Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

A Collection Of Calculus Lesson Plans: Deriving The 'Why' Behind Derivatives, Kasey Brabec

Honors Theses

The traditional mathematics classroom is led with a focus on procedural understanding, with deep conceptual understanding considered to be unimportant or too difficult to teach within the allotted time. Both levels of understanding are important mathematical competencies, as it is rare for either of them to function well without accessibility to the other. The disparity between conceptual understanding and procedural understanding in the mathematics classroom is no larger than in courses like Calculus. This project is a collection of fifteen lesson plans constructed with an emphasis on conceptual understanding and the connectivity of Calculus. Each lesson plan’s overview contains the …

The Causes And Ramifications Of The Lack Of Women In The Stem (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Fields, Jill Finn

Honors Theses

Women consist of only 27% of workers within the STEM fields while men make up the remaining 73% (Martinez). Several causes contribute to this drastic difference, with one of the main reasons being the lack of confidence that women have in these subject areas. Their lack of confidence often begins in the elementary and middle school grades as a result of teacher bias, fixed mindsets, and a lack of role models, causing young girls to shy away from STEM and turn toward other interests. However, there are ways to fix this problem and if teachers are willing to put the …

A View Into Secondary Education Mathematics, Thomas Krieger Jr.

Honors Theses

Teaching methods, and the effects they can have on students, are important to consider for a classroom because when teaching you should allow for every student to have an opportunity. Every student should feel encouraged in the classroom, however not every method may allow for that. An important task for a teacher is to find out how to reach their students in their classroom; be it adapting methods or choosing when to implement one item over another. This task differs with every student that enters the classroom as no student is the same. Every students’ differences stem from their academic …

Tiny Earth, Tinier Microbes: An Experiential Learning Approach To Antibiotic Discovery, Emily Kassing

Honors Theses

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest global health challenges of the 21^st century as antibiotic discovery has slowed even as scientific knowledge about AMR has progressed. At the same time, science education has turned to active learning approaches like CUREs, or course-based undergraduate research experiences, to achieve educational objectives while engaging students in real-life research. The Tiny Earth Project is a global research initiative that seeks to crowdsource antibiotic discovery by recruiting undergraduate students to screen soil samples for antibiotic producers. The goal of this study was to determine the viability of translating the Tiny Earth programming to …

Math Anxiety From All Angles, Katie Harmon

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to display the causes and impacts of math anxiety for students, especially in secondary education, and how to prevent math anxiety or help students with math anxiety. Three main groups, teachers, parents, and students, are discussed in this thesis. Overall, research is used to emphasize the significance and relevance of math anxiety and the ability of teachers and parents to help prevent the development or increased intensity of math anxiety for individual students.

Secondary Mathematics Teachers' And Students' Approaches To Engagement And Motivation For Mathematics Learning In The Classroom, Leenah Bouzid

Honors Theses

Engagement and motivation in a mathematics classroom is an issue that educators and researchers continually examine and analyze to understand and develop ways to maintain or increase. The main goal of this thesis research project is to gain insight and understand what engagement and motivation means in a mathematics classroom by examining secondary mathematics teachers and students. The literature from researchers and educators describe components that contribute to engagement and motivation such as mathematical disposition, which is the attitudes and beliefs towards the subject and learning the subject, self-efficacy, which is about the student’s belief in one’s own capabilities, intrinsic …

Comparing Nebraskan And Finnish Education Policy And Its Impacts On Mathematics Teaching, Elizabeth Tyler

Honors Theses

For two decades, Finland has been in the education spotlight as they consistently receive high international exam scores while spending less money, less time teaching, and putting students through fewer hours of school. This study aims to investigate the related policy that may help explain these seemingly paradoxical findings in the education sector. More specifically, this study examines how related policy impacts math teachers in their day to day work. This research includes an extensive literature review that explores several facets of the education system in both Nebraska and Finland in order to better understand existing policies. This background is …

Solvation Of Isoelectronic Halide And Alkali Metal Ions By Noble Gas Atoms, Carly A. Rock

Honors Theses

Alkali metal cations (M+ = Li+, Na+, K+, and Rb+), as well as their corresponding isoelectronic atomic anions (X− = H−, F−, Cl−, and Br−) were solvated with argon atoms (i.e., M+Arn and X−Arn where n=1−6). Full geometry optimizations were performed using the MP2 electronic structure method with a series of correlation consistent basis sets augmented with diffuse functions on argon and the anions (aug-cc-pVXZ) and weighted core valence basis sets were used for the cations (cc-pwCVXZ) that include the appropriate pseudopotentials for K+ and Rb+ (cc-pwCVXZ-PP). The basis sets for a particular cluster are, hereafter, simply denoted as XZ …

Launch-Explore-Summarize In High School Calculus, Nate Mattis

Honors Theses

Current research on high school calculus instruction indicates that students often possess a procedural knowledge of differentiation and integration as opposed to a conceptual knowledge (Orton, 1983; Ferrini-Mundy & Graham, 1994). Given the prominence of traditional lecture and textbook-based calculus classes in the United States, students are not always given the opportunity to expand their conceptual knowledge of essential calculus concepts. This project introduces calculus students to a more active and communal method of teaching: Launch-Explore-Summarize (LES) (CMP, n.d.). This methodology places students at the center of their learning and emphasizes inquiry-based thinking during a class. Specifically, two LES lessons …

Cross-Curricular Writing In Mathematics For Comprehension, Kirsten Stowell

Honors Theses

Even though the idea of implementing writing in a mathematics classroom is far from new and the benefits from doing so are hardly nonexistent, this concept is often not found in modern secondary mathematics classrooms. Writing about mathematics allows students to organize and communicate their thinking, gain a better conceptual understanding of mathematical topics, develop a stronger sense of mathematical procedure, move beyond surface-level thinking, and place abstract ideas into context. Writing can also be used by teachers as a formative assessment to explicitly determine if students are struggling conceptually or procedurally in a mathematics classroom to then adjust instruction …

Relative Rates Of Success Of Students In Calculus I, Joshua Ayerdi

Honors Theses

Students that enroll in Math 1220, Calculus 1, can be categorized into two groups after completion of the course; those that are successful and able to proceed to the next course by earning a grade of “C” or better (pass) and those that are not successful and unable to proceed to the next course by earning below a “C” (fail). The Mathematics Association of America (MAA) has reported the national average of unsuccessful Calculus 1 students to be 25%. At the conclusion of the spring 2015 semester at Western Michigan University (WMU), the rate was approximately 40%. Institutional data was …

Mathematics Teaching In The Secondary Schools, Gail Ray

Honors Theses

Thesis: What are the rewards of teaching mathematics in the high schools?

As to the rewards in teaching mathematics on the secondary level, one must not look totally at salaries and fringe benefits, for these are very limited in comparison with other mathematical professions. One could easily become a computer programmer and double the salary he received as a teacher.

Modern Mathematics In Secondary Education, Sandra Lee Sawyer

Honors Theses

Until recently, the mathematics curriculum in elementary and secondary schools had been relatively unchanged for a century or more. While both elementary and secondary school programs are undergoing special studies, the most extensive curriculum projects to date have been focused on the secondary school.

First, let us consider the purpose of modern math. There has been much criticism about changing from the traditional math to the modern math. As mathematician Allendoerfer explains: "More than anything else, the new math is a new approach to old ideas, a mixture of intuition, deduction, and application."