The Spectrum Laboratory: Towards Authentic Inquiry for All

探索研究K-12计划(DRK-12)旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具(RMT)，显著提高K-12学龄前学生和教师在科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)方面的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发努力的基础上，这些研究和开发工作为拟议的项目提供了理论和经验证明。这个项目涉及高中阶段的物理、天文学和化学教育。光谱学是科学中最重要的单一诊断工具，是在许多学科的科学前沿进行研究所必需的，但大多数教室都无法使用。史密森天体物理天文台建议设计、实施和调查名为光谱实验室的创新课程补充对学生的影响。光谱实验室将是一个在线、互动的学习环境，使学生能够利用研究科学家以及学生的公开可用光谱数据库。正在有目的地开发在线学习资源和相关材料，并与人口统计不同的一组学校一起进行测试。该项目将确定光谱学工作空间的设计如何帮助学生使用光谱，同时流利地掌握一系列重要的科学实践。该项目的意义和重要性是极大地增加了高中生进行真实探究的机会。能够评估和解释真实世界的数据是Spectrum Lab开发的数据素养的一个标志。该项目将通过教育和多样性方面的进步潜在地使该领域受益，并通过向高中生提供促进学生对光谱进行推理的感知和认知因素来造福社会。光谱实验室的初始设计应用了为教育界面推荐的以研究为基础的原则，即让学生与图形数据接触，将先前研究中的知识推进到理解学生如何理解光谱数据及其图形表示。该项目将与合作伙伴教师在最多八个高中教室合作开发，代表不同的学习者群体，然后由20名教师组成的全国小组进行测试，学生人数为600至800人。定量和定性措施的组合，包括事前/事后调查和评估、对学生专题工作的分析、课堂视频和教师调查，将有助于回答研究人员关于学生使用光谱实验室的经验的问题。将收集的数据将用于反复改进实验室的设计，以帮助学生了解这些来自光谱学的真实数据的来源，以解决他们感兴趣和重要的现实世界科学问题。光谱实验室将使学生能够参与一系列以前无法接触到的研究项目，包括接近科学前沿的项目。学生们将参与到他们真正的调查项目中，在每个活动中，他们都会参与到关键的科学实践中，包括生成模型谱图来做出预测，评估和解释数据，以及从证据(和模型)中进行推理来支持主张。学生们将使用详细记录的实验图表，在物理学中，使用不太熟悉的波长轴的更具挑战性的光谱图表。化学专业的学生将学习如何将原子光谱中观察到的亮线与原子的能级联系起来。将有跟踪学生眼球运动的研究表明，学生将光谱的峰或谷与分子中的单个原子联系起来，而不是与分子的整体性质联系起来。该项目开发的资源将在网上免费供教师和研究人员使用。频谱实验室是教育技术的进步，它使用现代工具来实现交互式数据可视化。它的特点使学生能够整合和应用科学实践中最重要的元素，如得出基于证据的结论的能力，以及收集、评估和解释数据的能力，旨在帮助学生的科学实践更接近于进行研究的方式。光谱实验室将使高中科学课堂的关键部分现代化，帮助教师满足下一代科学标准的期望，并将更好地为学生进入大学工作做好准备。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools (RMTs). Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. This project addresses physics, astronomy, and chemistry education at the high-school level. Spectroscopy is the single most important diagnostic tool in the sciences, and is required for inquiry at the frontiers of science across many disciplines, yet is unavailable to most classrooms. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory proposes to design, implement, and investigate the impact on students of an innovative curriculum supplement called the Spectrum Laboratory. The Spectrum Lab will be an online, interactive learning environment that enables students to make use of the database of publicly available spectra from research scientists, as well as from students. The online learning resource and associated materials are purposefully being developed and tested with a demographically diverse set of schools. The project will determine how the design of a spectroscopy workspace can help students to use spectra while gaining fluency with a range of important science practices. The project's significance and importance is to greatly increase the opportunities for high school students to engage in authentic inquiry. Being able to evaluate and interpret real-world data is a hallmark of data literacy that is developed with Spectrum Lab. Project will potentially benefit the field through advances with respect to education and diversity, and benefit society by equipping high school students with the perceptual and cognitive factors that promote students' reasoning about spectra. The Spectrum Lab's initial design applies research-based principles recommended for educational interfaces that engage students with graphical data advancing knowledge from prior research into understanding of how students make sense of spectroscopic data and its graphical representations. The project will be developed in collaboration with partner teachers in up to eight high school classrooms, representing a diverse population of learners, and then tested with a national group of 20 teachers with 600 to 800 students. A mix of quantitative and qualitative measures, including pre/post surveys and assessments, analysis of student project work, classroom video, and teacher surveys, will help address researcher's questions about students' experiences with the Spectrum Lab. The data to be gathered will be used to iteratively improve the design of the laboratory to aid students understand the source of these authentic data coming from spectroscopy to address real-world science questions of interest and importance to them. The Spectrum Lab will enable students to engage in a broad range of inquiry projects that were previously inaccessible, including projects near the frontiers of science. The students will become involved in their authentic inquiry projects, where each activity engages them in key science practices, including generating model spectrum plots to make predictions, assessing and interpreting data, and reasoning from evidence (and models) in support of a claim. The students will be using graphs of well-documented experiments and in physics, more challenging graphs of spectra of less familiar wavelength axis. The students in chemistry will learn how to relate the bright lines observed in an atom's spectrum to energy levels of the atom. There will be studies that track students' eye movements show that students associate the peaks or valleys of a spectrum with individual atoms in a molecule, rather than with the overall properties of the molecule. The resources developed by the project will be freely available online for teachers and researchers. The Spectrum Lab is an advance in education technology that uses modern tools for enabling interactive data visualization. Its features enable students to integrate and apply the most important elements of science practice, such as the ability to draw evidence-based conclusions, as well as the ability to gather, evaluate and interpret data, intended to help students' science practice more closely resemble how research is done. The Spectrum Lab will modernize a critical part of high-school science classrooms, help teachers meet the expectations of the Next Generation Science Standards, and will better prepare students for college work.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.