Scientific Reasoning Research Institute

This 3-year NSF-funded project seeks principles of instruction for developing students’ visualizable models in science, including design principles for curriculum development, technological tools, and new pedagogical principles.

TLT is a five-year project studying how secondary science teachers learn to use an electronic “classroom response system” (CRS) to implement continuous real-time formative assessment.

Model Chance is a three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation to develop simulation software and classroom activities to help middle school students learn about probability. The simulation tool will be integrated into our data-analysis software, TinkerPlots.

This project aims to change the way students – and teachers – think about math and science and is part of a larger endeavor by Peabody College to “reform the schooling of mathematics and science,” says co-investigator and Professor of Science Education Rich Lehrer. This innovative project focuses on learning rather than performance as the standard by which educational methods are judged.

This NSF project is completing a model-based curriculum on Energy and the Human Body at the middle school level and investigating ways of teaching complex visual models in science.

Traditional problem-based exams are not reliable tools for diagnosing students’ knowledge and guiding pedagogical intervention; new tools grounded in cognitive science and educational research are nee

This project complements and provides input to our visual modeling strategies in science teaching project by attempting to understand model construction and learning processes in expert scientists, with an emphasis on the roles of analogy, imagery, and thought experiments.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Tinkerzeum Planning Project was a one-year collaborative project exploring the feasibility of involving museum visitors in data analysis. These studies, which took place at the Museum of Science in Boston and at the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield MA, have helped us understand the kinds of data and exhibits that lead to compelling museum investigations and the types of additional supports visitors require to begin exploring data.

At a large state university such as UMass, resources are necessarily limited, and students in a course with 200 or more classmates often think they cannot possibly get the assistance they need to answ

Standard multiple-choice assessments, for which there are 4 incorrect and exactly one correct choice, are efficient to implement but imprecise and difficult to interpret.

RRA was a research project on the combined impact of qualitative analysis and reasoning activities and formative assessment on the attitudes, conceptual understanding, skills, and problem-solving prof

This project addresses the growing importance of data literacy as a fundamental skill for living in a democratic society and the disheartening fact that few people have a solid understanding of data. It addresses this need by studying how advanced visualization tools can affect teachers’ and students’ develop understanding of several crucial statistical concepts.

TinkerPlots was a research and development project aimed at creating a new type of data analysis software tool for instructional use in data analysis and statistics in middle schools.

There has been considerable interest in assessment, especially in view of the goals set forth in reform documents, such as the NRC’s National Science Education Standards.

Effective pedagogy — identifying students’ initial understanding and misconceptions, engaging their minds in the activity of learning, continually monitoring their individual progress, and adjusting