Project OCCAMS: A Design-Based Research Partnership Leads to a Sustainable Model for Accelerating Diverse Learners

Design-based research is characterized as a methodology where the “outcomes” of research include new or (hopefully) improved interventions in addition to contributing to the development of theory. Rather than developing an intervention in isolation (“in vitro”) and then “piloting” the intervention to evaluate its efficacy, design-based research in education develops interventions significantly “in vivo,” and directly engages stakeholders such as learners, teachers, and local administrators, in the research and design process as collaborators (van den Akker, 2007). Project OCCAMS, an acronym for “Online Curriculum Consortium for Accelerating Middle School,” is a collaboration between university-based centers for gifted education and talent development and a diverse urban school district which adopted this approach in pursuit of a shared goal of increasing access to advanced learning opportunities for low income and diverse students in middle school and providing a new pathway for successful participation in college-level coursework in high school. The articles in this special issue collectively tell the story of the development of a novel language arts curriculum which compacts three grade levels of curriculum standards into a 2-year course of study. The program facilitates academic acceleration of many students otherwise ineligible for traditional gifted education services with a goal of placing bright but underserved students in diverse schools on a path that narrows achievement gaps with more advantaged subgroups and creates time in high school for learners to take fuller advantage of advanced learning optionsmorewidely available in high schools. The authors of these articles bring both higher education and K12 perspectives. They describe the evolution of Project OCCAMS from an experimental intervention originally perceived as somewhat radical to some practitioners to an institutionalized model that has become sustainable and has continued to grow its impact beyond the life of the grants that supported its early development. In the introductory article, Calvert, OlszewskiKubilius, Cross, and Cross describe the goals of Project OCCAMS and its theoretical underpinnings in research on academic acceleration (Steenbergen-Hu et al., 2016), talent development (Subotnik et al., 2021) and the Integrated CurriculumModel (VanTassel-Baska &Wood, 2010). The authors also describe how the features of Project OCCAMS respond to specific policy and structural barriers minoritized and low-income students face to participation in advanced learning opportunities. These barriers are identified through analyses of public data and state and local policies that unintentionally contribute to the persistent underrepresentation of diverse and lowincome learners in gifted education services and advanced coursework in secondary schools. In their article describing the content, development, and revision of the Project OCCAMS Accelerated Language Arts curriculum, Robins, Sanguras, and Carpenter describe how the Integrated CurriculumModel was combined with curriculum compacting strategies (Reis et al., 2021) and culturally responsive instructional design frameworks (Gay, 2018). The authors also describe how input and feedback from participating students and teachers contributed to the evolution of the curriculum over two cycles of testing and iteration.