The Deep Think Project will use inquiry to examine students' thinking on concepts of biodiversity and ecology. The project will work in the Detroit Public Schools with 4-6 grade students and both preservice and inservice teachers. Assessments will be developed building on the Principled Assessment Development for Inquiry (PADI) project that provides design templates for the development of inquiry assessments. The implementation of the curriculum and assessments will be examined using a quasi-experimental research design exploring both professional development and instruction and will lead to new insights into the pathways in which content and reasoning knowledge develop.
