Effective: 2023-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Simone Sisneros-Thiry

Institution: California State University, East Bay Foundation, Inc.

This project aims to serve the national interest by contributing to the understanding of experiences of students and instructors of assessment strategies aligned with active learning methods. Towards this goal the project will seek to incorporate the student voice into professional development experiences for collegiate mathematics instructors. In particular, this project will focus on assessment strategies that are aligned with the values and practices of active learning. The community of...

Effective: 2023-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Jeremy Hsu

Institution: Chapman University

Many skills are typically taught in introductory biology lectures and labs and are important for success as a biologist. One of these skills is quantitative reasoning. Quantitative reasoning is the ability to use mathematical concepts in biological contexts, which encompasses processing and interpreting numerical and graphical data. However, many students in introductory biology struggle to apply quantitative reasoning skills taught in math classes and other classes to these biological...

Effective: 2023-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Youmi Suk

Institution: Teachers College, Columbia University

The current math course-taking plan for high school students across much of the United States is not optimized for every student’s success in math, especially in advanced mathematics. In particular, there has been disproportional participation in advanced math courses among different racial/ethnic and income groups. To this end, this research project develops data-driven, personalized math course-taking plans by leveraging recent advances in personalized medicine. In personalized medicine,...

Effective: 2023-2025

Funding Type: Mid-Career Advancement (MCA)

Principal Investigator: Jessica P Bishop

Institution: Texas State University - San Marcos

This project aims to serve the national interest by using analytic tools to better understand how classroom discourse affects the teaching and learning of mathematics. The project will focus on two aspects of classroom discourse: how teachers respond to student thinking, and how teachers and students talk about mathematical authority. The project will use quantitative methods to analyze video data from middle-grades mathematics classrooms. Results will advance knowledge and understanding how...

Effective: 2023-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Peggy McNeal

Institution: Towson University

This project aims to serve the national interest by developing a researcher’s skills to conduct fundamental geosciences education research that investigates how college students use spatial reasoning to think and learn about fluid-Earth science concepts. In fluid-Earth science courses, topics such as atmosphere and ocean dynamics are highly abstract and mathematical without a natural bridge to everyday understanding of physical reality. The important leaps in thinking from mathematical...

Effective: 2022-2028

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Sona Gholizadeh

Institution: University of South Carolina at Columbia

This project will investigate the influence of family on student interest and persistence in engineering. The overarching goal of this project is to expand the investigator’s expertise to conduct fundamental research on the influence of family in engineering fields to better understand facilitators of student persistence. The research findings have the potential to inform a larger quantitative study through developing and testing a theory about impacts of family relationships on STEM student...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Steven T Piantadosi

Institution: University of California-Berkeley

From counting to computing derivatives, many mathematical skills that students master rely on well-defined sequences of procedural steps, or algorithms. The acquisition of specific algorithmic skills such as counting, small number addition, and fractional reasoning have been intensely studied as cognitive achievements in their own right. However, despite the key role that algorithms play in early mathematics, very little is known about algorithmic cognition itself. It is not known, for example,...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: James Heckman

Institution: University of Chicago

Scholars in personality psychology, economics, and child development report a variety of empirical relationships connecting personality traits, executive functions (EF), and economic preferences to enrollment and performance in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses in elementary and secondary education and choice of STEM majors in college. The similarities and differences in how these attributes are measured and their relationships to STEM education outcomes have not been...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Zeyu Xu

Institution: American Institutes for Research in the Behavioral Sciences

America’s community colleges play a vital role in strengthening the country’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce. More than one-quarter of all STEM jobs are held by workers with either an associate’s degree or some other sub-baccalaureate training. Community colleges also play a central role in increasing the diversity of the STEM workforce, as they often serve students from populations underrepresented in their participation in STEM fields of study....

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Lin Bian

Institution: University of Chicago

The increased demand for intellectual talent has highlighted the need for more female scientists, yet women are consistently underrepresented in the STEM domain. A pervading stereotype associating intellectual talent with men rather than women is a powerful cultural message that is in part responsible for this gender gap, termed the gender brilliance stereotype. This pernicious stereotype emerges early and immediately shapes children’s interests. To tackle this gender disparity from its...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Abiola Akanmu, Andrea N Ofori-Boadu

Institutions: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University

While universities equip students with theoretical knowledge for STEM, there can be challenges in employing those theories to solve real-life problems. This challenge has resulted in an imbalance between the preparation of graduates entering the workforce and the demands of the industry. This disconnection is persistent in the construction industry as construction practitioners continue to highlight skill shortages that have resulted in low performance and low productivity. This research...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Ariel Starr

Institution: University of Washington

Spatial skills are a key predictor of success in STEM fields throughout the lifespan. When children first begin formal schooling, large individual differences in spatial skills are already present. These early emerging differences in spatial aptitude can have long-lasting, detrimental effects on students’ engagement with and performance in STEM classes. To address these issues, this research will conduct a series of studies with children between infancy and 8-years of age as well as adults to...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Shanta R Robinson

Institution: University of Chicago

Existing educational inequities produce complex challenges for Black students, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms. Black students who show promise for success in STEM while experiencing homelessness find themselves particularly marginalized at the intersection of race and class. The purpose of this project is to center the voices and experiences of Black, high achieving homeless adolescents to better understand the resources and strengths they...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: Other

Principal Investigator: David I Miller

Institution: American Institutes for Research in the Behavioral Sciences

As a 5-year resource center, the EHR Core Research – Resource Coordination Hub (ECR Hub) is designed to advance the ways in which NSF’s ECR Core (ECR) and ECR Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR:BCSER) programs can better use and support fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. ECR-funded research has the potential to address pressing national problems by developing foundational knowledge...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Erin Ottmar

Institution: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Many middle and high school students in the United States do not reach proficiency in algebra. When solving algebraic expressions and equations, students not only need to perform procedures, but also identify mathematical structure, attend to important perceptual cues, and make decisions about which steps are most appropriate or productive in a particular problem context. Math teachers are critical to supporting and improving students’ math achievement by providing high-quality feedback,...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Yu Chen

Institution: Louisiana State University

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization, and to build a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. This CAREER project will examine psychological and social factors that are influential to...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Jeremy R Manning

Institution: Dartmouth College

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). The project is also funded from the EHR Core Research (ECR) program with co-funding from the Human Networks and Data Science (HNDS) program in SBE.The goal of this CAREER project at Dartmouth University is to advance our understanding of how students learn STEM concepts through online course videos in order to improve online education. Continued expansion of the internet backbone and...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Jamie Jirout

Institution: University of Virginia Main Campus

This project will explore how to promote students’ curiosity as a way of supporting science learning. Students’ interest in science significantly relates to their science performance, but few list it as their most interesting subject. One way to promote interest in science and to make learning and teaching more enjoyable is to support students’ curiosity. In addition to its importance to motivation and innovation in STEM areas, curiosity has been shown to lead to learning that more...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: David W Shaffer

Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison

In modern classrooms, students learn science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through interactions not only with teachers and textbooks but also with computer games and simulations, automated tutors, and online resources. Education researchers thus have access to large amounts of data about students’ STEM learning processes, from classroom or online conversations to detailed records of student activity in educational apps. Despite the potential of such rich data for curriculum...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: David A Barner, Sara Cordes, Lisa Feigenson, Elizabeth A Gunderson, Daniel C Hyde, Melissa M Kibbe, Melissa E Libertus, Jessica Sullivan, Kristy L VanMarle

Institutions: University of California-San Diego, Boston College, Johns Hopkins University, Temple University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Trustees of Boston University, University of Pittsburgh, Skidmore College, University of Missouri-Columbia

Preschool numeracy is a crucial foundation for STEM learning and long-term academic success. Previous research suggests that the development of strong numeracy skills depends on a combination of perceptual, cognitive, and language skills. However, most past studies have focused on a relatively small and homogeneous groups of children in US urban areas. As a result, current understanding of early numeracy may notgeneralize to diverse groups of learners. It is likely that home language...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Yvonne Kao

Institution: WestEd

Over the last decade, the Computer Science for All movement has worked to broaden participation in computer science for students in every grade band. The Computer Science for All movement popularized visual, or block-based, programming languages. These languages allow students to program through a graphical user interface, dragging and dropping blocks of code into place. Because students do not have to type or memorize syntax, block-based languages can make programming more accessible to...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Cari F Herrmann Abell

Institution: BSCS Science Learning

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) organizes goals for student learning along three dimensions: (1) scientific and engineering practices such as developing and using models; (2) crosscutting concepts such as cause and effect; and (3) disciplinary core ideas which includes foundational ideas from the life, physical, and earth sciences, and engineering and technology. Students in 44 states are being or will soon be held accountable to science standards based on the...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: William J Therrien

Institution: University of Virginia Main Campus

Scientific literacy is essential for everyone. Unfortunately, many students with learning disabilities (LD) do not do well in science and, in turn, have limited career opportunities in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). For students’ with LD, difficulties in science start early, with a large achievement gap between students with LD and typically achieving peers evident by early elementary school. More concerning is that this science achievement discrepancy widens...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Ido Davidesco

Institution: University of Connecticut

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Attention is dynamic and tends to fluctuate between external and internal states, and thus focusing attention on an instructor in undergraduate science courses for a long period of time is extremely taxing. While external attention, the selection and modulation of sensory information (e.g., focusing on an instructor’s voice while ignoring background noise), has been studied extensively,...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Aramati A Casper, Sarah L Eddy, Amanda K Lane

Institutions: Colorado State University, Florida International University, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

This project examines how a more accurate curriculum about the diversity of sexes found across species, the role of the environment in sex determination, and the complex relationship between sex and gender can create a more inclusive environment for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming (TNG) students in undergraduate biology courses. Research indicates that rather than emphasizing the diversity of strategies and experiences that organisms have around sex, gender, and orientation,...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Wendy M Smith

Institution: University of Nebraska-Lincoln

2201486 AbstractThe disparity in achievement and access for students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in STEM are well documented, but there remains a lack of attention to what to do with this knowledge and how to measure the impact of improvement efforts beyond pass rates and demographics. While many university mathematics departments value providing diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) student experiences, the faculty often do not have the professional training to engage with DEI...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Kimberly C Rogers

Institution: Bowling Green State University

Undergraduate mathematics courses are required foundational courses for almost all STEM majors, since science, technology, and engineering are all built on mathematical underpinnings. Therefore, effective mathematics instruction at the undergraduate level opens the door to these fields, making it possible for students to pursue studies in scientific and technical areas. Unfortunately, students typically cite ineffective or uninspiring classroom instruction in foundational mathematics courses as...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Alejandra J Magana-de-Leon

Institution: Purdue University

As society becomes increasingly globalized, STEM graduates are increasingly called upon to work with individuals from different cultures and backgrounds. Thus, organizations and governments expect STEM graduates to contribute as productive members and leaders of intercultural teams. This project is designed to conduct fundamental research on team cognition, an important component of teamwork training. Team cognition refers to the knowledge, interactions, and processes essential to effective...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Lizandra C Godwin

Institution: University of New Mexico

Advancing participation in engineering is significant for meeting NSF’s goals and benefits national priorities. The University of New Mexico aims to improve understanding of the impacts of Latinas’ undergraduate experiences on their graduate school and career aspirations in engineering. As a designated Hispanic-serving Institution, the University of New Mexico is an ideal site for this study. Through advancing knowledge of the impact of intersectional identities on interest in graduate...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Florencia K Anggoro, Dedre Gentner, Benjamin D Jee, Bryan Matlen

Institutions: College of the Holy Cross, Northwestern University, Worcester State University, WestEd

The goal of this project is to develop and test methods for training powerful thinking skills. Specifically, the research will explore techniques for improving students' analogical reasoning ability. The history of science has shown analogy to be a powerful tool in scientific discovery. And there is abundant evidence from laboratory and classroom studies that analogical comparison can improve students' ability to learn, especially in mathematics and science. For example, reading that sound...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigator: Brendan R Eagan

Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison

The goal of the Quantitative Ethnography Institute is to increase the capacity of STEM education researchers to conduct quantitative ethnography (QE) to address fundamental questions in STEM education. A key challenge in STEM education research is using large amounts of rich qualitative data to develop models of student learning that accurately represent diverse learning processes and can be implemented at scale. QE helps mitigate this challenge by unifying quantitative and qualitative...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Chad Dorsey

Institution: Concord Consortium

Many of society’s biggest dilemmas and grandest opportunities involve extensive interpretation of complex data that vary across both space and time. Such spatio-temporal (ST) data stand at the forefront of the most critical decisions across practically all sectors of society, from making sense of changes in the climate and responses to the causes of socioeconomic differences to the understanding of global economic changes. Over the past few decades, analyzing and interpreting ST data has...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: David S Yeager

Institution: University of Texas at Austin

Recently, psychological research on broadening participation in STEM has shifted from student-focused interventions (e.g., belonging or growth mindset interventions given to students) to context-focused interventions (aimed at instructors to create cultures of belonging or growth). Tools for evaluating the changes in instructors’ practices induced by these programs have been lacking, however. Popular self-report methods for instructors can be biased due to faulty recall or social desirability...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Virginia J Flood

Institution: SUNY at Buffalo

Active, collaborative learning approaches are widely seen as effective ways for students to learn undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). However, learning outcomes are highly contingent on the quality of the interactional processes in which students engage. There is a great deal of research on successful verbal communicational practices in group work, but little is known about how nonverbal communicational practices like gesture contribute to successful...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Kathleen Lynch

Institution: University of Connecticut

Sociodemographic inequities in children's science skills are already evident in the early school grades, and early disparities may contribute to long-run gaps in children's persistence and outcomes in STEM. To disrupt the nation’s long- standing and substantial inequities in science education and careers, interventions to strengthen early science learning are critical. This research synthesizes the cumulative impact of science, technology and engineering innovations on early childhood...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Wendy M DuBow

Institution: University of Colorado at Boulder

This study addresses the longstanding problem of the lack of diversity among persons studying and working in the field of computer science (CS). The statistics describing the gender and race/ethnicity of those who earn CS degrees tell a story of a discipline that has been slow to change. The percentage of CS undergraduate degrees that have been earned by women has barely risen in nearly two decades. The lack of representation of Hispanic, African American, and Native American students in...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Dina Verdin

Institution: Arizona State University

The project aims to build the investigator’s capacity to conduct robust fundamental STEM education research by implementing a small-scale research project and a professional development plan. The research investigates how culturally responsive gamified activities impact STEM identity development and promote STEM pathways among students of migratory families. The project extends the efforts of the Migratory Student Summer Academy at Arizona State University that provides summer enrichment...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Nicole C Kelp

Institution: Colorado State University

Broadening participation in STEM is critical on many levels, from the equity perspective of removing barriers for success for people from historically excluded groups and from the perspective of increasing knowledge in the field of STEM. Both people and scientific endeavors benefit from increasing inclusion. However, evidence indicates that students who experience marginalization due to their socioeconomic status, first generation college attendance, or race and ethnicity are underrepresented...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Colleen Ganley

Institution: Florida State University

Many children, adolescents, and adults experience math anxiety. Research has shown that math-anxious children typically continue to experience math anxiety as they get older. People with math anxiety tend to perform more poorly in math and are less likely to take advanced math courses or pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. Thus, tackling math anxiety early on is important for mitigating negative impacts later in life. This project will develop and test a...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Jennifer G Cromley

Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

To better support college students in learning about science, it is important to understand how they make connections among the concepts and ideas as they are learning. Network Analysis (NA) has potential to enable new ways of analyzing student learning data to reveal such connections. This project seeks to serve the national interest by developing a researcher’s skills to apply the statistical techniques of NA to real-time data about students’ science learning. The principal investigator...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Marcos D Caballero, Noah D Finkelstein, Charles R Henderson, Scott P Simkins

Institutions: Michigan State University, University of Colorado at Boulder, Western Michigan University, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University

Research has shown that the use of evidence-based, student-centered instructional strategies helps to increase learning, retention, and equity in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses. However, it is also clear that commonly used change efforts have not made research-based instruction the norm in U.S. institutions of higher education. Outcomes from this synthetic research will be used to guide efforts to improve undergraduate STEM instruction to generate and...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Steve Bennoun

Institution: University of California-Los Angeles

This project aims to serve the national interest by enhancing student learning in calculus with a teaching method called interleaving. Unlike the common practice of studying and practicing one topic at a time and them moving to the next topic, interleaving consists in intermixing the study and practice of different topics together. Research conducted in middle school mathematics classrooms shows evidence that interleaving can help improve student learning. Yet, it is currently unknown if...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigator: Karen Nylund-Gibson

Institution: University of California-Santa Barbara

The goal of the Institute on Equity-Oriented Mixture Modeling for Discipline-Based Education Research Scholars is to train Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER) scholars in the use of mixture modeling to address pressing issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in STEM education. Mixture modeling is a powerful tool for uncovering heterogeneity in student experiences and providing a richer way of understanding the experiences of students typically underrepresented in STEM...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Julianne Wenner

Institution: Clemson University

Families are children’s first teachers and significantly influence children’s interest, engagement, and aspirations (IEA) in science. Family attitudes, conversations about science, expectations for their children, and family science/STEM career role models can be influential, particularly for people who identify with populations that are underrepresented in science. However, what families from these populations provide in terms of support for IEA in science is often framed as inadequate or...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Ryan Baker, Nicole Else-Quest, Bruce M McLaren, Timothy J Nokes-Malach, Jon R Star

Institutions: University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carnegie-Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, Harvard University

Despite evidence that gender differences in math achievement have narrowed or disappeared in recent decades, stereotypes about men being better than women at math emerge early in childhood and persist through adulthood. These perceptions appear to influence female students’ interest and performance in math, as well as their pursuit of STEM careers. Given the potential motivational benefits of digital learning games, games might provide a pathway for reducing math anxiety for female students...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Lauren Barth-Cohen, Sarah Braden

Institutions: University of Utah, Utah State University

Scientific observation is a ubiquitous discipline-specific skill that has been overlooked in contemporary science instruction. Instructional materials often treat scientific observation as a simple skill or a minor pedagogical challenge to be overcome. For secondary science teachers, challenges compound as they themselves are often emergent learners of this skill. Furthermore, the field has yet to develop explanatory frameworks for the development of expertise in observation. Existing research...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Ryan Stowe

Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison

To prepare learners to productively use scientific knowledge as they navigate life, science courses must develop students’ understandings of what it means to know and learn science (i.e., their epistemologies). This project aims to serve the national interest by developing a researcher’s skills to conduct fundamental chemistry education research that investigates both instructors’ and students’ epistemologies in the context of organic chemistry courses. Studies indicates that...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Lucas C Parra

Institution: CUNY City College

Education is moving online. During the global pandemic, this ongoing process accelerated and educators increasingly leveraged existing online video content to supplement synchronous remote instruction. One problem with this approach is that passive viewing of video content is not a particularly effective form of instruction. Many students struggle to sustain their attention to online video, and this is reflected in poor performance in subsequent tests of learning. This project will explore a...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Tamara Pearson, Rebecca Zarch

Institutions: Spelman College, SageFox Consulting Group, LLC

This research project seeks to examine longstanding inequities in access to and participation in computer science (CS) education. Decades of research have shown that certain subgroups (e.g., women, students with disabilities, underrepresented minority students) tend to face substantial barriers to participating in CS courses and programs. As computing education continues to expand in K-12 education systems, it is important to understand how early experiences in computing education relate to...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Lynn Stephens

Institution: Concord Consortium

It is increasingly vital that people be able to make sense of scientific data and extract information from public datasets in order to inform their decisions about everything from ballot initiatives on climate policy to personal choices about vaccines. The project has a long-term goal of broadening participation in STEM by making data literacy attainable by more students. The project will develop instructional design supports for high school students that build on their novice intuitions for...