goal of this project, funded by EHR's Core Research Program, is to guide and support teacher education programs. Significant research work is currently available about how to best train STEM K-12 teachers. As a result, it is an appropriate time to reflect on what educational researchers have already learned and plan for new research designs and methods that can sustain and extend improvements in STEM teacher education. This project will work with STEM teacher educators to study existing research designs and develop new ones to use in STEM teacher education. Using research to improve STEM teacher education is likely to contribute to increased student learning in K-12 classrooms.
Working in partnership with a group of STEM teacher educators, this two-year project aims to: 1) Develop strong research designs that can be realistically embedded in teacher education programs; 2) Identify key K-12 STEM classroom practices and design a proof-of-concept instrument to capture performance on one or more of these practices; 3) Publish working papers that provide guidance to teacher educators and others interested in improving research designs and developing new measures; 4) Conduct and report results of a proof-of-concept study that uses one of the newly developed research designs and measures to evaluate preservice teacher learning; and 5) Create a collaboration between teacher education researchers and educational methodologists aimed at increasing the generation and dissemination of new knowledge about effective STEM teacher education practices. This project includes strong collaborations among STEM education researchers and STEM Teacher Preparation programs, which may have long ranging benefits for improving STEM 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.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project had several goals: to develop and disseminate causal research designs that can be realistically embedded in teacher education programs, to conduct and report on a proof-of-concept causal study in teacher education, and to develop at least one proof-of-concept measure to capture a key outcome of teacher education. We report on our success below.
We iteratively developed, in partnership with STEM teacher educators, fit-for-purpose causal research designs that can be realistically embedded in teacher education programs. The most detailed reporting of these research designs is available from EdWorkingPapers.com: https://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai20-252. This report includes “how-to” information about specific designs, as well as general considerations for individuals wishing to engage in causal research in teacher education.
We also implemented a multi-armed randomized trial that tested three approaches to building students' skills in eliciting and using student thinking: reading about this practice; reading about and then analyzing a representation of this practice; and reading about, analyzing, and then rehearsing this practice. While the latter two represent newer pedagogies within teacher education, all three are typical approaches, making the comparison between them compelling. We enrolled roughly 180 undergraduates from two Ivy League universities. Due to disruptions related to the pandemic, this experiment was conducted via Zoom. We found significant and large positive effects of the practice-based pedagogies on participants’ skills in eliciting and responding to student thinking as demonstrated through a written assessment and a short teaching episode. This paper is available at EdWorkingPapers: https://edworkingpapers.com/ai23-873.
The short teaching episode created to capture outcomes from this study is the proof-of-concept measure described above. This measure captured study participants’ skills in eliciting and using student thinking in the context of “teaching” two specific math problems to research assistants (RAs). RAs were instructed to respond to study participants with standardized “student” responses, and we observed the extent to which research participants elicited and used those responses. We designed guidance for scoring this teaching episode, trained raters, and achieved minimally adequate score reliabilities of around 0.6. We describe the procedures used to create these measures in the above-listed EdWorkingPapers document.
Finally, to make progress on our field-building goal, we convened two conferences titled the Research Designs and Measurement for Teacher Education Conference in December 2021 and October 2022 at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. In these conferences, participants were introduced to a brief history of research in teacher education, discussed and brainstormed causal designs that lend themselves to STEM teacher education, and then applied the research designs to questions of interest. Additionally, participants learned from the experience of researchers in varying stages of implementing causal research designs. The conference also focused on strengthening measures of key teacher education outcomes, and included information about EdInstruments, a library of educational measurement tools. On the final day of each conference, participants had the opportunity to share their research and receive feedback from their peers.
Last Modified: 03/04/2024
Modified by: Heather Hill
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