Learning Sciences Research

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    Looking Back to Move Forward
    (SEERNet, Digital Promise, 2024-01) Jeremy Roschelle; Adam Schellinger
    SEERNet digital learning platforms (DLPs) are developing new infrastructure to support research in authentic contexts where student learning is happening. In order to contextualize this work within the larger field, we trace historical precedents along four main categories: data repositories, data collection services, research design interfaces, and research communities. By situating this innovative movement alongside its predecessors, we can identify the opportunities for SEERNet and others to progress and sustain the mission of making research more scalable, equitable, and rigorous.
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    Empowering High School Communities to Evaluate Their Programs Through Alumni Surveys
    (Digital Promise, 2023-10) Shelton Daal, MPP; Emi Iwatani, PhD; Tiffany Leones, MEd
    This presentation explores how iterative co-design was used as a culturally responsive methodology to design alumni surveys for equity-focused high schools. Digital Promise, as the evaluation partner, collaboratively built diverse design teams incorporating teachers, administrators, community partners, alumni, parents, and students from school communities. The teams actively engaged in the survey design process, continuously considering how alumni perspectives could enhance equity within the programs. Crucially, Digital Promise emphasized that the school communities retained control throughout the project, allowing them to generate goals and questions, finalize the question set, determine the survey sample, review results, ideate next steps, and provide input at every stage. Digital Promise aims to leverage these experiences for continued work with schools, placing a renewed emphasis on equity, scalability, healing, and sustainability.
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    Evaluation of World History Project
    (Digital Promise, 2023-12) Emi Iwatani, PhD; Angela Hardy, MA; Barbara Means, PhD; Shelton Daal, MPP; Xin Wei, PhD
    This evaluation assesses the impact of World History Project, a freely accessible online high school world history curriculum developed by OER Project in collaboration with educators and historians. The study, conducted during the 2022-23 school year, focused on 9th or 10th-grade on-level or honors world history classes in public schools across the United States. Key evaluation questions included the curriculum's effect on historical thinking skills, its usability, and its impact on student engagement. Results indicate statistically significant positive effects on learning opportunities for the historical thinking skill of continuity and change over time. However, challenges in usability and student engagement were identified, with recommendations for curriculum designers, practitioners, and future research. The findings underscore the curriculum's potential impact and the importance of ongoing refinement to empower teachers and enhance students' understanding of world history.
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    Civic imagination’s role in K-8 computing education in Kentucky Appalachia
    (Digital Promise, 2023-10) Emi Iwatani
    In this invited presentation, Dr. Emi Iwatani shares ways in which a 6-year research practice partnership to promote computing education in Eastern Kentucky has been guided by core principles of civic imagination. The project has not just trained K-8 teachers in computational thinking lessons, but importantly has (1) helped teachers imagine a viable future for their region and their students, (2) supported building of roles and skills for educators that allow them to participate in that future, and (3) provided educators with a sense of agency or permission to help shape that future.
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    Practitioners at the Center, Part II: Reflections on Practitioners’ Engagement with the SEERNet Hub
    (SEERNet, Digital Promise, 2023-10) Stefani Pautz Stephenson; Deblina Pakhira
    SEERNet, a network of Digital Learning Platforms, researchers, and practitioners with the vision to leverage DLPs as research infrastructure, is committed to valuing practitioners' insights and fostering a culture of collaboration among all three parties. Towards this end, SEERNet has implemented two strategies: Office Hours and a practitioner advisory board. Through these strategies, valuable lessons have emerged about recruitment strategies, challenges and complexities of the classroom, educators as content and context experts, the difference between buy-in and ownership, considerations for experimental research, and more. We hope that researchers will take into consideration what we learned from our experiences as they design and implement their own studies, and regardless of whether or not the DLP requires researchers to directly engage with educators in data collection, we hope that researchers will see the value of practitioners' lived experiences and engage them in feedback loops from design to implementation to dissemination.
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    Making Waves: Reflections on SEERNet’s Progress and a Vision for a New Generation of Education Research
    (SEERNet, Digital Promise, 2023-09) Dr. Stefani Pautz Stephenson; Dr. Jeremy Roschelle
    SEERNet is a network of Digital Learning Platforms, researchers, and practitioners with the vision to leverage DLPs as research infrastructure, enabling researchers to ask and answer important questions about learning in ways that are grounded in realistic, widespread use of learning technologies. A first wave of work established the foundation for the research community. The network looks now towards a second wave of work that clarifies research opportunities and builds capacity for the types of research that can be supported. A third wave seeks to expand the network’s efforts towards broader aspirations for better science, engineering, practitioner engagement, and community.
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    Tensions and Reflections on Researcher-Educator Co-design of Future-oriented Research Questions that Center Equity
    (Digital Promise, 2023-08) Deblina Pakhira; Debshila Basu Mallick; Marianne Bakia
    In this presentation, we will identify the tensions and reflect on the process of co-designing future-oriented research questions that center equity with educators and researchers. Participants will learn about the value of this community-building exercise that helps envision research that is highly relevant to educational problems of practice. Three key learnings highlight (1) research question co-design is a valuable community-building exercise as well as an important way to move the work of research closer to practice, (2) the importance of including practitioner voice to acknowledge problems of practice, and (3) although the research questions generated are future-oriented they are thematically current. During the session, participants will have the opportunity to engage in informal conversations and co-design research questions.
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    Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Engineering: Linking Home and School Learning for Young Learners
    (Digital Promise, 2023-04) Ximena Dominguez; Regan Vidiksis; Tiffany Leones; Danae Kamdar; Ashley Lewis Presser; Marcia Bueno; Jillian Orr
    This report describes the co-design of a preschool science program, Early Science with Nico & NorⓇ, with partner teachers and families, curricula and media developers at GBH, and Digital Promise and EDC researchers. It also summarizes findings from a field study to understand how teachers and families utilized the resources at school and home to promote STEM teaching and learning.
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    Nico & Nor Family Flyer
    (Digital Promise, 2023-04) Digital Promise; Education Development Center (EDC); WGBH Educational Foundation (GBH)
    This family flyer shares about the First 8 Studios resource, Early Science with Nico & NorⓇ, which is a preschool science program co-designed with partner teachers and families, curricula and media developers at GBH, and Digital Promise and EDC researchers. It also describes findings from our research study. The flyer is available in English and Spanish.
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    Tough As Nails and Drawing on Kinship: Rigorous and inclusive educational research in Kentucky Appalachia
    (Digital Promise, 2023-04) Emi Iwatani
    In this panel presentation, Emi Iwatani applies the three tenets of civic imagination (advanced by Henry Jenkins, Sangita Shresthova and colleagues) to explain how research practice partnership projects in Eastern Kentucky has required inclusion and rigor, in order to work towards the future. She argues that "rigor" (strictness, exactness) in such co-design work must be applied not just to the inferential, knowledge generation processes (e.g., instrumentation, analysis) but also to setting up pre-conditions in alignment with the tenets.
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    Nico & Nor Teacher Flyer
    (Digital Promise, 2023-04) Digital Promise; Education Development Center; WGBH Educational Foundation (GBH)
    This classroom flyer shares about the First 8 Studios resource, Early Science with Nico and NorⓇ, which is a preschool science program co-designed with partner teachers and families, curricula and media developers at GBH, and Digital Promise and EDC researchers. It also describes findings from our research study.
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    Teacher Learner Connect Project
    (Digital Promise, 2023-03) Iwatani, Emi; Simmons, Cortney; Leones, Tiffany; Bustillos, Adrian; Hinds, Fiona; Scheirman, Silvia
    The report and slides summarize findings and reflections from the Teacher Learner Connect project, an exploratory research practice partnership supported by the Pahara Institute, UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent, and Bezos Family Foundation. The project provided opportunities for small teams of teachers and middle/high school students to converse over a meal about assessment, exploration and healthy risk-taking in the classroom. The conversations underscored the importance of assignment relevance (as felt by students), as well as the value of student-teacher conversations and student voice.
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    A Summary and Synthesis of Initial OpenSciEd Research
    (Digital Promise, 2023-03) McElhaney, Kevin; Mills, Kelly; Kamdar, Danae; Baker, Anthony; Roschelle, Jeremy;
    This report summarizes and synthesizes OpenSciEd research published as of August 2022, addressing two questions about OpenSciEd: (1) To what extent do teachers enact OpenSciEd units with integrity to its distinctive principles? and (2) To what extent do OpenSciEd teacher tools and professional learning experiences support teachers to enact OpenSciEd with integrity? This review includes 16 publications (journal articles, peer-reviewed conference proceedings, conference papers, doctoral dissertations, and published reports). Five of the papers focus on the design of OpenSciEd materials and do not have an empirical focus, seven have an empirical focus on classroom enactment, and four have an empirical focus on teacher supports. All but one of the papers were co-authored by affiliates of the OpenSciEd middle school development consortium, and all but one focus on the middle school grade band.
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    Finding kinship in a far away land: The relevance of Japanese cultural perspectives to education research in Eastern Kentucky (アメリカ・ケンタッキー州東部の教育研究:日本文化との共通性)
    (Digital Promise, 2023-01) Iwatani, Emi
    In this presentation, Emi Iwatani shares how the "Tough As Nails, Nimble Fingers: Developing a K-8 Coding Pathway for Kentucky Appalachia" was conceptualized to explore the idea of "cultural fit" of computational thinking and computer science education in Eastern Kentucky. It also shares project activities and findings related to that topic, and comments on the potential relevance of Emi's personal cultural (Japanese) background to project conception and execution.
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    Partnering to promote equity and digital learning
    (Digital Promise, 2023-02) Wiley, Korah; Neisler, Julie; Means, Barbara
    This report describes a 15-month collaboration between three Every Learner Everywhere partner organizations (Achieving the Dream, the American Association of Public and Land-grant Universities [APLU], and Digital Promise) and five colleges, all engaged in a research-practice partnership (RPP) around enhancing equity and digital learning in gateway courses. The report describes the key features of research-practice partnerships, the design choices made for this Equity and Digital Learning RPP, the process of establishing the RPP, RPP activities both within and across institutions, and data on student perceptions and academic performance in the target courses before and after the RPP activities.
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    Practitioners at the Center: Catalyzing Research on Problems of Practice in Realistic Settings
    (Digital Promise, 2022-12) Pautz Stephenson, Stefani; Banks, Rebecca; Pakhira, Deblina
    SEERNet’s goal is to enable alignment of research on digital learning platforms to the Institute of Education Sciences’ Standards for Excellence in Education Research (SEER) and thereby make research more rigorous, transparent, actionable, inclusive, and focused on consequential impacts. While researchers have long aspired to study problems of value to the field, the conception of research questions rarely is in partnership with practitioners. Without voices from the field, researchers do not have the deep understanding of educator, student, and system needs that are essential for ensuring research will impact decision-making. This paper will discuss a national call for involving practitioners in research question design, strategies for partnerships with practitioners, and SEERNet’s guiding principles for practitioner engagement. It will also introduce how needs and research question ideas were developed through SEERNet’s Office Hours.
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    Designing for the future of research: Putting equity-relevant research into practice with scenarios and personas
    (Digital Promise, 2022-10) Pakhira, Deblina; Fusco, Judi
    SEERNet, a hub of five digital learning platforms (DLPs), either in K-12 or higher education, are enabling researchers with capabilities to conduct research and collect data on large numbers of students. Based on the new Standard for Excellence in Education Research (SEER Standards) around Equity, we propose that researchers should consider future-oriented approaches and methodologies to conduct equity-relevant research using DLPs. Taking a future-oriented approach, we created scenarios and personas to help us envision an equitable and inclusive future. Scenarios and personas are tools that may help center equity in research. We make three additional recommendations to bring new perspectives into future-oriented, equity-relevant research practices. First, include diverse research perspectives. Second, engage teachers, students, and families as partners in research. Third, minimize bias. In SEERNet, we invite the research community to join in future conversations as we continue to consider personas and future-oriented scenarios and see what they can help us understand and do.
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    Designing Gateway Statistics and Chemistry Courses for Today’s Students: Case Studies of Postsecondary Course Innovations
    (Digital Promise, 2022-08) Peters, Vanessa; Pakhira, Deblina; White, Latia; Fennelly-Atkinson, Rita; Means, Barbara
    Scholars of teaching and learning examine the impacts of pedagogical decisions on students’ learning and course success. In this report, we describes findings from case studies of eight innovative postsecondary introductory statistics and general chemistry courses that have evidence of improving student completion rates for minoritized and low-income students. The goal of the case studies was to identify the course design elements and pedagogical practices that were implemented by faculty. To identify courses, Digital Promise sought nominations from experts in statistics and chemistry education and reviewed National Science Foundation project abstracts in the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program. The case studies courses were drawn from 2- and 4-year colleges and were implemented at the level of individual instructors or were part of a department or college-wide intervention. Among the selected courses, both introductory statistics (n = 5) and general chemistry (n = 3) involved changes to the curriculum and pedagogy. Curricular changes involved a shift away from teaching formal mathematical and chemical equations towards teaching that emphasizes conceptual understanding and critical thinking. Pedagogical changes included the implementation of peer-based active learning, formative practice, and supports for students’ metacognitive and self-regulation practices.
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    Emerging Technology Adoption Framework: For PK-12 Education
    (Digital Promise, 2022-10) Ruiz, Pati; Richard, Eleanor; Chillmon, Carly; Shah, Zohal; Kurth, Adam; Fekete, Andy; Glazer, Kip; Pattenhouse, Megan; Fusco, Judi; Fennelly-Atkinson, Rita; Lin, Lin; Arriola, Sheryl; Lockett, David; Crawford-Meyer, Valerie; Karim, Sana; Hampton, Sarah; Beckford, Belinda
    The Emerging Technology Adoption Framework was created with education community members to help ensure that educational leaders, technology specialists, teachers, students, and families are all part of the evaluation and adoption process for placing emerging technologies in PK-12 classrooms. We engaged an Emerging Technology Advisory Board through Educator CIRCLS based out of The Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences (CIRCLS) and gathered additional feedback from researchers, policy experts, the edtech community, educators, and families to ground our work through a community of experts. This framework is specifically designed to include community members in the process of making informed evaluation and procurement decisions and outlines the important criteria to consider during three stages of emerging technology implementation: (1) initial evaluation, (2) adoption, and (3) post-adoption. Each criterion has specific questions that can be asked of decision makers, district leaders, technology researchers and developers, educators, and students and families, as well as resources and people who might serve as resources when answering these questions.
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    Scaling Up Design of Inquiry Environments
    (Routledge, 2021-06) Roschelle, Jeremy; Mazziotti, Claudia; Means, Barbara
    Bringing inquiry learning environments to scale is an important issue for society, especially given the needs for stronger inquiry skills among future citizens, employees, and leaders. Scaling up is a complex challenge for any educational innovation, as new pressures emerge as innovations scale. This chapter argues that scaling is particularly challenging for ambitious inquiry learning innovations that often do not find a good fit with prevailing priorities in many of today’s classrooms and communities. Six examples of inquiry learning environments that achieved considerable scale and four additional long-term partnerships illustrate the potential for scaling inquiry learning environments and key requirements for achieving scale . The example projects planned for scaling from the earliest stages of their work. They invested in scaling up for a long period of time, and their approach evolved to incorporate insights gained through their experience in the field. Teams implementing these inquiry learning innovations reflected on which principles helped them reach scale and consolidated their understanding of their approach as a learning activity system; they addressed teacher learning needs; and they built partnerships to sustain support for their approach. The chapter reviews definitions of scaling up, causes of failure, strategies linked to success, and unresolved remaining challenges.