Education Commons^™

Trends In Environmental Concern By Grade Level: A Study Of Elementary, Middle, And High School Students, Ryan David Lensing

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Environmental concern has been frequently measured since the 1970's, however, much of this research has focused on adults. Of the studies that look at students, the majority focus on high school with little attention given to middle or elementary grades. None of these studies have looked at elementary, middle, and high school students from the same population. This study uses the NEP Scale for Children in conjunction with free response questions to examine the trends in environmental concern from 120 Catholic elementary, middle school, and high school students from Des Moines, Iowa. The findings show no significant differences in levels …

The Impact Of Mathematics Professional Development On Elementary Teachers' Mathematics Content Knowledge For Teaching And Implementation Of Innovative Pedagogical Practices, Vicki Oleson

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study sought to understand the process of change elementary teachers experienced as they participated in mathematics professional development. This investigation explored the impact of mathematics professional development on teachers' content knowledge for teaching, their ability to implement innovative pedagogical practices, and the relationship between these two components of teacher change. Data collected from a semester-long professional development course involving 20 teachers from rural southwest Iowa was analyzed for this study.

Data was collected from six teachers involved in the professional development course. Data collected during the professional development course included a pre and post test of teachers' content knowledge, …

Struggling Learners Of Mathematics: An Investigation Of Their Learning Through Reform-Based Instruction, Jennifer Pothast

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to explore mathematics instruction which implements reform-based problems within a traditionally taught classroom and its effect on struggling learners of mathematics. The reform-based problems implemented during the course of this study dealt with area and perimeter concepts at the fifth grade level. For this study, struggling learners of mathematics were defined as students scoring below the 40th percentile on the mathematics subtests of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. The regular classroom teacher taught all lessons during the unit of instruction, while the researcher collected data from students using multiple methods: pretests and posttests, …