Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

A Mixed Method Approach To Explore Lecturers' Pedagogical And Content Knowledge, Students' Perspectives And Learning Experiences In Mathematics For Social Science Course, Julio Hector Solis

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Research indicates that institutions and teachers' pedagogical and content knowledge are essential to student learning and achievement. Nevertheless, teachers' knowledge and practices have been researched primarily in K-12th grades. Therefore, there is a gap in understanding teaching practices in higher education. Moreover, research has forgotten about exploring math classes for non-STEM majors. With this in mind, this research investigates how students perceive math professors' pedagogical and content knowledge and their effect on students' learning experiences in the context of mathematics for social science classes. To achieve this, this study takes a mixed-methods approach in its use of an observation protocol, …

Beyond Teacher Knowledge: Connections Between Content Knowledge, Mindset For Learning, And Teaching In Two-Year College Mathematics Faculty, Lucy Hernandez Michal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Addressing thousands of students entering unprepared to enroll in college freshman mathematics courses is a challenge two-year college mathematics faculty face every semester. The study addresses this challenge through a mixed methods sequential nested multi-case design to investigate what faculty need, beyond teacher knowledge, to teach mathematics effectively to students. The three-part study measured the mindset learning profile and content knowledge of a sample of mathematics faculty at a two-year college. The quantitative and qualitative data provided references to select four faculty typologies to interview and observe. Interviews reflected faculty perceptions of teaching and learning. Class observations captured images of …

High School Students' Views Of Science In A University Science Internship With Cogenerative Dialogues, Gabriel M. Hayes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this Thesis is to determine how participation in long term university science internships affect nature of science (NOS) conceptual change in high school students. The study was conducted on high school students who volunteered to participate in a seven month university science internship in west Texas. Student views of NOS were measured by pre- and post-internship interviews using five questions about NOS. Internship and no internship student responses were qualitatively analyzed to show change in views of NOS. Findings indicated that participation in long term science internships with cogenerative dialogues improved students conceptualizations of the social dimensions …

Challenges In Assessing College Students' Conception Of Duality: The Case Of Infinity, Grace Olutayo Babarinsa-Ochiedike

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Interpreting students' views of infinity posits a challenge for researchers due to the dynamic nature of the conception. There is diversity and variation among students' process-object perceptions. The fluctuations between studentsâ?? views however reveal an undeveloped duality conception. This study examined college students' conception of duality in understanding and representing infinity with the intent to design strategies that could guide researchers in categorizing students' views of infinity into different levels.

Data for the study were collected from N=238 college students enrolled in Calculus sequence courses (Pre-Calculus, Calculus I through Calculus III) at one of the southwestern universities in the U.S. …

Assessing U.S. High School Mathematics Students' Dependency On Calculators For Basic Arithmetic Operations Involving Integers From Single-Digit Fact Families, John Jeremy Sneed

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study was designed to investigate the extent to which high school students use calculators to perform basic operations, and how well they actually perform those same operations without using calculators. The investigation involved the testing of math classes of students--male and female, mixed ethnicities--in grades nine through twelve. Students were asked to perform all four basic math operations (add, subtract, multiply, divide) involving integers based on single-digit addition and multiplication fact families with and without calculators. The testing was in two environments--timed and untimed, with students recording their completion times--in order to investigate discrepancies in students' calculator use in …