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Science and Mathematics Education Commons™
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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Science and Mathematics Education
Why Word Problems Are Hard For High School Math Students: Problem Formulation And Disciplinary Literacy, Emily Charlotte Elliott
Why Word Problems Are Hard For High School Math Students: Problem Formulation And Disciplinary Literacy, Emily Charlotte Elliott
Senior Theses
This thesis is an extensive literature review designed to better understand the obstacles high school math students encounter when solving word problems (WPs). While many high school students find math difficult in general, students especially struggle with WPs. Often they are unable to provide correct solutions to WPs even when they are successful in solving computational problems using the same mathematical concepts (Cummins, 1988). Data from the 2007 National Survey of Algebra Teachers suggests that solving WPs is one of the skills that students are most unprepared for when entering Algebra 1 (Hoffer et al.). Additionally, many students try to …
A Survey Of Elementary Educators' Self-Efficacy Related To Stem Education, Elizabeth Mckenzie Johnson
A Survey Of Elementary Educators' Self-Efficacy Related To Stem Education, Elizabeth Mckenzie Johnson
Theses and Dissertations--Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education
While the call for STEM and engineering design has increased since the release of the Next Generation Science Standards, the implementation of STEM in elementary grades has been slow. A variety of factors play a role in why educators, schools, or districts make the informed decisions they do regarding curriculum and instruction. Identifying strengths and challenges elementary educators face in implementing STEM into the curriculum can guide schools and districts in creating supports for increasing STEM in the elementary grades. This study sought to create and test a survey instrument for use with elementary educators in a large urban district …
Preservice Teachers’ Strategies For Interpreting Fractions Represented In Discrete And Continuous Models, Victoria Webster
Preservice Teachers’ Strategies For Interpreting Fractions Represented In Discrete And Continuous Models, Victoria Webster
Transformations: Research Papers
Teaching and learning fractions have been a focus of research in mathematics education for decades. Current practices of teaching fractions emphasize the partitioning perspective, or part-whole, to conceptualize fractions. Another approach to teaching fractions is measurement. The part-whole approach limits students’ conceptualization of fractions and impedes learning improper fractions, whereas the measurement approach has the potential to overcome these difficulties and supports learning improper fractions. In this study, 55 preservice teachers engaged in an intervention to reexamine fractions using a measurement perspective. Before and after the intervention, the preservice teachers were asked to interpret proper and improper fractions using discrete …
Mathamigos: A Community Mathematics Initiative, James C. Taylor, Delara Sharma, Shannon Rogers
Mathamigos: A Community Mathematics Initiative, James C. Taylor, Delara Sharma, Shannon Rogers
Journal of Math Circles
We present a broad, and we think novel, community mathematics initiative in its early stages in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At every level, the program embraces community-wide collaboration—from the leadership team, to the elements of the mathematics being implemented (primarily math circles and the Global Math Project’s Exploding Dots), to the funding model. Our MathAmigos program falls within two categories of math circle-related programs: outreach and professional development (PD). In outreach, we work with the Santa Fe Public School district (administration, teachers, students, and parents) and the City of Santa Fe government (our funders via a two-year contract) in …
"Returning To The Root" Of The Problem: Improving The Social Condition Of African Americans Through Science And Mathematics Education, Vanessa R. Pitts Bannister, Julius Davis, Jomo Mutegi, Latasha Thompson, Deborah Lewis
"Returning To The Root" Of The Problem: Improving The Social Condition Of African Americans Through Science And Mathematics Education, Vanessa R. Pitts Bannister, Julius Davis, Jomo Mutegi, Latasha Thompson, Deborah Lewis
Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum
The underachievement and underrepresentation of African Americans in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines have been well documented. Efforts to improve the STEM education of African Americans continue to focus on relationships between teaching and learning and factors such as culture, race, power, class, learning preferences, cultural styles and language. Although this body of literature is deemed valuable, it fails to help STEM teacher educators and teachers critically assess other important factors such as pedagogy and curriculum. In this article, the authors argue that both pedagogy and curriculum should be centered on the social condition of African Americans – …
Epistemology Shock: English Professors Confront Science, Ian Barnard, Jan Osborn
Epistemology Shock: English Professors Confront Science, Ian Barnard, Jan Osborn
English Faculty Articles and Research
This article raises questions and concerns regarding students from the sciences working with faculty in the humanities in interdisciplinary settings. It explores the experience of two English professors facing the privileging of "facts" and a science-based understanding of the world in their own classrooms. It poses both questions and pedagogical possibilities for addressing conflicts around epistemologies, scholarship, and teaching and learning.
A Case Study Investigating Secondary Science Teachers' Perceptions Of Science Literacy Instruction, Phyllis Ann Blackmon
A Case Study Investigating Secondary Science Teachers' Perceptions Of Science Literacy Instruction, Phyllis Ann Blackmon
Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies
This project study addressed the lack of inclusion of discipline literacy pedagogy in secondary classrooms in a rural school district in eastern North Carolina. Discipline literacy practices are recommended in the Common Core Standards for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. The district had implemented content area reading strategies across content areas, yet no significant progress in secondary students' reading abilities had been demonstrated in statewide or national assessments. The conceptual framework that drove this study was disciplinary literacy, founded by the literacy research of Shanahan, Shanahan, and Zygouris-Coe. Within a qualitative case study method, this investigation of 8 secondary …
Parts Of The Whole: When Variation Is The Goal, Dorothy Wallace
Parts Of The Whole: When Variation Is The Goal, Dorothy Wallace
Numeracy
The goals of higher education are a population of extreme variability in expertise, a diffusion of specialized knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, and production of strong K-12 teachers. Promoting these three goals has implications at all granularities, from the pedagogy of an individual college professor to the incentives and policies that shape systemic change.
Number Sense: The Underpinning Understanding For Early Quantitative Literacy, Effie Maclellan
Number Sense: The Underpinning Understanding For Early Quantitative Literacy, Effie Maclellan
Numeracy
The fundamental meaning of Quantitative Literacy (QL) as the application of quantitative knowledge or reasoning in new/unfamiliar contexts is problematic because how we acquire knowledge, and transfer it to new situations, is not straightforward. This article argues that in the early development of QL, there is a specific corpus of numerical knowledge which learners need to integrate into their thinking, and to which teachers should attend. The paper is a rebuttal to historically prevalent (and simplistic) views that the terrain of early numerical understanding is little more than simple counting devoid of cognitive complexity. Rather, the knowledge upon which early …
Developing Mathematical Content Knowledge For Teaching Elementary School Mathematics, Eva Thanheiser, Christine A. Browning, Meg Moss, Tad Watanabe, Gina Garza-Kling
Developing Mathematical Content Knowledge For Teaching Elementary School Mathematics, Eva Thanheiser, Christine A. Browning, Meg Moss, Tad Watanabe, Gina Garza-Kling
Faculty and Research Publications
In this paper the authors present three design principles they use to develop preservice teachers' mathematical content knowledge for teaching in their mathematics content and/or methods courses: (1) building on currently held conceptions, (2) modeling teaching for understanding, (3) focusing on connections between content knowledge and other types of knowledge. The authors share results of individual research projects and teaching approaches focusing on helping preservice elementary teachers develop such knowledge. Specific examples from different content areas (whole number, fractions, angle, and area) are discussed.
An Integration Of Chemistry, Biology, And Physics: The Interdisciplinary Laboratory, Gerald R. Van Hecke, Kerry K. Karukstis, Richard C. Haskell, Catherine S. Mcfadden, F Sheldon Wettack
An Integration Of Chemistry, Biology, And Physics: The Interdisciplinary Laboratory, Gerald R. Van Hecke, Kerry K. Karukstis, Richard C. Haskell, Catherine S. Mcfadden, F Sheldon Wettack
All HMC Faculty Publications and Research
As a new venture to integrate research and education, a pilot section of a first-year laboratory sequence known as the Interdisciplinary Laboratory (ID Lab) was introduced on the Harvey Mudd campus during the 1999–2000 academic year and continues to be offered. The ID Lab attempts to bridge laboratory experiences from biology, chemistry, and physics for the first-year student. Taught by a team of faculty from these disciplines, the course seeks both to illustrate commonality of investigative methods and laboratory techniques in these sciences and to introduce discipline-specific principles. Experiments with a chemistry component include the Molecular Weight of Macromolecules, the …