Research Projects

A person looking at scraps of paper

The LSRI is dedicated to the support of multidisciplinary research on learning and teaching, and the development and evaluation of learning environments. Our research is grounded in a commitment to active engagement and collaboration with schools, community organizations, informal learning environments, and higher education institutions. Faculty in LSRI are advancing research in the field by exploring issues of data visualizations, teacher learning, large-scale organizational change, human-computer interaction, language learning, and diversity and equitable participation in STEM learning. Faculty in LSRI conduct research and design activities that are deeply rooted in authentic practices, leverage theories and methods from multiple research traditions, and address issues and challenges that learners face in diverse contexts. LSRI’s funded research and development projects encompass the content areas of mathematics, science, history, social studies, language arts and literatures, and assessment and span grade levels K-16+.

Curriculum & Instruction Heading link

The AIM system is an indexed and annotated database of electronic resources that shows state-of-the-art examples to illustrate the core principles of How People Learn and Knowing What Students Know.

Evaluation & Assessment Heading link

We evalute the embedded assessments of, two of the nation’s most popular math curricula, Everyday Mathematics and Math Trailblazers.

James Pellegrino and Louis DiBello are leading a project funded by the National Science Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop a new system of classroom assessments that aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The two collaborative grants (one in physical science and one in life science) were awarded to the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, CREATE for STEM Institute at Michigan State University, the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International, and The Concord Consortium. Our collaborative group is creating a dramatically different assessment system that includes task design templates, assessment tasks, task rubrics, and materials that support teachers’ use of the tasks in their classrooms. In developing and testing these tasks, we integrate technology and advanced psychometric models to measure student performance under NGSS.

Developing new assessments is important because NGSS significantly changes the way that K to 12 science will be taught in school, and changes what students are expected to know and be able to do at each grade level. The new standards are aimed at making science education more closely resemble the way scientists work and think, and are based on research about learning that demonstrates the importance of building coherent understandings over time. The new approach to science education envisioned under NGSS depends on high-quality, aligned assessments of student learning. With that in mind, our collaboration aims to help provide educators with methods to help all students succeed under the new standards. One of the important goals of the project is to include teachers in co-designing a set of effective strategies for using the assessments formatively and to monitor student learning as a basis for instructional decision-making. Work on this project is being done in collaboration with educators across multiple locales, including the Chicago Public School District and Waukegan Public School District in Illinois, and educators in Michigan, Oklahoma, Florida, and Wisconsin.

For more information about this project, or to try out the assessment tasks we have developed, visit our NGSA Project website.

Informal Learning Settings Heading link

The partnership between LSRI and the Chicago Zoological Society helped build an interactive exhibit to teach audiences the impact of climate change.

Social Sciences Heading link

The three-year study investigates how GIS inquiry projects that have iterative designs will increase student reflection on data artifacts, domain concepts and inquiry processes. It also looks at how students relate data to the world around them.

Science Heading link

The projects focuses on how to improve tutoring to help undergraduate and high school students better understand genetics and molecular biology.

The Connected Chemistry Curriculum project is developing and assessing a self-contained, technology-infused curriculum for teaching high school chemistry.

LSRI’s work with the NSF-funded The National Center for Learning and Teaching in Nanoscale Science and Engineering looks at how representational types and design-based activities support students’ learning of nanoscience, and how to create materials and curricula that are practical and useful in the classroom.

UIC researchers developed inquiry-based laboratory exercises that provide students hands-on experience in conducting “real science” to address issues that are major current concerns in ecology and conservation biology.

Mathematics Heading link

We partner with the University of Texas Charles A. Dana Center, to develop a comprehensive program to address the needs of 9th grade students who are underprepared for algebra courses.

This NSF-funded project develops classroom- and web-based materials to teach cryptography and related mathematics. It also supports leaders of these activities.

The TIMS project is at the forefront of current national efforts to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics and science in elementary schools. It publishes one of the nation’s most popular math curricula, Math Trailblazers and evaluates the effectiveness of it.

The goal of the iFAST Algebra Project is to develop innovative instructional resources and a professional development model to support middle school teachers’ use of formative assessment practices to improve student learning in algebra. The project team is working collaboratively with teachers

Literacy Heading link

The projects aims to develop an assessment system that identifies the skills elementary students need to grapple with information from many kinds of texts, identify where students struggle, and to offer teachers assistance for meaningful instruction.

Project READI(Reading,Evidence and Argumentation in Disciplinary Instruction) is a 5-year IES study that aims to improve students’ abilities to create arguments from multiple text sources within the content areas of history, science, and literature.

Teacher Learning Heading link

TOD^2 explores these issues in three strands of work with 6 th -12 th grade
teachers.. Strand 1 builds on classroom and professional development activities
conducted under the auspices of two earlier LSRI projects, Project READI and the iFAST Algebra Project.