IES Staff
Erin Higgins
Education Research Analyst
NCER
About
Cognition and Student Learning
Associated IES Content
Grant
Exploring Links Between Arts Education and Academic Outcomes in the International Baccalaureate
The purpose of this project is to explore the relation between rigorous, high quality arts education in high school and academic outcomes at the high school and postsecondary levels. Prior research on the association between arts education and academic outcomes has yielded mixed results, possibly due to wide variation in the definitions of arts education and the academic measures used by researchers. In this study, the research team will analyze a novel administrative dataset that overcomes ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A180062
Grant
Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling (MATRS)
In this project, researchers will develop a comprehensive, reliable, and valid morphological awareness assessment tool for students in grades one through six called the Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling (MATRS). Morphological awareness refers to the ability to understand and manipulate the smallest units of meaning in language, such as root word, prefixes, and suffixes. Many students in the United States do not read and write proficiently, and recent research has shown th...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170065
Grant
Strengthening the Research Architecture for High Quality Universal Pre-K: Leveraging the Opportunity of a Historic Expansion
Senior education leaders in New York City (NYC) are currently undertaking one of the most rapidly and broadly deployed education policy initiatives in the nation, dramatically expanding universal pre-kindergarten opportunities for the city's preschool-aged children. The purpose of this project is to provide quantitative and capacity-building solutions to two pressing problems faced by the NYC Department of Education (DOE) in the face of this historic expansion. The first is that the NYC DOE'...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305U140002
Grant
Individual Growth and Development Indicators: Automated Applications for Performance Evaluation of Early Literary (IGDI-APEL)
The purpose of this project is to develop a tablet-based application (app) that provides a comprehensive early literacy Response-to-Intervention (RTI) experience for children and supporting material for their educators. Based on already existing paper-and-pencil materials that include assessments for screening and identification (Individual Growth and Development Indicators, or IGDI), this technology-based app will also allow for the real-time collection and analysis of student data, result...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140065
Grant
Automating the Measurement and Assessment of Classroom Discourse
The purpose of this project is to automate the Classroom Language Assessment System (CLASS 4.24), a computer program developed at the University of Wisconsin Center for Education Research. CLASS 4.24 is used to code classroom interactions between a teacher and his or her students, and (a) has successfully identified key instructional variables promoting reading achievement, (b) has been used to successfully support professional development, and (c) is currently used for teacher education at ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130030
Grant
Exploring the Educational Game Landscape through Focused Studies and Ecological Interventions
In this project, the researchers will systematically explore how individual differences among students (e.g., motivation, engagement, persistence, prior knowledge) interact with educational game designs and integration of those games into classrooms. Researchers will use components of an existing game-based intelligent tutoring system, Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking-Motivationally Enhanced (iSTART-ME). The goal of the research is to improve the design of learni...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130124
Grant
Making Individualized Literacy Instruction Available to All Teachers: Adapting the Assessment to Instruction (A2i) Software for Multiple Real-World Contexts
The purpose of this project is to complete development of Assessment to Instruction (A2i) software, which is an integral part of the Individualizing Student Instruction (ISI) intervention. A2i was originally developed and funded under an earlier IES grant (Child Instruction Interactions in Early Reading: Examining Causal Effects of Individualized Instruction) as a research tool to compute recommended amounts and types of instruction taking into account that the effect of specific types of re...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160404
Grant
Burst: Reading Efficacy Study
The purpose of this study is to examine the efficacy of Burst:Reading, a fully-developed software-based reading intervention designed to improve the literacy skills of students in grades K-3. In this intervention, students' reading ability will be repeatedly assessed and scored dynamically using handheld devices, thereby allowing teachers to make data-driven, in-the-moment instructional decisions at both the individual- and classroom-levels. For example, the assessment data can be used to i...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120811
Grant
Intelligent Scaffolding for Peer Reviews of Writing
The purpose of this project is to improve upon an existing software technology-Scaffolded Writing and Rewriting in the Disciplines (SWoRD)-that facilitates the writing and revision of essays and compositions, and handles the logistics of peer review (e.g., distribution of essays to reviewers, collection and distribution of anonymous reviewer comments to original authors). Researchers will attempt to improve upon the current software technology by adding new features that leverage advances in...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120370
Grant
Creating Compositions Using a Technology-Based Writing Tool: Supporting Students With Universal Design for Learning
The goal of this project is to develop and formatively evaluate the Composition Builder (CB), a web-based, guided-process writing tool that supports students in grades 6-8 in writing persuasive and expository compositions. Ensuring that students master effective writing requires a standards-based supported, digital writing environment that maximizes instructional impact for students with different learning needs, strengths and challenges. The proposed tool will incorporate the process-writin...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110333
Grant
Habitat Tracker: Learning About Scientific Inquiry Through Digital Journaling at Wildlife Centers
Field trips to museums and wildlife centers are a common activity in schools and it is widely believed that they have educational and motivational impacts. Yet research shows field trips frequently have limited educational benefits and lack integration with science curricula. National reform efforts in science education emphasize the need for students to participate in scientific inquiries, yet inquiry-based instruction remains a rarely-seen practice in most elementary classrooms. To addres...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100782
From Seedlings to Scale Grants Program
Through the From Seedlings to Scale (S2S) grant program, IES will invest in innovative ideas within an identified focus area through three phases of increasing funding and duration to support ideas as they grow from seedlings to scalable solutions.
Foreign Language Education
The National Center for Education Research created the Foreign Language Education topic in Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 to support research that examines how best to support English-speaking students who are learning a foreign language in school and how proficiency in two or more languages is linked to student education outcomes.
Arts in Education
The National Center for Education Research (NCER) competed the Arts in Education special topic during its fiscal year (FY) 2017 and FY 2018 Education Research Grants (305A) competitions. The Arts in Education special topic was developed to highlight the opportunity for arts research funding through the 305A program, and to increase attention to research projects seeking to improve education outcomes
Leveraging Evidence to Accelerate Recovery Nationwide Network
The LEARN Network is focused on adapting and preparing to scale existing, evidence-based products that have the potential to accelerate students' learning relative to pre-pandemic rates of growth for the many learners enrolled in kindergarten through grade 12 whose learning was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Transformative Research in the Education Sciences
Through the Transformative Research in the Education Sciences Grants Program, IES seeks to support innovative research that has the potential to make dramatic advances towards solving seemingly intractable problems and challenges in the education field and/or to accelerate the pace of conducting education research to facilitate major breakthroughs.
Digital Learning Platforms to Enable Efficient Education Research Network
The Digital Learning Platforms to Enable Efficient Education Research Network, now known as SEERNet, is designed to facilitate the education research
Blog
Accelerating Research on Generative Artificial Intelligence: IES Announces Four New Research & Development Centers
Today's announcement from IES is its latest effort to identify high-reward, quick turnaround, scalable solutions to improve education outcomes for all learners and to identify AI-related opportunities and risks. IES is pleased to announce the newest set of Accelerate, Transform, Scale (ATS) Initiative investments: four National Research and Development (R&D) Centers focusing on Using Generative Artificial Intelligence to Augment Teaching and Learning in Classrooms (U-GAIN). These four new R&D
Date published:
Sep 17, 2024
Grant
Effects of Enhanced Representations in Digital Mathematics Practice Items
In this project, the research team will explore how to improve the design of practice items in a digital learning platform (ASSISTments/E-TRIALS) so that they better support students' conceptual and procedural knowledge of proportional reasoning. Students' reasoning about situations involving ratios, rates, and proportions is deeply tied to their understanding of fractions, measurement, functions, and algebra as well as complex topics in statistics, biology, and physics. Despite its importan...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N240050
Grant
Examining the Relationship Between Individual Characteristics and Self-Regulated Learning Across Multiple OpenStax Courses
In this project, the research team will work with the OpenStax/Kinetic platform team to explore the use of interactive tools like digital highlighters and notetaking tools for digital textbooks - a common type of open education resource in postsecondary education. Students need to be able to actively monitor and judge their progress toward fully understanding the text they are reading. If or when students identify a topic they do not fully comprehend, they must engage in self-regulated learn...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N240049
Grant
The Educational Divide: Transition, Retention, and Course Selection in Digital and On-Campus Immersion Students
In this study, the research team will examine differences in course taking and degree persistence between the online and on-campus programs at Arizona State University (ASU), a large Hispanic-serving institution (HSI). The research team will work with the Learning @ Scale (L@S) platform team at ASU, one of the five platform teams within the SEERNet Network, to carry out this work. The research team aims to analyze course-taking patterns throughout students' enrollment to identify common acad...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N240042
Grant
A Multipronged Approach to Small-Teaching Interventions for Reducing Academic Procrastination: A Randomized Control Study via Terracotta
Through this project, the research team will develop and test interventions for postsecondary academic procrastination. These interventions will focus on equipping students to circumvent two predicted causes of procrastination: (1) experiencing negative mood caused by aversion toward an academic task and (2) choosing an immediately pleasurable activity over the academic task. Academic procrastination is prevalent and associated with worse academic performance and higher psychological distres...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N240063
Grant
Active Learning at Scale: Transforming Teaching and Learning via Large-Scale Learning Science and Generative AI
The purpose of this project is to create Active Learning at Scale (L@S), a flexible learning environment where postsecondary students can learn course content and practice their skills while on the go and in a variety of settings. Active L@S will expand access to evidence-based generative learning strategies (e.g., note taking, summarizing, self-explaining, question answering, and retrieval practice) for diverse students while also testing the boundaries and interactive factors that influenc...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305T240035
Grant
Talking Math: Improving Math Performance and Engagement Through AI-Enabled Conversational Tutoring
The purpose of this project is to develop a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) tutor (CAIT- pronounced as "Kate") to support independent math practice for middle school students who struggle with math and, otherwise, may not have access to after-school tutoring. CAIT will be integrated into ASSISTments, an existing, freely available, and evidence-based online math platform with widely used homework assignments from open education resources (OER). Through this work, the project team ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305T240029
Grant
Investigating the Impact of Metacognitive Supports on Students' Mathematics Knowledge and Motivation in MATHia
The purpose of this project is to explore the effects of evidence-based enhancements implemented during mathematics problem solving in UpGrade/MATHia on middle school students' metacognitive skills, mathematics knowledge, and motivation. Mathematics learning is an incremental process that requires intensive metacognitive activity. Students must create a plan to solve a problem, monitor and control their understanding, and evaluate their learning process. Metacognitive skills are essential fo...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N240024
Grant
Now I See It: Supporting Flexible Problem Solving in Mathematics through Perceptual Scaffolding in ASSISTments
The purpose of this research is to explore whether exposure to perceptual cues, referred to as perceptual scaffolding, in mathematics notation (e.g., using color to highlight key terms such as the inverse operators in an expression) may disrupt in-the-moment fluency, lead learners to pause and notice structural patterns, then ultimately practice more flexible and efficient problem solving. This project will yield evidence on how, when, and for whom perceptual scaffolding works to inform clas...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N230034
Grant
Adapting STARI to Accelerate Student Reading Achievement in Middle Grades
The purpose of this project is to further adapt and assess the impact of the Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI) to respond to the urgent need to accelerate learning among middle grades students reading two or more years below grade level. The number of middle school students struggling with reading has grown significantly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The STARI program is designed to motivate students and to support the self-efficacy that will be critical to accelerated learni...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N220025
Grant
Scaling Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI) to Serve Students Impacted by COVID-19: Digital Implementation of an Effective Intervention
The purpose of this project is to adapt and prepare to scale Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI), an evidence-based reading program for kindergarten through grade 3 students. To scale TRI as an effective response to COVID-19, this project will adapt TRI as a digital application ("TRI App") to build foundational reading, oral language, fluency, and comprehension skills of students not yet meeting grade-level benchmarks on school progress monitoring measures. The TRI App will support virtual tr...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N220013
Grant
LEARN Network Lead
A Research Network involves several teams of researchers who are working together to address a critical education problem or issue. The objective is to encourage information sharing, build new knowledge, and assist policymakers and practitioners to strengthen education policies and programs and improve student education outcomes. The LEARN Network will focus on adapting and scaling up existing, evidence-based products that have the potential to accelerate students' learning for the many le...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N220012
Grant
Classwide Fraction Intervention With Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies to Support Learning Acceleration
The purpose of this project is to adapt, evaluate, and prepare to scale CFI+PALS, a product for fifth grade students that combines Classwide Fraction Intervention (CFI) with Math Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS). COVID-19 learning loss has impacted students in high-poverty elementary schools, particularly in math. To accelerate math learning, teachers in these schools need innovative, evidence-based methods that incorporate a dual focus on grade-level content and content from earlier...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N220008
Grant
Modifying an Evidence-Based Peer-Mediated Reading Program to Differentiate Instruction and Accelerate Learning Among Underrepresented Groups: Implementing PALS in the Rio Grande Valley
The purpose of this project is to modify Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) Reading, an existing evidence-based literacy program, to make it more responsive to the learning needs of a greater number of children. The adaptations proposed are intended to accelerate the learning of students from underrepresented groups who have been negatively affected-and differentiallynegatively affected-by the pandemic. PALS Reading is a supplemental program that has been repeatedly shown to improve th...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N220010
Grant
The Canvas+Terracotta LMS-Based Experimental Education Research Platform
Schools have been increasing their adoption and use of online learning management systems, particularly so since the pandemic. Canvas is the most widely used learning management system (LMS) in the US, with over 7 million learners in higher education and 14 million learners in K-12 settings. Long gone are the days when the LMS was simply an administrative platform for gradebooks and file storage. Canvas has become the de facto environment for engaged online learning, ranging from discussions...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N210035
Grant
MATHia: A Digital Learning Platform Supporting Core and Supplemental Instruction in Middle and High School Mathematics
There is an urgent need to improve mathematics outcomes in the United States. Mathematics often acts as a gateway to overall academic success. The failure of students to succeed in mathematics at the middle and high school level has a strong economic impact on the country, by one estimate reducing US GDP by as much as 3.5 percent annually. One barrier to improving outcomes in mathematics is that the diversity of students, teachers, and school settings makes it difficult to clearly understand...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N210045
Grant
Efficient Education Research via the OpenStax Learning Platform
The main goal of this project is to build OpenStax Labs (Labs), a first-of-its-kind research infrastructure integrated within the OpenStax digital platform. Through Labs, the platform team will create a rapid iteration and testing environment to conduct research faster and at scale, cultivate an inclusive research community, and deploy research-based insights to improve student outcomes that lead to equitable student success. Education in the United States is rapidly evolving as teachers and...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N210064
Grant
The SEER Research Network for Digital Learning Platforms
The Network Lead will help platform developers, researchers, and educators share ideas, build knowledge, and strengthen dissemination. SEERNet will (a) maximize the distinctive advantages of organizing research around Digital Learning Platforms, (b) align to IES's goals by focusing activities around the Standards for Excellence in Educational Research ("SEER"), and (c) achieve deeper and broader national impacts by leveraging extensive, existing networks of education partners, researchers, a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N210034
Grant
Revisions to the ASSISTments Digital Learning Platform to Expand Its Support for Rigorous Education Research
The goal of this project is to make education research more widely available and efficient by building the necessary infrastructure for an existing online digital platform. The new infrastructure that will be built during this project will enable researchers to run studies within open education resources (OER). An additional goal is to help researchers explore ways to increase student learning for the 500,000 students who use the ASSISTments digital platform. Educators need to know what work...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N210049
Grant
The ASU Learning at Scale (L@S) Digital Learning Network
The purpose of this project is to develop a digital learning network platform with the capacity to connect, access, and examine undergraduate student data and courses within the scope of Arizona State University (ASU) online and digital classrooms (ASU Online). The proposed ASU L@S platform focuses on how students are represented in the system and how those data can be surfaced to the widest range of researchers. The long-term vision is to provide the infrastructure to promote innovation in ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305N210041
Grant
Using Computational Linguistics to Detect Comprehension Processes in Constructed Responses across Multiple Large Data Sets
The purpose of this project is to better understand student coherence building, which students use to develop a coherent mental model of a text. Understanding text is a vital activity, enabling us to fully engage in our communities, whether through printed advertisements, electronic messaging, or signs for highway navigation. Students who struggle with coherence building have difficulty achieving deep comprehension. Using previously collected data sets, researchers will examine coherence-bui...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A190063
Grant
The Efficacy of From Here to There: A Dynamic Technology for Improving Algebraic Understanding
The purpose of this project is to test the efficacy of From Here to There (FH2T), an interactive touch-based application developed with prior IES funding (Learning the Visual Structure of Algebra Through Dynamic Interactions with Notation). FH2T is designed to improve students' conceptual understanding of algebraic ideas. Algebra is foundational for understanding advanced mathematics; however, many middle and high school students fail to understand basic algebraic concepts. In FH2T, math sym...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A180401
Grant
Enhancing Middle School Mathematics Achievement through Spatial Skills Instruction
The purpose of this project is to evaluate the impact of a spatial skills training curriculum on mathematics achievement for middle school students. Well-developed spatial skills have been shown to be important to success in a variety of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. However, causal studies showing a link between spatial skills training and future STEM performance represent a significant gap in our understanding of the link between spatial skills and STEM a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170640
Grant
Scalable Multimedia Mindfulness Training for Youth
The purpose of this project is to develop and pilot test a scalable, multimedia mindfulness training program tailored to high school students and based on insights from cognitive science and educational psychology. Despite teachers' best efforts, students' ability to pay attention and absorb information is frequently compromised by distraction and mind-wandering. To help students improve their ability to focus their attention, mindfulness training programs are being introduced into schools t...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170445
Grant
Exploring the Spatial Alignment Hypothesis in STEM Learning Environments
The purpose of this project is to explore how to optimize the spatial arrangement of commonly used visuals, such as worked examples and diagrams, to facilitate visual comparison as students learn mathematics and science concepts. Visual comparison is the process of identifying the relational structure that visuals share (i.e., the correspondences between the aligned components of the compared items). Surprisingly, little is known about how to spatially arrange visuals to facilitate visual co...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170165
Grant
Drawing Connections to Close Achievement Gaps in Mathematics
The aims of this project are to examine the role of pressure as a factor underlying persistent achievement gaps in mathematical reasoning skills and to test a malleable factor for reducing those gaps: making worked examples visible while engaging students in mathematical reasoning. Most of the research exploring the effects of anxiety and pressure on academic performance focuses on testing situations. Through this project, the research team will extend this work by looking at whether anxiety...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170488
Grant
Fostering Reading Comprehension and Knowledge-Building in Middle-School Students
In this project, researchers will develop and pilot test the eBRAVO intervention aimed at helping middle school students develop deep comprehension skills necessary to read, comprehend, and build knowledge for informational texts. This intervention will be an adaptation of a previously developed intervention (BRAVO; Fostering Comprehension and Knowledge-Building in Middle-School Struggling Readers) shown in pilot work to have promise for improving students' reading comprehension outcomes. Th...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170142
Grant
Opening the Door to Algebra: Does Improving Facets of Fraction Knowledge Impact Algebra Learning?
The purpose of the proposed project is to develop a better understanding of whether, when, and how improving fraction knowledge yields improvements in algebra learning. Specifically, the research team will (1) explore the extent to which improving fraction knowledge improves algebra readiness and learning for middle school students and preservice teachers learning algebra and (2) examine the independent contributions of fraction magnitude and fraction computation knowledge for improving alge...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170226
Grant
Contextualizing Experimental Design Instruction Within Related Inquiry Activities: The ISP Tutor
The purpose of this project is to develop and pilot test the Inquiry-based Science Projects (ISP) Tutor, an enhanced version of the computer-based adaptive Tutor for Experimental Design (TED). ISP will provide instructional support to improve students' ability to perform experimental science in extended, engaging, and meaningful contexts. TED, which was developed with prior IES funding (Training in Experimental Design: Developing Scalable and Adaptive Computer-based Science Instruction and P...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170176
Grant
Focusing on the Efficacy of Teaching Advanced Forms of Patterning on Kindergartners' Improvements in Literacy, Mathematics, and Reasoning Ability
The purpose of this project is to replicate the efficacy of an advanced patterning intervention, previously shown to improve first-grade students' math, literacy, and higher-order thinking skills, with kindergarten students. "Patterning" is the ability to recognize an ordering of numbers, letters, shapes, symbols, objects, or events according to some rule of progression. This project builds on the research team's three prior IES grants (Increasing Learning By Promoting Early Abstract Thought...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170114
Grant
A Theory and Data Driven Approach for Identifying Evidence of Collaborative Problem Solving Skills
The purpose of this project is to develop a framework to assess and identify collaborative problem-solving (CPS) skills in computer-based educational environments and to explore the relationship between collaborative problem solving and student learning outcomes. Collaborative problem solving is recognized as a key 21st-century competency, however, no valid and reliable tool exists to measure and assess the influence of collaboration on educational outcomes. This research aims to address thr...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170432
Grant
Navigating Scientific and Statistical Reasoning in Adolescence
The purpose of this project is to identify promising strategies for teaching middle and high school students to critically evaluate scientific evidence presented in everyday contexts, along with new knowledge about the factors that affect the development of robust scientific evaluation skills. Individuals must learn to distinguish between good science, bad science, and pseudoscience so that they can make well-informed decisions about health, behavior, and policy. A major goal of K-12 science...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170489
Grant
Examining the Processes and Outcomes of Reading Comprehension (EXPO-RC)
The purpose of this study is to better understand the test-taking behavior of 3rd, 5th, and 8th grade students. Tests of reading comprehension (RC) are meant to measure the processes engaged in by readers when reading for understanding, yet research suggests that two individuals might engage in very different processes and earn the same score on a single test. Furthermore, the same student might earn very different scores on two different tests, with one test score suggesting the student has...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170036
Grant
An Examination of Response to Intervention in the Early Writing Skills of At-Risk Preschoolers
The purpose of this project is to test the efficacy of the Phonological Awareness + Letter Knowledge (PA+LK) intervention on writing skills in preschool children at risk for early learning problems. Research shows that preschool children who have difficulty with literacy skills are more likely to enter elementary school with literacy problems, and are unlikely to catch up with their peers. Thus, it is important to establish strong foundational literacy skills before students enter kindergart...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170529
Grant
Understanding the Mechanisms Supporting Knowledge Integration in Traditional and Dual-Language Classrooms
The purpose of this project was to explore instructional factors and cognitive abilities associated with a student's ability to self-generate new knowledge in both traditional and dual-language education settings. The self-generation process occurs when learners take information learned in one lesson (e.g., heat causes liquids to expand), integrate it with information learned in a different lesson (e.g., thermometers contain liquid), and develop a novel understanding (e.g., thermometers work...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160240
Grant
An Efficacy Study of Interleaved Mathematics Practice
This project assessed the efficacy and feasibility of a mathematics learning intervention known as interleaved practice. In a typical mathematics practice assignment, students see a group of problems that can be solved by the same strategy (e.g., 10 parabola problems), and this format allows students to use nearly the same strategy for every problem. With interleaved practice, different kinds of practice problems are arranged so that no two consecutive problems can be solved by the same stra...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160263
Grant
How Dynamic Gestures and Directed Actions Contribute to Mathematical Proof Practices
The research team will explore how directed actions-body movements that learners are instructed to formulate-and pedagogical language relate to high-school students' geometric proof production, a pre-college education topic essential for promoting advanced mathematical reasoning and future studies and work in STEM fields. The specific research aims include exploring how simulated action (i.e., students' speech and gesture production) informs students' understandings of the proof process; whe...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160020
Grant
Generating Large and Sustained Impacts on Early Language Skills: Evaluation of Timing and Duration of Intervention
The purpose of this project is to examine the relative efficacy and sustained impacts of three variations in timing and duration of a language and vocabulary intervention for students in prekindergarten and kindergarten with below or low average language skills. Because language weaknesses place children at heightened risk for reading comprehension and general academic difficulties, an intensive early intervention approach is necessary. The intervention is an integrated combination of two in...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160241
Grant
Cognitive Support for Learning Fractional Magnitudes
The purpose of this project is to explore the relationship between cognitive supports (i.e., supports to facilitate student thinking and reasoning) for mathematical comparisons and students' learning of fractional magnitudes, with a particular focus on students with low executive functioning (EF) skills. Understanding fractional magnitudes is a skill that is correlated with later math achievement as well as important real-world outcomes. Students with low EF skills are typically at high risk...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160295
Grant
Precision Education: The Virtual Learning Lab
The Virtual Learning Lab will bring together expertise in informatics (the study of information processing in the context of computer systems), mathematics education, and teacher professional development to launch the emerging field of precision education, in which prior students' data are used to support decisions about the learning opportunities provided to future students. Precision education is now becoming possible due to the availability of large data sets accumulated as students work ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305C160004
Grant
Exploring the Roles of Pattern and Spatial Skills in Early Mathematics Development
The purpose of this research is to explore how two important but often overlooked skills-pattern and spatial skills-uniquely contribute to prekindergarten students' early mathematics development. Pattern skills include identifying, extending, and describing predictable sequences in objects or numbers. Spatial skills include spatial visualization (i.e., the ability to imagine and mentally transform spatial information) and visual-spatial working memory (i.e., the ability to hold the locations...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160132
Grant
Educational Media Supports for Low-Income Preschoolers' Vocabulary Development
The purpose of this research is to explore the mechanisms by which low-income preschoolers' vocabulary development and oral language comprehension are influenced by their experiences with educational media. The specific aims of this research are to define the features of educational media that support low-income children's vocabulary acquisition and oral language comprehension; establish how these features impact low-income children's engagement with educational media; and determine the exte...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150143
Grant
Embedding Working Memory Training within Math Problem Solving Intervention
The research team tested the efficacy of a fully developed intervention intended for elementary school students who need to support with their mathematics problem solving (MPS) skills. The field’s major approach to intervention for students with or at risk for mathematics difficulty (MD) is structured skills instruction, which is designed to compensate for student limitations in the cognitive resources associated with academic performance. Despite the efficacy of this approach, approxi...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150200
Grant
Linking Dialogue and Student Modeling to Create an Enhanced Micro-adaptive Tutoring System
In this project, the research team will continue to develop and test Rimac, a tutorial dialogue system for physics developed with prior IES funding (Improving a Natural-Language Tutoring System that Engages Students in Deep Reasoning Dialogues about Physics) and currently serving as the test bed for a current exploration project (Exploring Studies to Derive Policies for Adaptive Natural-Language Tutoring in Physics). The researchers will create and incorporate a student modeling engine into ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150155
Grant
Improving Children's Understanding of Mathematical Equivalence: An Efficacy Study
The purpose of this project is to evaluate Improving Children's Understanding of Equivalence (ICUE), a fully-developed intervention that supplements teachers' existing mathematics instruction and helps students develop understanding of mathematical equivalence. This intervention was developed under two prior IES awards (Arithmetic Practice that Promotes Conceptual Understanding and Computational Fluency and Improving Children's Understanding of Mathematical Equivalence). A vast majority of ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150088
Grant
Developing and Revising Instructional Activities to Optimize Cognitive Engagement
This research team will develop and pilot test a set of classroom activities for use in middle school science classrooms that will support both constructive and interactive modes of student engagement The value of learning actively is widely recognized, yet teachers are often unsure exactly how to select optimal "active learning" activities. Prior work by this team has led to the development of the Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive (ICAP) Framework which defines active learning...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150432
Grant
Teaching the Crosscutting Concept of Emergent Cause-and-Effect to Overcome Misconceptions
To address students' persistent misconceptions about the cause-effect relations of scientific phenomena, the research team will develop and pilot test an intervention to teach the common structure that appears to underlie many science concepts and phenomena, and in particular, those in which students have misconceptions (i.e., the "emergence" schema). The Principal Investigator's prior work suggests that misconceptions occur when a student incorrectly uses a more familiar schema to explain t...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150336
Grant
Focused Computer Games that Promote Specific Cognitive Skills
The research team will develop and pilot test game-based interventions for students in middle school through early college that are intended to improve the executive function (EF) skills that are needed to enter rigorous academic disciplines. EF predicts success in many academic disciplines, including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); however, explicit instruction in EF is rarely part of formal or informal education. The specific project goals are: (1) to design and d...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150417
Grant
Language for Reading: Building Vocabulary Through Engaged Learning
The research team will develop and pilot test an intervention designed to foster vocabulary development among preschool children from low-income homes. Low-income children typically have smaller vocabularies than their middle-income peers, and these vocabulary disparities directly contribute to the achievement gap. This project will extend the research team's previous Development and Innovation project (Increasing Vocabulary in Preschoolers: Using Cognitive Science to Guide Pedagogy), where ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150435
Grant
Alphabet Instruction Details
The purpose of this project was to develop and pilot test guidelines for alphabet instruction in the context of preschool classrooms. Alphabet knowledge is important for students' success with word reading and spelling development. Although learning letter names and sounds may appear to be a simple task, research suggests that many children from low socioeconomic status families, including many with limited English proficiency, enter and exit preschool with limited alphabet knowledge. In add...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150005
Grant
Learning from Errors
The purpose of this project is to develop and pilot test an intervention for using students' errors to enhance their learning in mathematics, both by focusing instruction on the problem areas that are most in need of attention, and by examining and correcting the missteps that underlie students' errors. Recent research has shown that committing errors, as long as those errors are corrected, enhances learning as compared to error-free learning. The research team will address how to use errors...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150467
Grant
Fostering Reliance on Visuospatial Representations to Enhance High School Students' Success in Pre-Calculus Trigonometry
This project explored whether encouraging high school and community college students to use visuospatial representations and providing them with support to enhance familiarity with these representations contributes to success in trigonometry, a difficult subject that sits at the gateway to entry into university-level science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) coursework and ultimately into careers in these disciplines. It is common to view mathematics as a formal system of abst...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150453
Grant
When STARS Align: Exploring Spatial Thinking and Relational Scaffolding (STARS) in Elementary Astronomy
The purpose of this project was to identify malleable instructional factors to help students with spatial perspective-taking, a critical process for learning astronomy topics and a central concept in elementary school science curricula and the Next Generation Science Standards. There is evidence that spatial thinking skills are malleable and that these skills are important in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Researchers (1) tested the theory that relational sc...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150228
Grant
Computer-Based Guided Retrieval Practice for Elementary School Children
The objective of this research project is to develop and pilot test the Guided Retrieval Practice program, a computer-based program for elementary school students that will provide a sequence of encoding activities (e.g., identifying key terms) and retrieval practice activities (e.g., fill-in-the-blank) to promote high levels of retrieval success. Many students study using passive techniques, such as rereading their notes and textbooks, rather than those that require active retrieval of info...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150546
Grant
Application of the Dual-Component Theory to Adaptive Working Memory Training
The ability to meet benchmark standards in core academic subjects such as reading and math is limited by a student's working memory (WM) capacity. This research seeks to explore the effects of a novel training regimen that can target and enhance both the attention and memory components of WM capacity on student education outcomes. According to the dual-component theory of WM, there are two critical components of WM capacity—an attention component and a memory component—that account for t...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150305
Grant
Facilitating Transfer of Mathematical Knowledge from Classroom to Real Life
Mathematical knowledge is crucial for science, engineering, economics, and many other fields of study, as well as many aspects of everyday life; however, even when students successfully learn mathematical concepts, they often have difficulty transferring their knowledge to new situations and at later points in time. One approach to teaching mathematics to facilitate both learning and transfer has been the use of concrete instantiations, including visual displays, as well as real world contex...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140214
Grant
Dynamic Support of Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition for Reading (DSCoVAR): An Intelligent Tutoring System
Vocabulary knowledge is widely regarded as a precursor to skilled reading comprehension. Knowledge of words that are abstract or take on multiple meanings otherwise known as Tier 2 words, is often considered to be the key to higher-level comprehension. A complete grasp of the meaning of Tier 2 words may depend on reading the words multiple times across a variety of contexts. Tier 2 words take on greater importance in the intermediate grades (fourth through eighth grade) as students begin to ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140647
Grant
An Elementary-age Origami and Pop-up Paper Engineering Curriculum to Promote the 3-D Spatial Thinking and Reasoning Underlying STEM Education
Visuospatial thinking relates to success in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education (e.g., topographic map interpretation, molecular structure understanding), so it is important that children practice fundamental visuospatial skills at an early age. The purpose of this project is to develop and pilot test an elementary-aged curriculum that will promote the development of and practice with visuospatial thinking integral to STEM disciplines. The curriculum will teach visuos...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140151
Grant
Linguistically-Informed Activity Generation Technology to Support English Learner Content Learning
The purpose of this project is to develop a technology-rich instructional program that will improve the language skills and comprehension of content-area texts of English language learners (ELLs). The project is motivated by the awareness that ELLs who may already be struggling to acquire grade-level English language skills may be additionally challenged by the new text demands likely to enter the curriculum as a result of the Common Core State Standards. This project, informed by a prior IE...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140472
Grant
Contributions to Mathematics Competency of At-Risk Students: The Impact of Executive Function, Approximate Number System and Early Mathematics Skills
This project is designed to explore the learning trajectories in mathematics of children at risk for academic difficulties. Through a longitudinal study, this project is intended to capture both the concurrent and longitudinal predictors of middle school children's mathematics achievement as measured via state standardized assessments and detailed individually-administered standardized mathematics achievement tests in the middle school grades. Using information from a previously funded IES p...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140126
Grant
Designing Contrasting Cases for Inductive Learning
The purpose of this project is to develop and test a theory for how to pick sets of problems within science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) domains that help students understand the quantitative (functional) structure of empirical phenomena. Based on prior research, problem sets that incorporate contrasting cases can foster an appreciation of deep structure, flexibility, transfer, and preparation for future learning. Contrasting cases exhibit systematic variation, which is useful f...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140314
Grant
Story Talk: A Cognitive Research-based Vocabulary Intervention for Preschoolers
Spoken language competence is a foundation needed for developing reading skills. Upon entering school, low-income children lag behind their more affluent peers in spoken language skills and experience more difficulty learning to read. This project aims to translate the considerable body of basic research on early vocabulary development into a highly feasible and effective classroom intervention that can be used with low-income preschoolers, called Story Talk. This book reading intervention ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140034
Grant
Exploring Studies to Derive Policies for Adaptive Natural-Language Tutoring in Physics
Students' failure to grasp basic scientific concepts and apply these concepts to problem solving has been a persistent challenge, especially in physics education. Many educators and education policymakers have looked to intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) as a means of providing cost-effective, individualized instruction to students with the potential to improve their conceptual understanding of and problem-solving skills in math and science. The key to developing highly effective, adaptive ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130441
Grant
Use of Machine Learning to Adaptively Select Activity Types and Enhance Student Learning with an Intelligent Tutoring System
When preparing instructional materials and lesson plans, teachers and instructional designers choose from an almost overwhelming set of student activity types. A fundamental problem in education is determining what combinations and sequences of activity types are most effective in supporting student learning. This research team hypothesizes that significant gains in robust learning are possible by careful selecting among a diverse set of activity types. To address this issue, the researchers...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130215
Grant
The Impact of Theories of Intelligence on Self-Regulated Learning Strategies and Performance Improvement
Maximizing a child's opportunity to learn and succeed academically requires confronting at least two types of challenges. First, one must determine which strategies best foster learning. Second, one must determine how best to motivate students to take advantage of those strategies. This project will focus on whether a belief that one can improve one's intelligence leads students to use self-regulated learning strategies more often and to use those strategies in more effective ways. The resea...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130699
Grant
Exploring the Potential of Essay Testing for Improving Memory and Learning
Students report that re-reading and highlighting text are their main study strategies, but such strategies are not as effective as ones that involve retrieval practice. Even though essays maximize retrieval practice, minimize exposure to errors, and encourage organization and elaboration of to-be-learned material, research on retrieval practice has not focused on the potential benefits of essay testing. On the other hand, the writing-to-learn literature has emphasized how writing can be an e...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130535
Grant
Promoting Discriminative and Generative Learning: Transfer in Arithmetic Problem Solving
Educators often see that students have difficulty applying the lessons taught in school to new contexts, particularly in mathematics. For instance, students' knowledge of mathematics often seems like a collection of disconnected facts and procedures and is insufficient for mastering mathematic skills. To foster students' acquisition of robust and transferable knowledge, it is not clear how much of a focus should be placed on efficient retrieval of arithmetic facts or on rich understanding o...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130082
Grant
Connecting Mathematical Ideas through Animated Multimodal Instruction
Mathematical ideas are connected to and build upon other mathematical ideas. Understanding these connections is fundamental to having a deep conceptual understanding of mathematics. This project will build on previous IES-funded research (Does Visual Scaffolding Facilitate Students' Mathematics Learning? Evidence From Early Algebra) that focused on exploring how mathematics teachers make connections between ideas during middle school lessons in beginning algebra. The purpose of this current ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130016
Grant
My Science Tutor: Improving Science Learning through Tutorial Dialogs (MyST)
Many students in the United States are not proficient in science and do not demonstrate competence in challenging science content. Many schools and districts are moving toward inquiry-based science curricula that allow students the opportunity to use inquiry, experimentation, and analysis to actively construct ideas. However, even with inquiry-based science curricula, there are students who do not master science content. The current project will test the efficacy of a computer-based intellig...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130206
Grant
Combining Advantages of Collaborative and Individual Learning with an Intelligent Tutoring System for Fractions
Classroom instruction often involves both individual and collaborative modes of learning. Yet relatively little is known about the ways in which these learning modes complement each other, or how best to combine them. In this project, the research team will combine features of both individual and collaborative learning interventions that each on their own have evidence of efficacy into a revised version of a current web-based intelligent tutoring system. Previous research has found that inte...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120734
Grant
Enhancing Learning and Transfer of Science Principles via Category Construction
Poor academic performance has been linked to the tendency of students to focus on surface level characteristics of information in learning and when encountering new situations. To combat the often inaccurate and inaccessible concepts that result from this tendency, the researchers will develop an intervention based on an established psychological task known as category construction. The goal of category construction is to guide students in scientific thinking in much the same way that natura...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120554
Grant
Teaching Perceptual and Conceptual Processes in Graph Interpretation
Throughout K-12 education, science inquiry standards and curricula emphasize the importance of developing the skills needed to comprehend graphically presented data. Learning to extract relational information from graphs requires specialized processing and both conceptual and perceptual skills. At the core of this study is the process by which the visual system transforms pictorial representations into a set of relations among objects. This project will explore how students extract these rel...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120531
Grant
Spatial Ability as a Malleable Factor for Math Learning
Previous research shows that children and adults who perform better on spatial tasks also perform better on tests of mathematical ability. However, the relation between spatial and math ability is not yet well understood. This grant will conduct studies to clarify which aspects of spatial ability relate to different aspects of math performance, and gather evidence regarding whether training to improve spatial ability also improves math performance. Results will lay the groundwork for the dev...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150588
Grant
The Effects of Arts-Integration on Retention of Content and Student Engagement
There is theoretical and empirical justification for the idea that arts-integrated instruction may improve student learning. For example, a number of researchers argue that the use of activities that incorporate the visual and performing arts may separately improve retention of instructional content by leveraging a variety of cognitive practices related to long-term memory, including: rehearsal, elaboration, generation, enactment, oral production of information, effort after meaning, emotio...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120451
Grant
SimSelf: A Simulation Environment Designed to Model and Scaffold Learners' Self-Regulation Skills to Optimize Complex Science Learning
Cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, and affective self-regulated learning (SRL) processes have been identified as critical for solving complex science problems. Self-regulated learners monitor their own cognitive activities and deploy appropriate regulatory processes when a problem has been detected. Developing and using these key processes are critical to academic achievement and life-long learning. This project will work with middle school students who tend to rely on a few suboptimal ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120186
Grant
Interleaved Mathematics Practice
In most U.S. mathematics textbooks, the majority of practice problems following a lesson are devoted to that same lesson. This "heavy repetition" approach gives students many problems on the same topic in immediate succession. An alternative approach is to rearrange the practice problems so that a portion of each assignment includes “interleaved" problems from previous topics. Evidence suggests that interleaving different kinds of practice problems drawn from other lessons in the textbook,...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110517
Grant
Developing a Manual for Test-Enhanced Learning in the Classroom
This project builds on earlier work on Test-Enhanced Learning (TEL), a method for improving students' retention of knowledge in many different subject matters. When students are given a quiz that requires active retrieval of information, they remember that information better on a later test relative to information not previously tested (or even relative to information that is restudied but not initially tested). Active retrieval and feedback during the test are the critical processes that pr...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110550
Grant
Exploring the Malleability of Executive Control
The link between executive control and achievement has prompted researchers to investigate whether executive control (EC) is malleable. A handful of studies on preschool and early elementary school programs incorporating techniques designed to improve executive control in the curriculum demonstrate significant improvements in early literacy and numeracy, and some even indicate sustained achievement gains in subsequent years. However, research exploring the malleability of executive control i...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110932
Grant
Retrieval-Oriented Learning Strategies
Many students study using passive techniques, such as rereading their notes and textbooks, and choose not to use study techniques that require active retrieval of information, such as answering study questions at the end of chapter. However, retrieval practice is a powerful learning strategy and has been found to increase test performance with undergraduate learners. The objective of this research project is to identify the best practices for implementing retrieval-oriented learning strategi...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110903
Grant
Promoting Executive Function to Enhance Learning in Homeless/Highly Mobile Children
The goal of this project was to improve student learning by applying advances in developmental cognitive neuroscience to create an intervention targeting the executive function (EF) skills of impoverished preschoolers experiencing homelessness or high residential mobility. Prior research indicated that EF skills among these children often lagged behind the level expected for school readiness and also predicted difficulties with early school adjustment. EF refers to the neurocognitive process...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110528
Grant
An Examination of the Qualities of Interactive Science Learning Environments That Promote Optimal Motivation and Learning
Although interest and learning are believed to be intrinsically linked, a gap exists between research on learning and research on interest. Researchers specializing in cognition rarely consider in detail the processes related to interest, and researchers specializing in interest rarely consider in detail the processes related to learning. Variables that hold promise for promoting interest may be detrimental to learning whereas variables that hold promise for advancing learning may be detrime...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110810
Grant
Learning the Visual Structure of Algebra Through Dynamic Interactions with Notation
Algebra is a foundational domain for understanding advanced mathematics. However, many middle and high school students fail to understand basic algebraic concepts. Much of the difficulty stems from failures to achieve algebraic literacy: a robust, intuitive understanding of how to create, transform, and interpret statements expressed in standard algebraic notation. The goal of this project is to develop and explore the feasibility of an intervention that uses a set of verbal, physical, and c...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110060
Grant
An Alternative Statewide Assessment Strategy that Uses Test Results to Support Learning and Includes Measures of Problem Solving
Conventional statewide assessments, such as those used to meet No Child Left Behind mandates, can measure only a subset of competencies essential to the K-12 curriculum. These skills are primarily those that can be assessed through conventional paper-and-pencil tests. This limitation encourages schools and teachers to emphasize that subset, often at the expense of other skills that are harder to assess, including complex problem solving. An additional problem is that statewide assessments f...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110121
Grant
Developing and Evaluating Measures of Formative Assessment Practices
There is a substantial and growing body of evidence that using assessment results formatively to shape learning activities can have a significant impact on student learning. However, there are no instruments available to measure formative assessment practices in the classroom. In this project, the researchers will investigate formative assessment practices and accompanying instructional practices that occur in middle-level science classrooms. Specifically, this project will develop and carry...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100571
Grant
Improving a Natural-Language Tutoring System that Engages Students in Deep Reasoning Dialogues about Physics
Recent studies show that U.S. students lag behind students in other developed countries in math and science. Because one-on-one tutoring has been shown to be a highly effective form of instruction, many educators and education policy makers have looked to intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) as a means of providing cost-effective, individualized instruction to students that can improve their conceptual understanding of and problem-solving skills in math and science. However, even though many ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100163
Grant
A Theory-Driven Search for the Optimal Conditions of Instructional Guidance in Algebra Tutor
The purpose of this research is to better understand the cognitive processes of individual students as they solve algebra problems in the context of the Carnegie Learning Algebra Tutor software. The researchers will use computer simulations of individual students (synthetic student models) to find the optimal conditions of instructional guidance a student would need to receive to master an algebra problem. The team will explore whether techniques such as direct instruction or guided discover...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100109
Grant
National Research & Development Center on Instructional Technology: Center for Advanced Technology in Schools
The purpose of the National Center for Advanced Technology in Schools (NCATS) is to create materials that will lead to improved learning of critically important math concepts such as pre-algebra and algebra, commonly referred to as "gateway" concepts, because they are necessary for successfully performing higher-level math. The team will leverage advances in instructional technology (e.g., "serious games") in order to challenge and motivate 9th grade students, particularly underperforming on...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305C080015
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