Education Commons^™

Understanding Climate Change And Sea Level: A Case Study Of Middle School Student Comprehension And An Evaluation Of Tide Gauges Off The Panama Canal In The Pacific Ocean And Caribbean Sea, Juan Carlos Millan-Otoya

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study had two main objectives. The first was to determine the degree of understanding of climate change, sea level and sea level rise among middle school students. Combining open-ended questions with likert-scaled questions, we identified student conceptions on these topics in 86 students from 7^th and 8^th grades during 2012 and 2013 before and after implementing a Curriculum Unit (CU). Additional information was obtained by adding drawings to the open-ended questions during the second year to gauge how student conceptions varied from a verbal and a visual perspective. Misconceptions were identified both pre- and post-CU among …

The Influence Of Types Of Homework On Opportunity To Learn And Students' Mathematics Achievement: Examples From The University Of Chicago School Mathematics Project, Yiting Yu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Public views on assigning students mathematics homework have been controversial. Although homework is designed for students to complete during non-school hours (Cooper, 1989), many see homework as excessive pressure on students. Most research placed their focus on the influence of the time spent on homework or the amount of homework on student achievement. Few studies have addressed the impact of types of mathematics homework. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of homework types in influencing opportunity to learn (OTL) on student achievement.

This quantitative study used subsets of a large existing dataset collected by University …

Review Of Case Studies For Quantitative Reasoning: A Casebook Of Media Articles By Bernard L. Madison, Stuart Boersma, Caren L. Diefenderfer, And Shannon W. Dingman, Samuel L. Tunstall

Numeracy

Bernard L. Madison, Stuart Boersma, Caren L. Diefenderfer, and Shannon W. Dingman. Case Studies for Quantitative Reasoning: A Casebook of Media Articles (Pearson Learning Solutions, 2012). 215 pp. ISBN 9781256512875.

Concisely organized and timely to a tee, Case Studies for Quantitative Reasoning contains a wealth of articles and exercises to promote higher-order thinking in any course where quantitative literacy is a goal. The text is a self-contained package complete with just enough mathematics to ensure that all students can join in. It contains a total of twenty-four case studies, each of which highlights how numbers appear in day-to-day media. The …

Promoting Numeracy In An Online College Algebra Course Through Projects And Discussions, Samuel L. Tunstall, Michael J. Bossé

Numeracy

This research stems from efforts to infuse quantitative literacy (QL) in an online version of college algebra. College algebra fulfills a QL requirement at many universities, and it is a terminal course for most who take it. In light of the course’s traditional content and teaching methods, students often leave with little gained in QL. An online platform provides a unique means of engaging students in quantitative discussions and research, yet little research exists on online courses in the context of QL. The course studied included weekly news discussions as well as “messy” projects requiring data analysis. Students in online …

Implementing Quantitative Literacy At Southwestern Community College, North Carolina, Vicki Todd, John Wagaman

Numeracy

There is a time when articulation agreements between universities and community colleges come to an end. When this happened in North Carolina, there was great hope that not only would the mathematics classes that were offered in the North Carolina Community College System be revamped with respect to overlapping content, but also that mathematics classes would be developed that have a clear connection between what is seen in the world and what is taught in the classroom especially for non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-related studies) students. This paper describes how Southwestern Community College (SCC) implemented a quantitative literacy class …

The Math You Need, When You Need It (Tmyn): Leveling The Playing Field, Jennifer M. Wenner, Eric M. D. Baer

Numeracy

The Math You Need, When You Need It (TMYN) is a set of online tutorials designed to help students develop and review mathematical skills that are applied in undergraduate geoscience courses. We present results of a three-year study of more than 4000 students in 106 geoscience courses at a variety of post-secondary schools who were assigned TMYN tutorials as supplemental mathematics instruction. Changes in student scores from pre- to post-test suggest that the support provided by programs such as TMYN can begin to reduce the gap between mathematically well-prepared and underprepared students; in essence, TMYN levels the quantitative playing field …

Quantitative Reasoning In Environmental Science: Rasch Measurement To Support Qr Assessment, Robert L. Mayes, Kent Rittschof, Jennifer H. Forrester, Jennifer D. Schuttlefield Christus, Lisa Watson, Franziska Peterson

Numeracy

The ability of middle and high school students to reason quantitatively within the context of environmental science was investigated. A quantitative reasoning (QR) learning progression, with associated QR assessments in the content areas of biodiversity, water, and carbon, was developed based on three QR progress variables: quantification act, quantitative interpretation, and quantitative modeling. Diagnostic instruments were developed specifically for the progress variable quantitative interpretation (QI), each consisting of 96 Likert-scale items. Each content version of the instrument focused on three scale levels (macro scale, micro scale, and landscape scale) and four elements of QI identified in prior research (trend, translation, …

The Levels Of Conceptual Understanding In Statistics (Locus) Project: Results Of The Pilot Study, Douglas Whitaker, Steven Foti, Tim Jacobbe

Numeracy

The Levels of Conceptual Understanding in Statistics (LOCUS) project (NSF DRL-111868) has created assessments that measure conceptual (rather than procedural) understanding of statistics as outlined in GAISE Framework (Franklin et al., 2007, Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education, American Statistical Association). Here we provide a brief overview of the LOCUS project and present results from multiple-choice items on the pilot administration of the assessments with data collected from over 3400 students in grades 6-12 across six states. These results help illustrate students’ understanding of statistical topics prior to the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Using the …

The Quantitative Reasoning For College Science (Quarcs) Assessment, 1: Development And Validation, Katherine B. Follette, Donald W. Mccarthy, Erin Dokter, Sanlyn Buxner, Edward Prather

Numeracy

Science is an inherently quantitative endeavor, and general education science courses are taken by a majority of college students. As such, they are a powerful venue for advancing students’ skills and attitudes toward mathematics. This article reports on the development and validation of the Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, a numeracy assessment instrument designed for college-level general education science students. It has been administered to more than four thousand students over eight semesters of refinement. We show that the QuaRCS is able to distinguish varying levels of quantitative literacy and present performance statistics for both individual items and …

Relationships Between The Algebraic Performance Of Students In Subject-Specific And Integrated Course Pathways, Derrick Saddler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare the algebraic performance gains of high school students who enroll in an integrated mathematics course pathway (i.e., Integrated Mathematics I-II-III) to the algebraic performance gains of high school students who enroll in a subject-specific course pathway (i.e., Algebra I-Geometry-Algebra II). Several studies have been performed in which researchers examined relationships between mathematics outcomes and the course-taking patterns of high school students enrolled in subject-specific course pathways. However, there is little extant research in which researchers have investigated effects of content organization on students' learning and achievement. Therefore, this study addresses calls for …

Effect Of Interactive Digital Homework With An Ibook On Sixth Grade Students' Mathematics Achievement And Attitudes When Learning Fractions, Decimals, And Percents, Jennifer Zakrzewski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past decade, technology has become a prominent feature in our lives. Technology has not only been integrated into our lives, but into the classroom as well. Teachers have been provided with a tremendous amount of technology related tools to educate their students. However, many of these technologically enhanced tools have little to no research supporting their claims to enhance learning.

This study focuses on one aspect of technology, the iBook, to complete homework relating to fractions, decimals, and percents in a sixth grade classroom. An iBook is a digital textbook that allows the user to interact with the …

Precalculus Students' Achievement When Learning Functions: Influences Of Opportunity To Learn And Technology From A University Of Chicago School Mathematics Project Study, Laura A. Hauser

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The concept of function is one of the essential topics in the teaching and learning of secondary mathematics because of the central and unifying role it plays within secondary and college level mathematics. Organizations, such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, suggest students should be able to make connections across multiple representations of mathematical functions by the time they complete high school. Despite the prominent role functions play in secondary mathematics curriculum, students continue to struggle with the complex notion of functions and especially have difficulty using the different representations that are inherent to functions (algebraic, graphical and …

A Conceptual Analysis Of Perspective Taking In Support Of Socioscientific Reasoning, Sami Kahn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Scientific literacy is concerned with the informed citizens' ability to negotiate scientifically-related societal issues. The suite of skills necessary to negotiate these complex issues is referred to as Socioscientific Reasoning (SSR). SSR requires, among other things, perspective-taking abilities in order to consider the multi-faceted nature of these open-ended, debatable socioscientific issues (SSI). Developing interventions and instruments to foster and measure perspective taking in support of SSR is therefore critical to the promotion of functional scientific literacy through both research and practice. Although widely studied in many disciplines, perspective taking is a particularly tangled construct that has been used to describe …

Parts Of The Whole: Moderating Competition In The World Of Ideas, Dorothy Wallace

Numeracy

In both biological and mathematical dynamical systems, competition may be moderated by the presence of a top predator of both competing species. Applying this principle in memetics sheds light on why some strategies are more likely than others to promote quantitative literacy in various kinds of institutions.

Can We Use Polya’S Method To Improve Students’ Performance In The Statistics Classes?, Indika Wickramasinghe, James Valles

Numeracy

In this study, Polya’s problem-solving method is introduced in a statistics class in an effort to enhance students’ performance. Teaching the method was applied to one of the two introductory-level statistics classes taught by the same instructor, and a comparison was made between the performances in the two classes. The results indicate there was a significant improvement of the students’ performance in the class in which Polya’s method was introduced.

Quantitative Literacy And The Common Core State Standards In Mathematics, Bernard L. Madison

Numeracy

How supportive of quantitative literacy (QL) are the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSSM)? The answer is tentative and conditional. There are some QL-supportive features including a strong probability and statistics strand in grade 6 through high school; a measurements and data strand in K-5; ratio and proportional reasoning standards in grades 6 and 7; and a comprehensive and coherent approach to algebraic reasoning and logical argument. However, the standards are weak in supporting reasoning and interpretation, and there are indications that the applications in CCSSM – mostly unspecified – will not include many QL contextual situations. Early indicators …

Faculty Viewpoints On Teaching Quantway®, Heather Howington, Thomas Hartfield, Cinnamon Hillyard

Numeracy

Quantway is a quantitative reasoning-based pathway for developmental math that has been developed as an alternative to the traditional remedial algebra sequence. To explore the experiences of faculty involved with Quantway, we interviewed eight individuals who have taught the course in the past year to survey their attitudes and opinions about students in their classes, the materials and pedagogies in use, and the collegial interaction of networked faculty. Faculty were selected with the intention of gathering a broad set of opinions resulting from differences of location, experience, and other factors. In this paper, we summarize those interviews by identifying common …

Improving University Students' Perception Of Mathematics And Mathematics Ability, Shelly L. Wismath, Alyson Worrall

Numeracy

Although mathematical and quantitative reasoning skills are an essential part of adult life in our society, many students arrive at post-secondary education without such skills. Taking a standard mathematics course such as calculus may do little to improve those skills. Using a modification of the Tapia & Marsh questionnaire, we surveyed 62 students taking a broad quantitative reasoning course designed to develop quantitative skills, with respect to two broad attitudinal areas: students’ perception of their own ability, confidence and anxiety, and their perception of the value of mathematics in their studies and their lives. Pre- to post-course comparisons were done …

Quantitative Literacy And Co-Construction In A High School Math Course, Mark Russo

Numeracy

This article reports some of the key findings from a practitioner-action research study that analyzed the impact of co-construction on students’ quantitative literacy (QL) and attitudes towards mathematics. Co-construction is a process where students work alongside their teachers to plan units, lessons, and assessments, and this approach was chosen because of its potential to help students advocate for the specific mathematical contexts that would best develop their QL. This yearlong study took place in a public high school, with forty-five students in two different classes participating. Students formally contributed to the development of the course by completing written questionnaires and …

Assessing Numeracy In The Upper Elementary And Middle School Years, Carol Ann Gittens

Numeracy

Numeracy is the ability or tendency to reason critically about quantitative information. The preponderance of published research on numeracy examines this construct among either pre-K or early elementary samples, students with developmental challenges, or is focused on post-secondary and adult cohorts. The numeracy skills of upper-elementary and middle school students is less documented and understood, most notably because of the lack of valid instruments that are developmentally appropriate for the age range. A numeracy scale for use among upper-elementary and middle school students is introduced in this paper. Scale validation was performed using a gender-balanced, racially / ethnically diverse sample …

Student-Teacher Interaction Through Online Reflective Journals In A High School Science Classroom: What Have We Learned?, Megan Elizabeth Ehlers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Three challenges in current secondary school science classrooms are (a) meaningful integration of technology, (b) integration of reading and writing in content courses, and (c) differentiation of instruction to meet individual student needs in courses. This is an exploratory study of an urban, high school marine science course in which a teacher added communication with her students via asynchronous online journals. This intervention was intended to enable the teacher to understand how students were constructing knowledge and their understanding of marine science topics. Data included journal postings from all students and the teacher throughout the semester, as well as the …

Ucsmp Teachers’ Perspectives When Using Graphing Calculators In Advanced Mathematics, Ilyas Karadeniz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nowadays, technology plays a fundamental role in education, in general, and in mathematics education in particular. The graphing calculator has been an important technological tool in mathematics classrooms since its invention and introduction in 1985 by Casio. As graphing calculators provided so many uses, their contribution to the teaching and learning process has been investigated by many researchers who have shown the use of such technology can have a significant effect on improving mathematics teaching and learning.

Investigating the impact of graphing calculators on student learning is important. It is also essential to research teachers’ perspectives on how using graphing …