OpenSciEd Research Community

Overview

The OpenSciEd Research Community was a network of innovators, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers supporting OpenSciEd-enabled research, building cross-sector collaboration, and promoting OpenSciEd innovations that support students, teachers, and districts.

Facilitated by Digital Promise and backed by OpenSciEd leaders, the OpenSciEd Research Community builds on Digital Promise’s previous research agenda work.

We strongly encourage educators and researchers from historically and systematically excluded populations to participate in the community so that your voices are heard and represented. Join us in building a vibrant community committed to equitable science education and research.

For Practitioners and Policymakers

• Connect with and learn from other educators and innovators who are using OpenSciEd materials.
• Gain access to new tools, professional development, and supports for OpenSciEd implementation via partnerships with researchers.
• Share your need for a successful implementation of OpenSciEd in your school community.

For Researchers and Innovators

• Connect with practitioners and other researchers with shared interests and priorities.
• Gain access to resources to support research proposals and research studies.
• Support seed funding recipients to develop competitive proposals.
• Share OpenSciEd research findings and tools with community members.

Learn More about the Community

OpenSciEd Research Agenda

At Digital Promise, we are committed to developing and activating a research agenda that can position OpenSciEd as an opportunity for the science education community. With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, we are organizing a wide range of stakeholders—including STEM education designers, researchers, teachers and administrators, and program officers—to collaboratively develop and launch an OpenSciEd Research Agenda that addresses important knowledge gaps and issues of equity in science education.

OpenSciEd is developing high-quality, comprehensive, NGSS-aligned curricula and supporting materials. The science education community needs rigorous research studies that examine the potential of OpenSciEd to improve outcomes and identify what steps schools and districts that use OpenSciEd need to take to realize this potential.

We’ve hosted convenings, webinars, workshops, and working groups to develop a research agenda. These activities helped us articulate promising research questions, establish appropriate methodological approaches, and center equity issues. We also awarded additional seed funding to research teams interested in pursuing new research projects related to OpenSciEd.

Seed Funding

Digital Promise and the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) selected five teams to support their development of OpenSciEd-enabled grant proposals.

The supported seed funding activities were expected to result in the submission in 2024 or 2025 of a competitive grant proposal to a federal program (e.g., National Science Foundation, Institute of Education Sciences), philanthropic foundation, or other grant-awarding organization. The focus of the proposals were aligned with the distinctive features and offerings of OpenSciEd curriculum materials.

The seed funding awardees all address at least one of the following seed funding priorities: A focus on designs, supports, or processes needed for teachers, schools, and districts to adopt and implement OpenSciEd effectively and sustainably, such as (but not limited to): shifts in culture, norms, and expectations; formative assessment; teacher professional development; meeting the needs of historically and systematically excluded student populations in STEM or a goal to conduct an efficacy, effectiveness, scale-up, capacity-building, or implementation study enabled by OpenSciEd.

Congratulations to 2024 OpenSciEd Research Community Seed Funding Awardees:

• Sara Cooper, Research Associate, University of Colorado Boulder: A Toolkit for Customizing OpenSciEd Assessments: Attending to students’ local contexts, identities, and funds of knowledge by leveraging community knowledge and expertise
• Elizabeth de los Santos, Assistant Professor, University of Nevada, Reno: Developing Teacher Leaders to Support and Sustain Equitable Science Teaching and Learning
• Kate Henson, Research Scientist, University of Colorado Boulder: Professional Learning to Support OpenSciEd Implementation in Washington State
• Chad Janowski, Executive Director, Einstein Projects: Advancing Equity and Sustainability of Professional Learning with AI
• Corinne Singleton, Senior Education Researcher, Solana Research LLC: Articulating Practices for Equitable Science Instruction