As noted in the Director’s letter on the inside cover of the ATDP brochure, in addition to providing enrichment and acceleration classes, ATDP also engages in and facilitates research studies about the academic and socio-emotional development of learners. In 2009, there are four targeted studies taking place.
- The Adolescent Time Perspective Study involves a survey of some classes in the Secondary Division and the goal of this project is to better understand how adolescents think about the past, present, and future. This study has also solicited participation from students in several bay area school districts and another Western state.
- In another study, Explorations of Metacognition, the purpose is to examine how middle and high school mathematics students think about learning and problem solving. As the title indicates, this study is limited to students taking mathematics classes this summer.
- Study 3, Understanding Physical Phenomena, is similar to the mathematics study, in that it is focused on understanding how students learn, but in this study the focus is on science. In this study, participants will be recruited from both Elementary and Secondary Division classrooms, if approval from the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects comes through before the program ends.
- The fourth study, Evolution in Science, is open only to students in the Elementary Division. In this study, the researchers are interested in students’ understanding about change in an environmental context. The researchers will use their findings to develop curricula for use by science teachers in the classroom.
Although not everyone will be given the opportunity to participate in research studies, we encourage those of you who are asked to consider participating. One of the major goals of a research university is to generate knowledge and many of you may be the principal investigators on research studies in the future hoping that some students will agree to participate in your project.