CAST Research to Improve Secondary Mathematics Outcomes Expands with New Grant

Date:
Friday, February 18, 2022

CAST will share in a National Science Foundation grant to Mindprint Learning for Phase II of the Integrating Cognitive and Self-Regulatory Strategies to Improve Secondary Mathematics Outcomes research study.

The National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, awarded the two-year, $948,300 grant to Mindprint Learning, with $263,000 shared with CAST.

The study aims to demonstrate improvements in math instruction, engagement, and outcomes through a holistic approach to supporting social-emotional, cognitive, and academic skills in general education classrooms.

“In Phase II, Mindprint proposes to shift its efforts from predictive modeling to explanatory modeling,” says Jess Gropen, Senior Research Scientist at CAST. “Instead of just using cognitive and SE factors to predict math outcomes, Mindprint will explore how these outcomes result from the combination of these factors in particular forms of student engagement.”

Core objectives include providing educators with data to address student variability across cognitive, social-emotional, and academic skills; demonstrating the specific evidence-based, personalized interventions for engagement, social-emotional learning, and academic instruction to improve math outcomes for individualized learner profiles; and build on the current state of research on student engagement by addressing individual differences in cognitive and social-emotional skills.

Phase II research will feature a longitudinal randomized control trial design to support causal inference and mediation analysis, as well as a large, diverse sample to permit a test of measurement invariance across groups differing in socio-economic status, race/ethnicity, and gender. Using this rigorous design, researchers will test the hypothesis that a customized approach to education-based cognitive and SE factors results in increases in both the quantity and quality of student engagement, which in turn leads to improvements in math achievement.

CAST’s partnership with Mindprint extends to 2018, when CAST published The Empowered Student: A Guide to Self-Regulated Learning, authored by Mindprint founder Nancy Weinstein and researcher Mary-Vicki Algeri.

Kate Walton will lead Phase II research along with her Mindprint colleagues Nancy Weinstein and Susan Beshel, and in collaboration with CAST researchers Jess Gropen and Bob Dolan.