Research on Continuous Improvement: Exploring the Complexities of Managing Educational Change

Publications

As a result of the frustration with the dominant “What Works” paradigm of large-scale research-based improvement, practitioners, researchers, foundations, and policymakers are increasingly embracing a set of ideas and practices that can be collectively labeled continuous improvement (CI) methods. This chapter provides a comparative review of these methods, paying particular attention to CI methods’ intellectual influences, theories of action, and affordances and challenges in practice. We first map out and explore the shared intellectual forebears that CI methods draw on. We then discuss three

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Research on Continuous Improvement: Exploring the Complexities of Managing Educational Change

Publications

As a result of the frustration with the dominant “What Works” paradigm of large-scale research-based improvement, practitioners, researchers, foundations, and policymakers are increasingly embracing a set of ideas and practices that can be collectively labeled continuous improvement (CI) methods. This chapter provides a comparative review of these methods, paying particular attention to CI methods’ intellectual influences, theories of action, and affordances and challenges in practice. We first map out and explore the shared intellectual forebears that CI methods draw on. We then discuss three

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Assessing Research-Practice Partnerships: Five Dimensions of Effectiveness

Publications

While research-practice partnerships have emerged as a promising means of creating and applying relevant research evidence in settings where young people grow and learn, we’ve lacked definition in terms of what constitutes an effective partnership and how RPPs, funders, and other stakeholders might gauge and demonstrate such effectiveness. Offering a clear picture of the common goals that cut across diverse types of partnerships, Assessing Research-Practice Partnerships: Five Dimensions of Effectiveness outlines the elements that members of existing RPPs have reported are essential to their

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The landscape of Block-based programming: Characteristics of block-based environments and how they support the transition to text-based programming

Publications

Block-based programming (BBP) environments have become increasingly commonplace computer science education. Despite a rapidly expanding ecosystem of BBP environments, text-based languages remain the dominant programming paradigm, motivating the transition from BBP to text-based programming (TBP). Support students in transitioning from BBP to TBP is an important and open design question. This work identifies 101 unique BBP environments, analyzes the 46 of them and identifies different design approaches used to support the transition to TBP. The contribution of this work is to provide a snapshot

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To block or not to block, that is the question: students' perceptions of blocks-based programming

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Blocks-based programming tools are becoming increasingly common in high-school introductory computer science classes. Such contexts are quite different than the younger audience and informal settings where these tools are more often used. This paper reports findings from a study looking at how high school students view blocks-based programming tools, what they identify as contributing to the perceived ease-of-use of such tools, and what they see as the most salient differences between blocks-based and text-based programming. Students report that numerous factors contribute to making blocks

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Latent value in humiliation: A design thinking tool to enhance empathy in creative ideation

Publications

Design thinking emphasizes that in addition to being creative, design solutions should be empathetic. Yet, research suggests there may be a tension between these goals, where focusing on empathy comes at a cost to creativity, sometimes by inducing fixation. We investigated this phenomenon through a quasi-experimental design with novice designers, contrasting two structured ideation techniques in which participants (N = 47) generated bad ideas prior to proposing beneficial ideas. Specifically, they used the wrong theory protocol (WTP) to generate harmful and humiliating ideas, and a variant in

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Accessible Playground Design: A Community-Connected Elementary Engineering Unit Focused on Designing Accessible Playground Equipment

Publications

In the ConnecTions in the Making project, researchers and district partners work to develop and study community-connected, integrated science and engineering curriculum units that support diverse elementary students’ science and engineering ideas, practices, and attitudes. In the community-connected units, students in the third, fourth, and fifth grades use human-centered design strategies to prototype and share functional solutions to a design challenge rooted in the students’ local community while scientifically exploring the phenomena and mechanisms related to the challenge.One of the units

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Exploring Generative Models with Middle School Students

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Exploring Generative Models with Middle School Students

Applications of generative models such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have made their way to social media platforms that children frequently interact with. While GANs are associated with ethical implications pertaining to children, such as the generation of Deepfakes, there are negligible eforts to educate middle school children about generative AI. In this work, we present a generative models learning trajectory (LT), educational materials, and interactive activities for young learners with a focus on GANs, creation and application of machine-generated media, and its ethical

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Artificial Intelligence and Learning: NSF ITEST Projects At-A-Glance

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Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is permeating the world around us, changing the ways we live, work, and learn. The National Science Foundation (NSF) lists AI as one of its organization-wide priorities, and is encouraging programs like ITEST to pursue what it means to prepare youth for careers in AI. In response to this, the STELAR convened an AI working group comprised of more than 20 projects funded through a variety of NSF programs. This paper is designed to highlight the areas being explored by these projects, to provide an overview of what has been funded within the ITEST portfolio to date

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A multiple case study of an interorganizational collaboration: Exploring the first year of an industry partnership focused on middle school engineering education

Publications

Calls to improve learning in science, technology, engineering,and mathematics (STEM), and particularly engineering, present significantchallenges for school systems. Partnerships among engineering industry, uni-versities, and school systems to support learning appear promising, but currentwork is limited in its conclusions because it lacks a strong connection to theo-retical work in interorganizational collaboration.

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