| NSF Org: |
BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 2, 2020 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | October 15, 2020 |
| Award Number: | 1941132 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Soo-Siang Lim
slim@nsf.gov (703)292-7878 BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
| Start Date: | November 1, 2020 |
| End Date: | October 31, 2022 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $48,937.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $48,937.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1500 HORNING RD KENT OH US 44242-0001 (330)672-2070 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1275 Lefton Espianade (Science M Kent OH US 44242-0001 |
| 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): |
Sci of Lrng & Augmented Intel, Accelerating Discovery in Ed, Discovery Research K-12 |
| Primary Program Source: |
04002021DB NSF Education & Human Resource |
| 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): | 47.075 |
ABSTRACT
Gaps in math achievement in the United States are numerous: children in the US lag behind children in other higher performing countries; children in low income families lag behind those with higher incomes; and girls lag behind boys even for the highest achieving students. These national, socio-economic, and gender gaps can result in negative downstream outcomes for the lower achieving students, such as limiting the types of careers that they can pursue. Closing these gaps is essential, especially given that the US seeks to increase its workforce in areas that require strong mathematical understanding, such as in science, technology, and engineering. Thus, discovering solutions on how to close these gaps will have a broad and positive impact on the public welfare. Towards discovering these solutions, the organizing committees? goals are (a) to identify the most promising avenues for developing and evaluating the efficacy of interventions aimed at improving math achievement and closing the math-achievement gaps and (b) to foster the development of younger scientists in the field of math cognition/education ? the next generation of math researchers who will be charged to solve these and other societal problems that arise from underachievement in math.
The Numerical Understanding Mentored by Expert Researchers (NUMBERS) Workshop will be designed to foster high-quality research aimed at closing the gaps in math education. To do so, the organizing committee of this two-day workshop will provide a venue where expert, senior scientists can share their vision for the most promising avenues for future research and provide direct mentorship and guidance for younger scientists (postdoctoral and graduate students) who aspire to conduct math research that will have an impact. The schedule and agenda for the NUMBERs workshop will achieve several aims: (a) develop a forum to allow workshop attendees to engage K-12 educators to identify their most pressing needs for enhancing math education; (b) provide an overview of prior interventions aimed at improving math education and the most important questions to guide future research; (c) provide up-to-date discussion and analyses of cutting-edge theory of math ability to foster theory-driven research (theoretical and applied) in the next decade; (d) provide expert mentorship to young scholars who are developing their research programs around math scholarship; (e) provide a mind's-on workshop that will guide both senior and junior scientists on how to effectively translate their research ideas into fundable NSF grants; and (f) foster collaborations among workshop attendees. Although participation will be limited to about 50 scientists so as to ensure that everyone can actively engage in all aspects of the workshop (and so that younger scientists can receive individual mentorship from senior scientists), the impact of the workshop will be broader and inclusive. In particular, the organizing committee will summarize the development and success of the workshop (which will be made available on the NUMBERS Workshop website), and, most important, all sessions held during the NUMBERS Workshop will be video-recorded so as to share the talks with the broader research and education community. This project is co-funded by the Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12), which seeks to enhance preK-12 teaching and learning of science, technology, engineering and mathematics through the research and development of new innovations and approaches.
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.
The overarching aim of the Numerical Understanding Mentored By Expert Researchers (NUMBERs) Workshop was to discuss current directions for research relevant to math education, discussing methods and theories of math learning and the active ingredients in math interventions, and perhaps most important, mentoring young scientists who seek to make an impact on math education. Held over two days in late May, 2022, at Kent State University (Kent, Ohio), the workshop was a resounding success, with over 31 senior scientists and 36 junior scientists attending from across the country to discuss the future of intervention research in math education. The workshop began with an overview keynote of approaches for developing interventions to improve math education and was followed by numerous talks and breakout sessions where smaller teams of senior and junior scientists were tasked to create new collaborations about improving math education. These sessions were also aimed at explicitly mentoring junior participants on many aspects of scholarship, which included discussions of how to mentor and collaborate, how to increase inclusivity and diversity in research, and how to obtain funding from the National Science Foundation. The impact of this workshop was impressive in that it helped to galvanize bonds among math researchers who have aligned interests and who through their collaborative work will make even larger strides in developing effective interventions. The participants were overwhelmingly positive about the workshop, and the objective measures of success were unmistakable. In particular, many of the teams who first met at the workshop continued to pursue their joint interests and are currently collaborating on math-education research. In fact, enough teams continued to pursue their projects that the work will be showcased in an upcoming special issue of the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. This special issue will also detail how we developed and conducted this workshop, so that scientists pursuing other domains can use our successful template to support and stimulate collaboration, mentorship, and new ideas as they seek to generate future discovers that will have an impact in their fields and the community.
Last Modified: 12/19/2022
Modified by: John T Dunlosky
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