Julie Sarama

Integrated, Intelligent, and Interactive Technologies Building Young Children's Math Along Learning Trajectories

Children's ability to answer assessment questions correctly paints an incomplete portrait of what they know and can do, yet it remains a common basis for program evaluation. Researchers should study the development of competences by observing the ways children approach and make sense of problems, and how they learn to develop, apply, and generalize problem-solving strategies over time, from one type of problem to the next. This project has two goals. First, the research team will determine h...

This project will evaluate the efficacy of a new comprehensive interdisciplinary curriculum, Connect4Learning (C4L). Although the importance of all young children gaining competence in four core curricular domains-social-emotional, language and literacy, mathematics, and science-is well established, research results on the efficacy of comprehensive curricula is dismal, with no measurable effects in comparative studies and near zero effect sizes for the most commonly-used preschool curricula....

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of using a learning trajectories approach to mathematics instruction to foster the development of early mathematics skills which are predictive of later school achievement. A learning trajectories approach includes a goal for teaching a mathematics concept, a developmental progression of levels of thinking about the concept, and instructional activities and content for each developmental level. Although research has shown that educational...

Some research has indicated that early childhood interventions have lasting effects, while other research suggests that the effects of early childhood interventions diminish over time. This mixed evidence base warrants further research on the sustainability of early childhood interventions and the need to identify elements of continued support necessary for preserving initial gains from early childhood interventions. To that end, the researchers will assess the long-term effectiveness of the...

In this training program, the trainers recruited and mentored six postdoctoral fellows, five of whom completed the full training, in ongoing projects regarding applied scientific research in education. The trainers provided fellows with complementary training in using state-of-the-art methodologies.