ECR Projects

Explore past and current fundamental STEM education research projects across the three research areas that NSF's EDU Core Research (ECR) program funds, as well as across ECR funding types. Other search filters draw from both NSF's data and the ECR Hub's hand coding of award abstracts.

Ninth-grade biology students create cell models using clay.

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Developing Computer Science Pedagogical Content Knowledge through On-the-Job Learning

Effective Years: 2014-2019

WestEd proposes to study the Technical Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program. TEALS, a pioneering work-place intervention of the non-profit Microsoft YouthSpark program, provides multi-year, on-the-job computer science education professional development to high school teachers. The project will identify an effective learning model to prepare in-service teachers to teach computer science. To ensure the model meets workplace requirements, all research will take place in an authentic high school learning context. In addition, the project will synthesize existing research on computer science education, integrate research with practice, and contribute to the development of theory around computer science pedagogy.

This project addresses a major barrier to increasing the number of qualified K-12 computer science teachers in the U.S. Few avenues currently exist for pre-service and in-service teachers to train in computer science pedagogy and become certified to teach computer science. As computer science is becoming increasingly important for many kinds of careers, improving teaching in this area is in the national interest.