A parallel issue to the question of educational effectiveness is the time of development. How long does it take to implement a Network Science curriculum effectively? Even the most proficient teachers spent several years working with a true innovative practice before they are comfortable with it and before an outside reviewer would conclude that it works. Our research will look for evidence of this developmental trajectory by participating teachers by comparing those new to the project to those who have been involved previously.

What is role of the technology in the design of a Network Science project?

Again, we use this question as an occasion to explore a number of related issues. How is the technology actually used in the different classrooms and which local conditions are most important for guiding or limiting that use? How much variation is found across schools in the use of the technology and how important are those variations? Finally, what aspects of the teaching and learning does the technology provide and support that could not be achieved in other ways?

Can the technical support for the Network Science projects be successfully transferred to other organizations?

Part of our proposal is to share the technology developed at TERC with other organizations. The research will examine the feasibility of this transfer in Year Two by documenting the experiences of the EstuaryNet project.

The bulk of the research effort will be spent in classrooms looking for answers to these questions. We will observe teachers and students, interview the various participants, monitor e-mail conversations and collect related supporting materials. From these various sources of information, we will construct case studies of classroom situations and then analyze these cases for answer to the research questions. We hope that this analysis will also shed light on thequestion of why particular settings can make appropriate and effective use of the Network Science experience.

The observation and interview data will give us a direct view of the classroom experience. Careful monitoring of the e-mail conversations among classrooms is a second important window into how the project works in the daily lives of the classrooms. Indeed, by comparing what we observe in classrooms with the conversations they hold, we hope to gain a perspective on the impact of the technology itself on the project. In the past some classrooms have followed and extended the experimental procedure locally but did not share their experiences with others; in other cases, classrooms have been very active in the electronic conversation but were less dedicated to the classroom experimentation. In both cases, observation in the classroom together with monitoring the network conversations were required to develop a complete understanding of the experiences of those classrooms.

In our classroom observations we will also try to develop some initial comparisons between teachers new to the project and those who have had a year of experience. This will shed some light on how teacher practice changes as they become more familiar with the project and adapt its expectations to their classroom practice.