Dr. Tracy Dobie Awarded NSF Grant

Making Math and Science Education More Equitable

Dr. Tracy Dobie will be the Principal Investigator (PI) on a new $599,971 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant along with Co-Investigators (Co-Is) Dr. Lauren Barth-Cohen (EdPsych), Connor Warner (UITE), and Lynne Zummo (EdPsych). The project will address the challenge of supporting elementary teachers to enact culturally grounded mathematics and science pedagogy through teaching cases investigating  equity issues in mathematics and science. The project will develop a series of cases drawn from the experiences of real-world in-service elementary teachers from various backgrounds and settings. Those cases will then be implemented in university elementary teacher preparation courses in mathematics and science methods courses as learning opportunities for pre-service teachers.

The team will investigate a) the process of developing and implementing the cases and b) pre-service teachers’ learning through the lens of transfer. Cases generated by the project will be made available for use in other teacher education programs, along with guidelines for implementation and suggestions for adapting cases to different contexts. Research-based principles for designing cases will also be made widely available to facilitate the creation of future cases. These various project results will be disseminated via scholarly presentations and manuscripts, a project website, podcast episodes, and professional development sessions/workshop series for P-12 practitioners.

The College of Education faculty and staff congratulate the team and look forward to the many benefits this research will have on the STEM education community and society at large by training and supporting future elementary teachers in addressing educational inequities in STEM.