Our learning sciences research spans grade bands, contexts, methods, and topics. Our research projects are partnerships that seek to improve learning opportunities and outcomes for each learner. Explore our project portfolio to learn more about our equity-centered approaches to improve learner opportunities.
This exploratory early learning project, funded by the National Science Foundation from 2017 to 2021, involved investigating which computational thinking (CT) skills and practices resonate with young children's interests and abilities, and could be promoted to support learning broadly. Read more.
As part of the Every Learner Everywhere Network, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Digital Promise is helping broad-access higher education institutions redesign gateway courses and leverage digital learning systems to improve outcomes for students who are low-income, Black, Indigenous, or other People of Color. Read more.
Digital Promise is reviewing and synthesizing findings from National Science Foundation (NSF) awards that addressed the unanticipated effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on STEM teaching and learning. Read more.
The Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences (CIRCLS) is a community-based hub for National Science Foundation-funded researchers who explore and investigate technologies that will be available to learners in the future. Read more.
In partnership with SRI International and Vanderbilt University, this project examines the impacts of different levels of engagement with computational thinking (CT) on fifth- and sixth-grade students' learning of CT, science, and engineering. Read more.
In partnership with New Visions for Public Schools (NY), refine, implement, and scale a professional learning and curriculum adoption model for high school life science. Read more.
This project involves developing curricular and training materials to support high school world history teachers’ facilitation of text-based discussions (online or in-person) and fostering students’ historical thinking skills. Read more.
Districts Helping Districts is scale-up research-practice partnership in which Digital Promise will partner with eight schools districts from eight different states (from geographies as varied as Alaska to Mississippi) to develop and refine K-12 computing pathways that attract and retain a broader and more diverse range of children in computer science. Read more.
This National Science Foundation-funded research-practice partnership is applying and studying a “kinship-based” approach to Computer Sciences/Computational Thinking (CT) by situating introductory computing initiatives in the maker-oriented, problem-solving Appalachian heritage that has been sustained for 250 years. Read more.
Learning Sciences Research