Scientific Reasoning Research Institute

SRRI’s administration does whatever is necessary to keep the Institute’s researchers employed and productive, including managing research accounts, purchasing equipment, providing computer and web support, and battling with UMass administrators.

The Conceptual Learning in Science Group has been engaged in science education research activities within SRRI for the past 18 years, with the help of Professors Melvin Steinberg and Neil Stillings, and many doctoral students and postdocs. Our work has focused on analogies, misconceptions, useful intuitions, creativity and imagery use in experts, model based learning, co-construction strategies, computer simulations, gesture analysis, and other topics. The group has been funded virtually continuously during this period by the US National Science Foundation.

PERG (a.k.a. UMPERG) is the University of Massachusetts Physics Education Research Group. We are a team of physicists studying knowledge, cognition, learning, and teaching about physics and other sciences. We investigate fundamental questions in the cognitive science of physics learning and expertise; develop pedagogic techniques and curricula; and promote effective instruction within our university and around the world.

SERG is a group of researchers with backgrounds in psychology and education who have been collaborating since the late 1970’s. The group’s mission is to better understand how people reason about probability, statistics, and data analysis, and to use this understanding to improve the teaching of these topics at both the university and K-12 levels. Research initially focused on how adults reason about statistics and probability before receiving any formal instruction. More recent work has focused on younger students learning data analysis and how their understanding develops over instruction.