The School of Education has a long history of engagement with schools and community organizations serving the state of Colorado and beyond. Together, we combine the expertise and research interests of our faculty, the dedication of our students, and community expertise of our partners to address some of the pressing challenges in education and our communities.
Here, you can explore a sampling of our research and community engagement programs.
A Queer Endeavor seeks partnerships with educators and school communities to make unworkable the silence that historically has surrounded topics of gender and sexual diversity in education
This project focuses on the development of equitable mathematical systems across different levels of a school district through sustained action research and participatory action research projects.
This project is investigating the steps state level science educators and policymakers can take to help build coherent systems of science education around a common vision where curriculum, instruction, and assessment align.
This project emphasizes enactment through a partnership with schools involving university and classroom teacher educators working closely with novices on site at a school, providing immediate feedback to novices as they engage a cycle of observing, planning and rehearsing lessons, enacting instruction, and debriefing teaching through video.
The Boulder County Latino History Project, a collaborative, grass-roots initiative, is documenting and describing the history of Latinos in our area over the past century. We are working with teachers in the two local school districts to incorporate material about Latino history and culture into the curriculum at all grade levels.
Provide professional development and support to science and social studies teachers in Collaborative Strategic Reading
Co-design a 9th grade ELA year-long course focusing on PBL, SEL, and UDL.
A program that prepares future outstanding secondary mathematics and science teachers.
This project prepares educators to improve instruction for English learners, including those at-risk or with disabilities, in a high needs rural county school district that includes several dual language schools.
Doing Democracy Day is multi-community, multi-school one day event devoted to area students wrestling with local issues, such as homelessness, vaccination, drone use, transportation, school testing, minimum wage, equal justice, marijuana, etc.
Are children more successful in early schooling if they have access to full-day pre-k? Westminster Public School District is piloting a new full-day pre-k program to supplement its existing half-day offerings.
Focused on analyzing outcomes from growth results used to evaluate student learning and to inform educator evaluations.
Collaboratively identify and work toward goals that involve families with a variety of cultural identities and practices in their school communities.
This represents year three of a project aimed at building out a balanced assessment system with Denver Public Schools Arts and Physical Education instructional specialists and teacher leaders.
In this citizen science program, volunteers can participate in running a series of studies on the genetics of taste (including sweet tastes, sour tastes, bitter tastes), and the general public visiting the museum can participate in the study as enrollees
This project brings together a partnership of educational researchers, computer scientists, school district leaders, curriculum developers, interactive resource providers, and multiple publishers of STEM curricula to undertake a systemic approach to learner-centered teaching that promotes adaptability and responsiveness to the differing needs of diverse learners.
To design and implement an opportunity for current CU Teach students to work alongside veteran teachers from local school districts on engineering-design challenges as valuable "anchoring activities" for math and science teachers to facilitate specific math and science learning.
This project is using learning progressions in science and math to foster and support formative assessment practices with participating middle school teachers.
Lessons on Local Government is a resource for elementary, middle, and high school teachers in Colorado to easily find curriculum materials that meet the state's civics standards.
Aimed at improving and enhancing the development of biliteracy in Spanish/English emerging bilingual children in US schools. Research includes examining academic outcomes in reading and writing in Spanish and English for children in research schools as well as impact on teacher knowledge and attitude.
Studies how educational leaders—including school district supervisors and principals—use research when making decisions.
Developing and implementing lessons that integrate neuroscience research and effective pedagogy.
This is a four-year scale-up project aimed at developing Computational Thinking with 200 teachers and 15,000 middle school students in nine states' diverse learning environments, such as urban, remote rural areas, and Native American communities. Embedded in existing computing education and STEM courses, the project-developed curriculum, Scalable Game Design, and more.
The goal of the project is to develop a better understanding of how to enact and support institutional change for implementing Active Learning in Mathematics in undergraduate learning environments.
This project is developing and implementing a model of youth infographics-based data journalism. The aim is to understand how participation leads to appropriation of STEM literacy.
This project involved documenting the noticing practices of mathematics teachers Grades 8 - 12 who was successful at sustaining high levels of classroom participation among a wide range of students. The project is in its final stages of data analysis.
Teacher Research Teams are small groups of veteran, novice, and prospective teachers who conduct systematic research on problems of practice they identify. The program addresses diverse needs of stakeholders.
The project studies: How the design of an interactive simulation can generate pedagogically-productive use? How instruction with simulations can be best structured to support learning of mathematical concepts and engagement in mathematical practices? And more.
Providing research and technical assistance to the Colorado Department of Education to evaluate assessment issues impacting the state (e.g., opt-outs) and to advise on accountability.
This project aims to explore two key malleable factors that have the potential to improve ELLs writing outcomes — the quality of sheltered instruction and the quality of writing instruction. Researchers will investigate the relationship between instruction and writing.
