Summary of Projects

The Causal Learning Projects are a set of research studies conducted to lend insight into how students structure their causal explanations.  These findings are important to how students understand scientific explanations but they also extend to other areas of the curriculum.  The findings of these studies and the resulting curriculum materials and instructional approaches are especially relevant to the “Cross-cutting Themes” of “Cause and Effect” and “Systems Thinking” in the Next Generation Science Standards.