Improving Science for Students

The 21st Century Center for Research and Development in Cognition and Science Instruction is a five-year national grant funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to further the goal of fostering science literacy in young people so they are able to compete in a 21st Century global economy. The Center's work focuses on applying the lens of cognitive science to existing middle school science curricula in an effort to improve student learning of science.

The Center's team of cognitive scientists is applying theoretical principles to systematically modify two popular middle school science programs and to prepare related teacher professional development materials. These methods for improving student learning will be evaluated through rigorously designed scientific studies.

Forms for principals and teachers

 

Welcome

 

Research

The Center will develop and test the systematic and systemic application of theoretically driven cognitive science principles to middle school science curricula currently in use as a reform strategy that has the potential to: 1) make large improvements in student learning in the near run, and 2) be a more general demonstration of how cognitive science might be used to improve science curricula at all levels. Specifically, 21CR&D will significantly improve two widely deployed science curricula (FOSS and Holt) representing the two genres of middle school curricula that are typically used in textbook and hands-on inquiry. Within each curriculum, we select three curricular units to modify. These selected units represent the span of physical, earth, and life sciences and are well aligned to science standards in the states included in the study. Three units are selected to establish the generality of our approach across science content.

The modifications will be based upon recent research around three generative cognitive science principles: analogical reasoning, diagrammatic reasoning, and the role of background knowledge in learning.

Our focal research questions are: 1) whether the three selected cognitive science principles are broadly useful across science curricular content and science curriculum type; and 2) whether systematic and systemic curriculum modification using a focal set of cognitive science principles can produce significant and scalable improvements in student learning. The cognitive science principles are highly general in theory; we test whether they are general in practice. In addition, cognitive science work in science education has not yet been followed to the level of high stakes assessments in large-scale interventions.