Category: FEATURED RESEARCH

SMU Researcher Awarded $14 Million Grant to Improve Math Learning Loss Nationwide, Setting SMU Record for Highest Single Award Total

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Leanne Ketterlin-Geller’s grant represents the highest single total dollar amount in SMU’s history, aiming to help students prepare for their future by learning fractions

SMU professor Leanne Ketterlin-GellerSMU professor Leanne Ketterlin-Geller was awarded a $14 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to nationally scale a math intervention designed to help students improve their fraction skills – the highest single total dollar amount in SMU’s history. The five-year project will provide support to 4th and 5th graders in rural settings and out-of-school programs across the United States.

“A limited understanding of fractions is a major problem in schools because fractions are the gatekeeper for future success in algebra,” said Ketterlin-Geller, professor of education policy and leadership in SMU’s Simmons School of Education and Human Development and the Texas Instruments Endowed Chair in Education. An internationally recognized math and special education researcher, Ketterlin-Geller also leads Simmons’ Research in Mathematics Education program.

“Recent data suggests that compared to reading, more students struggle with math, especially for underserved populations,” she said.

As principal investigator of SCALE UP, Ketterlin-Geller’s largest grant to date, the SMU researcher will work with partners at six universities to examine how a fraction intervention program can be used in rural schools and in community-based afterschool settings. This program, called Fraction Face-Off!, was developed by researchers at Vanderbilt University. Students work in small groups with their educator or tutor to learn about fractions during 36 sessions.

Cassandra working with students on fractions“Understanding proportions, ratios, algebra and higher levels of math begins with an understanding of fractions,” Ketterlin-Geller said. “Just memorizing procedures is not enough, students need to understand the ‘why’ of fractions.”

Before beginning the new SCALE UP project, Ketterlin-Geller and partner researchers worked with Fraction Face-Off! In diverse settings through the SCALE project. They found students who completed the program showed measurable improvement in their understanding of fractions. The new project expands the intervention to include more students and educators in additional settings.

“Educator training and coaching is a key part of the program’s effectiveness,” Ketterlin-Geller said. Rural school educators and community-based providers often have limited access to effective interventions and professional training. The program provides them with online training and ongoing coaching, she said.

Leanne Ketterlin Geller instructing teachersSMU will lead the SCALE UP project with implementation partners including the University of Missouri and The University of Texas at Austin. Collaboration partners include the University of Virginia, the University of Hawaii, Georgia State University and the University of California, Riverside. WestEd is the independent evaluator.

Simmons Dean Stephanie Knight says the research is much needed. “This history-making grant to develop more effective ways of supporting fraction learning is essential to the ever-growing number of students who struggle with math. I am appreciative that Dr. Ketterlin-Geller’s work is being rewarded and proud that her research at SMU Simmons has the potential to make a significant impact in improving the math trajectories for students across the country.”

The contents of this announcement were developed under grant S411A240014 from the U.S. Department of Education, Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Program as part of a financial assistance award of $13,990,544 funded by EIR (90% of total project costs) and 10% funded by non-governmental sources. The Department of Education does not mandate or prescribe practices, models, or other activities described or discussed in this document. The contents of this announcement may contain examples of, adaptations of, and links to resources created and maintained by another public or private organization. The Department of Education does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of this outside information. The content of this announcement does not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education. This publication is not intended to represent the views or policy of, or be an endorsement of any views expressed or materials provided by, any Federal agency.

Seeing Student Homelessness Through Their Eyes: New Graphic Short Story is Resource for K-12 Educators

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A person holding a book titled Uprooted: Voices of Student Homelessness by Ashley Robin Franklin. The book cover features an illustration of an empty classroom with desks, a blackboard, and a backpack on the floor.Imagine yourself in a shelter for homeless women and children – the noise, the communal meals, the anxiety that starts every day when the school bus driver assumes you are going to be trouble. That’s the opening for a new comic, Uprooted: Voices of Student Homelessness, that tells the stories of four students experiencing homelessness from their points of view.

Demonstrating the fear, shame and lack of stability that many students and their families experience, the book is the brainchild of SMU education researchers Alexandra Pavlakis and Meredith Richards, and former SMU postdoctoral fellow, Kessa Roberts, now assistant professor at Utah State University. The researchers have spent a combined 30 years studying how homelessness affects students and the best ways to help them succeed in school.

Their comic aims to provide a compelling snapshot of the diverse realities that students experiencing homelessness face, countering the myths that surround them and deepening educators’ policy awareness and sensitivity to the issue.

“We are passionate about research,” says Pavlakis, associate professor of education policy and leadership in SMU’s Simmons School of Education and Human Development. “But we’re equally passionate about helping students. Charts and graphs don’t hook people the way narratives do.”

“We wanted to find a way to share our data with the educators and nonprofit workers who interact the most with students experiencing homelessness.”

Professors Meredith Richards (left) and Alexandra Pavlakis (right) reading Uprooted: Voices of Student HomelessnessThe book was inspired by the team’s research. For example, according to a research brief Pavlakis, Richards, and Roberts co-authored, 1.2 million schoolchildren were homeless in the 2020-21 school year, the most recent statistics available. In Texas, 97,200 students were homeless, 20,000 of them in Dallas. Both statistics are underestimates, Richards says. Students and families rarely self-identify as homeless to school officials due to the stigma attached to the term.

Research also shows that students experiencing homelessness tend to have lower attendance, poorer achievement, higher rates of drop-out, and lower rates of graduation, Richards says.

The U.S. Congress passed the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act in 1987, which defines students experiencing homelessness as those who “lack a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence.” The majority, 77 percent, share housing or “double up” with someone else due to economic hardship or loss of housing, according to EdResearch for Action.

McKinney-Vento is designed to help students succeed in school by guaranteeing their rights, Pavlakis says. Research shows that students’ education outcomes improve when schools follow policy guidelines:

  • Students must be enrolled immediately in school, even if they are missing documents or have missed deadlines.
  • Students may stay in their school of origin, even if their housing changes.
  • When requested, districts must provide transportation to and from school.
  • Schools must remove barriers to full participation in school activities such as fees, required uniforms and fines.

“We know that interactions with educators often shape a student’s day,” Pavlakis says. “Schools track academic achievement, but that’s not the only way school personnel have an impact on students’ lives.”

Close-up of a page out of from Uprooted: Voices of Student Homelessness. The comic book page is brightly colored and detailed, capturing various scenes and emotions. Panel text includes reflections on personal challenges and interactions with other characters.Here’s how researchers say schools can help students experiencing homelessness:

  • Prioritize identifying students experiencing homelessness to help them access resources.
  • Collaborate and share data with community providers to ease access to support.
  • Build relationships with trusted adults in students’ lives.
  • Avoid stigmatizing students.

Implementation of McKinney-Vento is patchy across the country, researchers say. And families often don’t know their schoolchildren have rights.

“We hope Uprooted resonates with readers in a way that numbers don’t,” Richards says. “We’d like to see kids have access to their rights, along with more empathy and compassion.”

Uprooted is available at no cost here. The book was written and illustrated by Ashley Robin Franklin and edited and designed by Kacy McKinney. The comic was funded in part by the Spencer Foundation and American Institutes for Research.

Simmons-led team awarded $2.48M research grant from National Science Foundation focused on equity in undergraduate STEM

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Quentin Sedlacek, Assistant Professor, Department of Teaching & LearningDr.Quentin Sedlacek, assistant professor of STEM education in the Department of Teaching and Learning, received a $2.48M collaborative research grant from the National Science Foundation’s Racial Equity in STEM and Improving Undergraduate STEM Education programs.

The five-year grant, Amplifying Diverse Voices in STEM Education (ADVISE), will fund an SMU-led collaboration among nine colleges and universities to study the role that invited guest lecturers can play in promoting diversity, inclusivity, and student success in undergraduate STEM education.

Learn more about the project here. Faculty in natural sciences, mathematical sciences, or engineering interested in participating in the project should contact Dr. Sedlacek.

Walkington Awarded NSF ITEST Grant to Study Middle School Math Large Language Models

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A grant totaling nearly $1.3 million has been awarded to  Candace Walkington, Ph.D., the Annette and Harold Simmons Centennial Chair and Professor Gerald J. Ford Research Fellow.

Professor Walkington learned that she received the $1,296,683 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) on July 11. Walkington, Principal Investigator for the project, says the research will involve working with teachers and using large language models to write math problems that are personalized to the interest areas of middle school students.

According to Walkington, the research will advance theories of interest development where there is a lack of intervention studies targeting  motivation and guidance on how to support students at different interest development phases. “Interest in math has been shown to decline over adolescence and this research will explore how to make math meaningful to middle school students. This grant allows us to conduct research foundational to the future of personalized learning, capitalizing on very recent advances in AI that offer novel opportunities to bring these approaches to scale.” Walkington says the project will also advance theories of teacher problem-posing, examining teacher characteristics, knowledge, and attitudes, and the problems teachers encounter when teaming with AI.

Walkington says she is thrilled to begin working with her distinguished Co-PIs including Dr. Tiffini Pruitt-Britton, a Ph.D. graduate of SMU, currently at American Institutes for Research (AIR) as well as other national leaders in Generative AI and Large Language Models Ryan Baker, Andrew Lan, and Neil Heffernan.

The research has a start date of August 1, 2024, when Walkington and her team will begin recruiting and working with 7th grade teachers using ASSISTments. The team will conduct studies looking at the effect of deep authentic forms of personalization using LLMs versus other alternatives. They will test generating visual illustrations to accompany math problems using LLMs. And they will explore approaches teachers can use for prompt engineering to create the best personalized math problems. They will examine teacher and student outcomes in each of these studies.

Simmons has a Strong Presence at 2024 ISLS Conference

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International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) 2024 Participants (from left to right): Anthony Petrosino, Kelsey Schenck, Candace Walkington, Prajakt Pande, LeaAnne Daughrity, Maximilian Sherard, Tony Cuevas, Marc Sanger, Saki Milton, Julianna Washington. ISLS 2024, Buffalo, New YorkA group made up of Simmons faculty, post doctoral and PhD students will present at the 2024 International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) Conference in Buffalo, New York, June 10-14. The Simmons academics are presenting topics such as: Students’ Representational and Relational Caring in STEM; Exploring STEM Identity and Belonging in Minoritized Girls at a Summer Camp; and Pedagogical Issues in Virtual Reality Mathematics Education.With these presentations and those of other university researchers from around the country, the conference promises to offer discussion of meaningful issues and innovative approaches in the world of learning sciences today.

ISLS works to further scientific, humanistic, and critical theoretical understanding of learning and to engage in the design and implementation of learning innovations and the improvement of instructional methodologies. Learning Sciences (LS) research traditionally focuses on the cognitive-psychological, social-psychological, cultural-psychological, and critical theoretical foundations of human learning as well as the practical design of learning environments. Major contributing fields include cognitive science, computer science, educational psychology, anthropology, and applied linguistics. Over the past decade, LS researchers have expanded their focus to include the design of curricula, informal learning environments, instructional methods, and policy innovations.

A core feature of research in the learning sciences is attention to the detailed processes of learning and teaching for theory development. Accordingly, the Society calls for papers that address questions about learning processes, mechanisms, and outcomes. Papers may develop data-driven theories that elucidate processes of learning and teaching within various contexts and the ways in which technologies, instructional practices, and learning environments can be designed to support learning in different contexts.

This year’s ISLS Conference leads up to the new Learning Sciences Master’s at Simmons that launches in the 2024 Fall semester.  The full ISLS Conference schedule of presentations by Simmons educators can be found here.

 

Enigma Mobile Literacy Game Research

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Focused on improving literacy skills, the SMU Enigma literacy game is a mobile application that helps learners improve their reading skills  when played an average of 60 minutes per week over eight weeks. The customized version of the game was developed by SMU researcher, Dr. Anthony Cuevas, with player options for middle and elementary school students.

It was piloted at the Dr. Elba and Domingo Garcia West Dallas STEM School and was initially piloted with middle school students in an afterschool program during Fall 2023.  The Enigma research resulted in positive feedback from students and increases in some literacy measures.

At the request of the school, the Enigma project was extended to Spring 2024 to pilot the game with elementary students in first and second grade. The request came from some of the elementary teachers involved in the middle school pilot who believed the game could help elementary students build their foundational literacy skills. Students play Enigma for 30-45 minutes twice per week after school as part of a structured afterschool program. They play the game as an adventurer traveling around the world experiencing new cultures and history while uncovering the secrets of the lost city of Atlantis.

Players begin by discovering a tablet in their attic with clues of a great mystery and travel to the country of Egypt. They move through five levels of gameplay by completing literacy games focusing on different foundational reading skills including: letter-sound fluency; word identification fluency; and phonological decoding fluency using onset-rime. To support Spanish-speaking multilingual learners, a read-aloud dictionary is available. The skills and content in each level are reinforced through games that mimic real world tasks, such as reading documents, labels, street signs, or lists of objects. Students find artifacts and relics to decode the ancient language of Atlantis into English.

According to Cuevas, “The game maintains interest over time because it includes an interactive and engaging story that is fun and includes activities that are grounded in learning science and evidence-based literacy instruction. The students are able to improve their reading skills which provides a sense of accomplishment.”

Cuevas’ research is supported by the U.S. Department of Education. SMU continues to develop the Enigma game with financial support from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation and Barbara Bush Foundation. Dr. Diane Gifford and Dr. Corey Clark are Co-Investigators on the research project.

Middle School Math Gets a Boost from Virtual Reality  

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Middle school math students struggling to catch up with their peers benefited significantly from tutoring via virtual reality according to new research by SMU math education pioneer Candace Walkington. The first researcher to develop and analyze VR tutoring, Walkington found the strategy offered students the benefits of face-to-face tutoring in addition to virtual immersion into the world of math.

Walkington, professor of teaching and learning at SMU’s Simmons School of Education and Human Development, presented her research recently at the American Educational Research Association meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

To conduct the study, Walkington and her team recruited 38 seventh- and eighth-graders from after-school programs at two Dallas urban schools. Ten miles away on the SMU campus, SMU undergraduate student tutors met their students remotely as avatars in a virtual math classroom where student avatars could stretch, condense, and even crawl inside the prisms, pyramids and other geometric shapes they were studying.

“VR is this very immersive environment where things happen that can’t happen in the real world,” Walkington says. “You can have a cube floating in the air in front of you and there’s no gravity to make it fall to the ground.”

Students are drawn to the playful aspects of VR tutoring, Walkington says, but research shows they also benefit from embodied learning, or the movement the technology enables that illustrates mathematical concepts, she says.

“When we move we do mathematics,” she says. “Students intuitively understand math in a spatial and embodied way. They will spontaneously use gestures and movements to explore concepts.”

It’s important to note that the study also exposed some limitations to VR tutoring. Despite upgrades to school Internet connections, students and remote tutors regularly experienced connection problems while working in the virtual world.  It also took time for students to learn to use the VR headset and goggles, creating delays.

According to a recent study conducted by Harvard and Stanford, students in the U.S. have made up about a third of COVID math learning loss, but the $122 million federal aid education package to support tutoring and summer school for those with COVID learning loss expires in September 2024.

“As technology continues to advance, we believe VR tutoring will become commonplace, given its strengths of embodied learning, dynamic interaction and collaboration,” she says.

Walkington’s research was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Co-authors of her paper include Max Sherard, Prajakt Pande, LeaAnne Daughrity and Anthony Cuevas.

 

 

 

Lipsmeyer named Simmons’ Liaison to Texoma Semiconductor Tech Hub

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Dean Stephanie Knight has named Dr. Lin Lipsmeyer, Department Chair of SMU Simmons Teaching and Learning Department, as Simmons’ Liaison in the Texoma Semiconductor Tech Hub (TSTH) announced by President Joe Biden in October.  SMU was the only site in Texas selected and will serve as the lead agency in the economic development initiative to strengthen, build and drive innovation in the existing semiconductor supply chain in North Texas and Oklahoma.

Dr. Lipsmeyer says she has always been interested in interdisciplinary and collaborative work built on partnerships and is honored and excited about her appointment and the work ahead. “The TSTH provides such partnership opportunities to strengthen future learning and workforce. Serving as the liaison between Simmons and the TSTH consortium, I hope to use my research, interest, and experience to help Simmons, SMU, and the Tech Hub members to build innovative workforce pathways and open up learning and workforce opportunities for all.”

The consortium has started planning its Phase 2 proposals and will have its first workshop for the TSTH members on December 13 to build the model to promote enhanced collaboration, expand the region’s technical workforce and catalyze the commercialization of technological advancements through the development of three main areas.

Simmons School of Education and Human Development hopes to be involved in the overall vision and involved especially in the area of Workforce Development to promote opportunities at multiple skill levels for students and adult learners to enter the workforce, acquire new knowledge and obtain advanced degrees and certifications while minimizing the time it takes to do so. Outreach education will begin at the K-12 level while adult learners can also find a pathway to advance their careers in the semiconductor industry.

Dr. Tony Cuevas- Simmons Assistant Dean for Technology and Innovation, Dr. Richard Duschl -Caruth Institute and T&L affiliate faculty, and Dr. Corey Brady- Director of the Technology Enhanced Immersive Learning (TEIL) Cluster will also represent Simmons at the December 13 Tech Hub meeting.  Dean Knight says, “I am confident these outstanding educators led by Dr. Lin Lipsmeyer will contribute their extensive expertise in research, technology, and teaching to  benefit the important work of the Tech Hub. This is an incredible opportunity for SMU and Simmons as part of the consortium to have a major impact on our country and the world.” For details of the Texoma Semiconductor Tech Hub visit https://www.smu.edu/News/Research/SMU-to-lead-Texoma-Tech-Hub-to-unify-semiconductor-supply-chain

Article co-authored by Simmons Researcher honored with Editor’s Choice in The Journal of Educational Psychology

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Dr. Stephanie Al Otaiba, the Patsy and Ray Caldwell Centennial Chair in Simmons Teaching and Learning, has co-authored an article published in The Journal of Educational Psychology that was selected as the Editor’s Choice. According to the Journal, the article titled: The relations of kindergarten early literacy skill trajectories on common progress monitoring measures to subsequent word reading skills for students at risk for reading difficulties, was chosen for this honor  for “reflecting science that is incredibly important, impactful, and deserves additional visibility for the whole field.”

The study, published in the Journal of Educational Psychology (Clemens et al., 2023), addressed the need for reliable and efficient assessment data to inform early and preventative literacy interventions for students at risk of developing reading disabilities. Researchers asked two primary questions: Does growth on certain brief curriculum-based measures predict word reading skills at the end of kindergarten and first grade and which measures are better at predicting which students would have weak word reading skill profiles at the end of first grade?

According to Al Otaiba, “We learned that in fall of kindergarten it was important to monitor letter sound fluency (LSF), or the number of sounds that students name correctly in a minute. During this instructional period, LSF growth was best able to predict students who later struggled to read. However, by spring of kindergarten, as instruction starts to focus on reading words and texts, it was important to monitor word reading fluency (WRF), or the number of words read correctly.”  WRF includes short words (2-6 letters); some that are decodable and some that are irregular. Al Otaiba says she and her collaborators hope educators will take away from the study the importance of identifying problems earlier. “Instead of waiting to identify students formally as having dyslexia or a reading disability, typically at grade 3, kindergarten is an important time when schools and teachers can use reliable data from brief curriculum-based measures (LSF and WRF) across the year to adjust instruction and provide more intensive support and resources to prevent word reading difficulties.”  She says schools can also use this growth data to confirm their literacy programs are helping most students develop reading skills. By contrast, data for those few students with limited growth despite good instruction (i.e., those who have not responded as well) could be part of a comprehensive evaluation to determine whether students need special education. In other words, the data can be used to ensure children don’t have to wait to fail before supporting their instructional needs.

The article stems from federally funded research in which Al Otaiba served as Co-Principal Investigator with Dr. Nathan Clemens, who was the Principal Investigator. This was a 1.6-million-dollar measurement grant from the Institute of Educational Sciences at U.S. Department of Education titled:(R324A130214) Investigating the Technical Adequacy of Progress Monitoring Measures for Kindergarten Students At-Risk for Reading Disabilities.

The purpose of this grant  was to learn more about early assessments of risk for reading difficulties. The grant period was 2013-2017 during which Al Otaiba says she and her SMU Simmons team collaborated closely with Dr. Clemens and his team, first at Texas A&M and later at the University of Texas at Austin. The teams continue to publish several articles and present findings from the study.

The article on the study findings published in the November 2023 issue of  the Journal of Educational Psychology  was co-authored by Al Otaiba, Clemens, Kejin Lee, Ziao Liu, Alexis Boucher, and Leslie Simmons and can be found at https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024-12677-001.html?fbclid=IwAR31XYj2bbLRzLdrR5RGtoTiIPdXcMr_FcYuBEpbAUjY1UNxviUZmQiMZvY

 

Mathfinder Camp at the Dallas Zoo

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Students from throughout the Dallas area enjoyed exploring the lives of animals through the lens of mathematics. Mathfinder Camp was free to participants thanks to generous funding provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Thanksgiving week camp was a joint effort between SMU Simmons, talkSTEM, and the Dallas Zoo.

More than 60 children aged 8-12 attended the educational camp where they got the chance to explore an exciting new math app currently in development. The Mathfinder app, a collaborative effort between SMU Simmons and talkSTEM, is designed to make math fun while sparking curiosity and creativity and instilling a lifelong love for learning in children. The mobile app uses Augmented Reality (AR) technology for use on iPads. Students used the app to watch videos that showed them how to see math in the animals and habitats at the zoo. The AR feature allowed them to insert holograms over their camera feed to see new things in the zoo surroundings.

SMU’s Candace Walkington, Ph.D.is grateful for the collaborative effort in working for the common goal of fostering a love for math and science among children. She also appreciates the data gathered to help further the success of the app. ”It was amazing to see the kids at the zoo using their ‘math lens’ to look at the zoo exhibits and generate their own observations and questions. The kids also loved sharing their mathematical discoveries with each other, their instructors, and even their parents at home.”

Koshi Dhingra, founder of talkSTEM, said, “We were thrilled to partner with SMU and the Dallas Zoo that allowed us to bring this unique educational opportunity to young minds in our community. We believe the camp showed children that math is not only essential but also a fascinating lens through which they can view all the places they go, including the zoo!”

Simmons Dean Stephanie Knight is extremely pleased with all aspects of the Mathfinder camp. “There is nothing better than when our Simmons research is taken into the community to directly serve youngsters by heightening their interest and understanding of math, reading and technology. The fact that it is a collaborative effort with talkSTEM, and the Dallas Zoo makes it even more exceptional. I applaud Dr. Walkington and her team for this excellent work and look forward to the impact the app will have when completed.”

The Mathfinder team plans to run additional camps in the Spring and Summer of 2024. The Girl Scouts of North Texas will participate in that camp at the Dallas Arboretum. The team’s current set of studies is looking at the impact that AR tools in the Mathfinder app have on learning. The long-term goal is to create an app that could be used anywhere to ask and answer mathematical questions about the world around you.