Projects
David Hammer, University of Maryland at College Park

Current projects are: 

1) Learning Progressions in Scientific Inquiry (NSF DRL 0732233, 1/08-6/12)

Fred Goldberg at the Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education at San Diego State is the principal investigator of this project, which is to study teachers' and students' learning progressions in scientific inquiry.  We're working with a team of teachers, grades 3-6, in summer workshops and throughout the year. 

2) Improving students' mathematical sense-making in engineering:  Research and development (NSF EEC 0835880)

Andy Elby is the principal investigator of this project, which is to study how engineering students' mathematical sense-making:  How do they understand and work with mathematical expressions and calculations?  We'd like it to be a meaningful part of their learning, but it isn't always.  
 
3) What influences teachers' modifications of curriculum?  (NSF ESI 0455711, 6/05 - 5/08; extended with supplement to 5/10)

We're in the end stages of this one, with a supplement to support Dan Levin in developing a set of case studies for use in secondary professional development, along the lines of our previous work for K-8.

4) Developing Conceptual and Teaching Expertise in Physics Graduate Students: An Integrated Approach (NSF REC 0529482, 1/06 - 7/08)

Rachel Scherr is the principal investigator of this project, which is to (1) create and teach a professional development seminar designed to help graduate students  develop sophisticated teaching practices and “learning theories” they apply both to their  teaching and to their own learning; and (2) study the ways in which taking the seminar and teaching in a reformed introductory  physics course bring about changes in TAs’ approaches to teaching, their conceptual  expertise, and their epistemologies – their views about the nature of knowledge and learning. 


Previous projects: 

Toward a New Conceptualization of What Constitutes Progress in Learning Physics, K-16:  Resources, Framing, and Networks  (NSF REC 0440113, 4/05 - 3/08)

The core idea was that students of all ages have a rich variety of cognitive resources for reasoning about the physical world, resources they use in different ways depending on the circumstances.  We're interested to understand how students extend and refine these resources and how they use them. 

 Helping students learn how to learn: Open-source physics worksheets integrated with TA development resources (NSF DUE 0341447, 6/04 - 5/06, extended to 6/08)

Andy Elby was the principal investigator of this project, which is to develop curriculum materials for use in introductory physics instruction that (1) allow for local customization and (2) embed professional development for instructors.  Customization is possible because the materials are in electronic format.  The professional development is in the form of explanations about the design of the worksheets and annotated video snippets of students using them. 

Case studies of elementary student inquiry in physical science (NSF ESI 9986846)
book cover We worked for three years with a team of K-8 teachers to collect video snippets of student inquiry from their classes and develop them into case studies as materials for professional development. 

The book with DVD was published last year by Heinemann.  The book presents a view of scientific inquiry and six case studies of student inquiry, at grades 1-8, written by their teachers.  Five of these cases come with video of the class discussion(s), which we provide on the DVD.  Each case study includes detailed notes to guide conversation about the video and the case study in workshops or seminars.
Learning how to learn science:  Physics for bioscience majors.  (NSF REC 0087519)

Joe Redish was the principal investigator of this project.  Our focus was on students' expectations and epistemologies:  What do they think learning in physics entails?  What do they think constitutes understanding?   We'd seen that in small classes, we could help students take more productive approaches toward knowledge and learning; we were interested to find out what we could accomplish in large-lecture contexts.  We found that by coordinating all aspects of the course -- lectures, labs, homework and tutorials (adapting materials developed at the University of Washington, Seattle) -- we could make a substantial difference.