Senior Research Scientist 43 Foundry Ave. Waltham, MA 02453 617-618-2417   ..read more

Washburn Elementary School in Auburn, Maine, site of an Interactive STEM research–practice partnership, has been awarded just over $1.63-million in School Improvement Grant funding by the Maine Department of Education. The funds will be used to raise student proficiency in math by 30 percent and reading by 35 percent over the next five years, according to a Maine DOE media release. The school is one of four—and soon to be six—schools that are a focus of the National Science Foundation–funded Research + Practice Collaboratory initiative at several sites across the country. Washburn Element ..read more

Contributed by June Mark, EDC “If we want all students to have high-quality computer science (CS) learning experiences, we need to make sure that all educators charged with teaching CS receive the support and resources they need to succeed.” On October 28 and 29, the Research + Practice (R+P) Collaboratory is contributing to an R+P session during the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Summit, “Computer Science (CS) For All: State-Level Research and Action.” R+P leaders Bronwyn Bevan (University of Washington), Pam Buffington (EDC), Bill Penuel (University of Colorado-Boulder), and ..read more

On November 4–5, the Interactive STEM team at EDC convened an Inquiry Group, bringing together participants with varied professional backgrounds—teachers, teacher leaders, representatives from professional organizations, university faculty, and researchers—to share knowledge, deepen understanding, and begin to develop products that will support pre-service and in-service teachers’ capacity to use interactive mobile technologies to improve mathematics learning among young students. Over two days in southern Maine, the group looked at the themes emerging from the project’s work in Auburn, Maine ..read more

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Communications Lead Mailing Address: Education Development Center, Inc. 43 Foundry Avenue Waltham, MA 02453-8313 Shanna Russ is Communications Lead for Interactive STEM.   ..read more

The Interactive STEM team at EDC has been awarded a grant from the Maine Department of Education for the Mathematics and Science Partnerships (MSP) program to continue, sustain, and expand its work begun in Auburn, Maine to improve student learning of mathematics in the early grades across the state. Project lead Dr. Pam Buffington For the past approximately three years, STEM education experts and researchers from EDC, the University of Southern Maine (USM), and the University of Maine at Farmington (UMF) have collaborated with school teachers and administrators from the Auburn School Departme ..read more

Interactive STEM team members Josephine Louie, Pam Buffington, and Jennifer Stiles were recently published in Connected Science Learning, an online journal from the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) focused on STEM experiences that connect in- and out-of-school settings. Read “A Screencasting Strategy to Support STEM Learning in the Early Grades” to learn more about how the research-practice partnership has used a collaborative approach to address low mathematics achievement in early elementary students in a Maine school distr ..read more

Students experience productive struggle when they persist in trying to make sense of a difficult problem and develop new strategies for solving it. This perseverance is essential for developing mathematical reasoning. For struggle to be productive, students must have a classroom environment where they feel safe and supported in experimenting with different problem-solving strategies. Creating such an environment requires shifting the mathematical mindset of both students and teachers. For Auburn, Maine, math coach Lisa Coburn, one of the biggest challenges for engaging in productive struggle i ..read more

Contributed by Patricia Ann Maislen, Auburn School Department  “Reflecting with colleagues at monthly meetings generates insights to help transform my students into confident mathematical risk-takers and problem-solvers.” This is my second year working with the Interactive STEM team at EDC as a member of the Research + Collaboratory. As a second-grade teacher, the collaboration has been one of the best professional development experiences I have had. We have met monthly and focused on developing mathematical thinking with effective questions, how to get students to share their thinking wi ..read more