Applying Technology and Triarchic Enhancement to Instruction and Assessment in a School Science Curriculum: Air-Traffic Control, Earthquake, and Air-Pollution Analysis

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Through an interdisciplinary collaboration between a program that has achieved extensive validation of a theory of student learning and a program that has gained wide recognition for using Internet technology as a real-time resource in science classrooms. The triarchic theory of human intelligence will provide a systematic methodology for the study of student learning achievement levels of roughly 1600 middle school and high school students as they pursue lessons in the context of four different instructional conditions. The four conditions are: (1) traditional teaching using paper-and-pencil; (2) traditional teaching with (non-Internet ) computer use; (3) triarchically enhanced teaching using archived data but no computers; (4) triarchically enhanced teaching using real-time data via Internet. Each of the four conditions will be implemented in three different classroom settings: (1) the study of earthquakes and seismic phenomena by 7th and 8th grade students; (2) the study of air quality and pollution by 11th and 12th grade students; and (3) the study of velocity vectors used in navigation by 11th and 12th grade students. Strong emphasis will be placed upon recruiting teachers from urban schools, suburban and rural schools. Instructional conditions will be assigned randomly by school. Since Stevens Institute of Technology is pursuing teacher professional development programs involving more than 15,000 teachers in the states of Arizona, Florida, New Jersey and Ohio, recruiting schools in these four states will ensure diversity. The research will be conducted over a five-year period. Prior to Year 5, all teachers will be informed about interim research results concerning the efficacy of the triarchic approach, the use of real time Internet resources in instruction and the synergies between these two efforts to enhance learning.