Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

The One Month Project As A Training Tool Of The Space Hardware Club, Nathanial Long

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Improving The Efficacy Of Web-Based Educational Outreach In Ecology, Gregory R. Goldsmith, Andrew D. Fulton, Colin D. Witherill, Javier F. Espeleta

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Scientists are increasingly engaging the web to provide formal and informal science education opportunities. Despite the prolific growth of web-based resources, systematic evaluation and assessment of their efficacy remains limited. We used clickstream analytics, a widely available method for tracking website visitors and their behavior, to evaluate 60,000 visits over three years to an educational website focused on ecology. Visits originating from search engine queries were a small proportion of the traffic, suggesting the need to actively promote websites to drive visitation. However, the number of visits referred to the website per social media post varied depending on the social …

Gender Differences In The Consistency Of Middle School Students’ Interest In Engineering And Science Careers, Marsha Ing, Pamela R. Aschbacher, Sherry M. Tsai

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

This longitudinal study analyzes survey responses in seventh, eighth, and ninth grade from diverse public school students (n = 482) to explore gender differences in engineering and science career preferences. Females were far more likely to express interest in a science career (31%) than an engineering career (13%), while the reverse was true for males (58% in engineering, 39% in science). After controlling for student and school demographic characteristics, females were as consistent as males in their science career interests during the three years of the study but less consistent in their engineering career interests. Knowing an engineer significantly …

The Mindful Learning Model, David W. Brooks, Guy Trainin, Khalid Sayood

DBER Speaker Series

Earlier we published the Unified Learning Model which speaks to learning based on achieieving the "top slot" in working memory, repetition, and connections. The Mindful Learning Model accounts for more recent understandings of learning, and especially connections to "consciousness." The model has many parts. Inputs to the brain from sensors (eyes, ears) are not so much information about what is perceived but about discrepancies between that perception and one's mental model of the current context. The voices in our heads are after‐the fact reports rather than realtime executives. Working memory is a series of detectable brain events taking place over …

Rich Problem Solving Tasks, Valorie L. Zonnefeld

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

No abstract provided.

Critical Thinking And High-Level Discourse: Teaching, Learning, And Professional Development In A 1:1 Environment, Valorie L. Zonnefeld, Ryan G. Zonnefeld

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

No abstract provided.

Teacher-Made Tactile Science Materials With Critical And Creative Thinking Activities For Learners Including Those With Visual Impairments, J. Teske, P. Gray, C. K. Clausen, Latisha L. Smith, S. A. Alsubia, M. Ghayoorad, Audrey C. Rule, J. S. Schneider

Open Educational Resources

Gifted students with visual impairments are twice exceptional learners and may not evidence their advanced science aptitudes without appropriate accommodations for learning science. However, effective tactile science teaching materials may be easily made. Recent research has shown that when tactile materials are used with all students in the class, everyone benefits. This presentation provides many classroom-tested example sets of tactile materials for teaching upper elementary and middle school science concepts. These science concepts include the parts of: a flower, ear, insect, beaver habitat, volcano, hydroelectric power plant, plant cell, and sun. Critical and creative thinking skill strategies to accompany these …

Field Trip Partnerships: Student-To-Student Mentoring, Aziza Darwish, Robyn Lee-Diaz

Publications & Research

Children running wild enjoying a day of freedom, exhausted chaperones, budget-conscious, hand-wringing administrators back at school -- all of these conjure troubling images for educators about field trips. These are far from the enjoyable, state-of-the-art, educational experiences that field trips could be for today's teachers and students.

For several years, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy® (IMSA) has had longstanding partnerships with school districts throughout the state which have involved designing STEM field trip experiences that serve middle school educators and students. These field trips to the Academy are led by IMSA high school students who are enrolled in the …

An Investigation Of The Dayton Regional Stem School Public-Private Partnerships, Kimberly S. Poole

CCE Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation study documents in-depth the exploration of the Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) between the Dayton Regional STEM School (DRSS) and their industry partners as well as the establishment of a framework for evaluating and assessing PPPs. The public-private partnership agreements were studied in order to answer the over-arching research question: How is an effective public-private partnership established, assessed, and evaluated in education? A descriptive case study methodology was used to study DRSS' public-private partnership agreements to determine if goals and objectives were established and whether or not the partnerships met those goals and objectives. This case study also included …

A Case Study Of How Ninth Grade Mathematics Students Construct Knowledge During A Productive Failure Model, Amy F. Westbrook Dr.

Georgia Educational Research Association Conference

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explain how ninth grade mathematics students at a rural high school in Georgia constructed knowledge through student talk when problem solving using Kapur’s (2012) productive failure design. An embedded case study design was used to understand how a group of students constructed knowledge through their use of talk, persistence during the task, and use of prior knowledge while working on a productive failure modeled task. Triangulation resulted from the collected data from multiple sources, which included videotaping, interviewing, and analyzing student artifacts. Utilization of the constructivist perspectives of Vygotsky (1934/1962), Piaget (1971), …

Studying Teacher Noticing: Examining The Relationship Among Pre-Service Science Teachers' Ability To Attend, Analyze And Respond To Student Thinking, Tara Barnhart, Elizabeth Van Es

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This study investigates pre-service teachers' capacities to attend to, analyze, and respond to student thinking. Using a performance assessment of teacher competence, we compare two cohorts of science teacher candidates, one that participated in a video-based course designed to develop these skills and one that did not. Course participants demonstrate more sophisticated levels of attention to and analysis of student ideas. Analysis of the relationship among skills reveals that sophisticated analyses and responses to student ideas require high sophistication in attending to student ideas. However, high sophistication in attending to student ideas does not guarantee more sophisticated analyses or responses.

The Challenge: Magazine For The Center For Gifted Studies (No. 35, Fall 2014), Center For Gifted Studies, Tracy Inman Editor

Gifted Studies Publications

No abstract provided.

Iowa Academy Of Science: The New Bulletin, V10n3, Fall 2014, Iowa Academy Of Science

New Bulletin

Inside This Issue:

--Message from the Executive Director

--Member Only Website Log-in

--ICTM-ISTS Math Science Fall Conference

--New IAS Program Coordinator

--New REAP Grant

--New Academy Website

--Iowa Science Foundation

--Recognizing Excellence

--Events and Deadlines

--Excellence in Science Teaching Award

A Qualitative Analysis Of The Impact Of The Reform Of The College Of Science Undergraduate Core Curriculum At State University, Dean Ballotti

Open Access Dissertations

The Dean of the College of Science at State University, a large public Midwestern research university, in a memo to the faculty and staff initiated what he called a "review" of the undergraduate science core curriculum. He formed a task force that was to investigate on three issues; a reassessment of the undergraduate core curriculum, the recruitment and retention of qualified undergraduate students with an emphasis on diversity, and strategies that would address these issues. The age of the curriculum, 40 years since the last significant change, was an important factor in the review of the curriculum. This qualitative study …

Diagnosing Undergraduate Biology Students' Experimental Design Knowledge And Difficulties, Annwesa Dasgupta

Open Access Dissertations

Experimental design is an important component of undergraduate biology education as it generates knowledge of biology. This dissertation addresses the challenge undergraduate educators face for assessing knowledge of experimental design in biology by examining knowledge of, and difficulties with, experimental design in the context of first-year undergraduate biology students at Purdue. The first chapter reviews several recent reports that highlight the necessity to increase understanding of the experimental research process as a core scientific ability (for e.g., AAAS, 2011; AAMC-HHMI, 2009; NRC, 2007). Despite its importance, there is limited information about what students actually learn from designing experiments. In the …

Culturally Responsive Engineering Education: A Case Study Of A Pre-College Introductory Engineering Course At Tibetan Children's Village School Of Selakui, Marisol Mercado Santiago

Open Access Dissertations

Culturally responsive teaching has been argued to be effective in the education of Indigenous youth. This approach emphasizes the legitimacy of a group's cultural heritage, helps to associate abstract academic knowledge with the group's sociocultural context, seeks to incorporate a variety of strategies to engage students who have different learning styles, and strives to integrate multicultural information in the educational contents, among other considerations. ^ In this work, I explore the outcomes of a culturally responsive introductory engineering short course that I developed and taught to Tibetan students at Tibetan Children's Village of Selakui (in Uttarakhand, India). Based on my …

Implementing The Caspie Coursebased Research Experience At The United States Military Academy: Affective Responses And Effects On Critical Thinking, Anthony Michael Chase

Open Access Theses

The Center for Authentic Science Practices in Education (CASPiE) pioneered a course-based research experience approach to teaching chemistry laboratory courses. The method had previously been studied in a variety of institutional settings. Recently, the United States Military Academy at West Point decided to develop CASPiE-style modules for the introductory honors chemistry course. This research setting presents clean experimental-control comparisons and a group of faculty who were completely new to the method. Equipping students with authentic research experiences early in their education is important regardless of the institution. However, cadets at a military academy must make decisions relatively early (the outset …

The Composition Of First-Year Engineering Curricula And Its Relationships To Matriculation Models And Institutional Characteristics, Xingyu Chen

Open Access Dissertations

The preparation of technically excellent and innovative engineering graduates urges for a reform of the engineering curriculum to meet critical challenges in society (National Academy of Engineering, 2005). An examination of the current engineering curricula is needed to offer a baseline to further discuss if the curriculum reform meets the critical challenges. Meanwhile, concern about engineering retention prioritizes a review of the first-year engineering curricula. The existing literature does not include a nationwide examination of the first-year engineering curricula and introductory engineering courses. This study aspired to fill the gap by providing a detail description of the composition of first-year …

The Flipped Classroom: Its Effect On Student Academic Achievement And Critical Thinking Skills In High School Mathematics, Joranna Saunders

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study examined the effect of the flipped classroom on academic achievement in high school mathematics. The purpose of this study was twofold. The immediate purpose was to determine if there was a statistical difference in student academic achievement in two high school mathematics classrooms once the flipped classroom concept was implemented. This study also examined the effect of the flipped classroom on students' critical thinking skills. This static-group comparison utilized a pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group design and two null hypotheses were tested. The flipped curriculum was not a significant factor in increasing student academic achievement or in increasing student …

Leveraging Students’ Passion And Creativity: Ethos At The University Of Dayton, Margaret Pinnell, Malcolm Daniels, Kevin P. Hallinan, Gretchen Berkemeier

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The Engineers in Technical Humanitarian Opportunities of Service-learning (ETHOS) program was developed in the spring of 2001 by an interdisciplinary group (electrical, chemical, civil and mechanical) of undergraduate engineering students at the University of Dayton (UD). ETHOS was founded on the belief that engineers are more apt and capable to appropriately serve our world if they have an understanding of technology’s global linkage with values, culture, society, politics, and the economy. Since 2001, the ETHOS program at UD has grown and changed.

From conceptualization, to implementation, to maturation and national recognition, the program has addressed challenges of academic acceptance, programmatic …