Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

Associations Between Input And Outcome Variables In An Online High School Bioinformatics Instructional Program, Douglas S. Lownsbery

Dissertations and Theses

Quantitative data from a completed year of an innovative online high school bioinformatics instructional program were analyzed as part of a descriptive research study. The online instructional program provided the opportunity for high school students to develop content understandings of molecular genetics and to use sophisticated bioinformatics tools and methodologies to conduct authentic research. Quantitative data were analyzed to identify potential associations between independent program variables including implementation setting, gender, and student educational backgrounds and dependent variables indicating success in the program including completion rates for analyzing DNA clones and performance gains from pre-to-post assessments of bioinformatics knowledge. Study results …

Supporting Student Justification In Middle School Mathematics Classrooms: Teachers' Work To Create A Context For Justificaiton, Megan Staples

CRME Publications

Justification is an important disciplinary and learning practice. Despite a growing knowledge base regarding how teachers orchestrate mathematical discussions, few analyses have considered the orchestration of specific disciplinary practices such as justification. Using classroom video data from the JAGUAR project, we analyze two instantiations of extensive student justification in seventh-grade classrooms and document each teacher’s pedagogical approach that supported students’ engagement in this practice. We argue that, although there was overlap in their pedagogical repertoires, the teachers created a context for student justification in two unique ways. We document the similarities and differences in their approaches, including the nature of …

Chelsea Achieves In Mathematics: University Of Massachusetts Institute For Community Inclusion, Chelsea Public Schools And Capic Head Start Funded By The Board Of Higher Education Improving Teacher Quality, Institute For Community Inclusion, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Partners: Chelsea Achieves in Mathematics (CAM) is a partnership between the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB) and Chelsea Public Schools, Early Learning Center (ELC) and Capic Head Start (CHS). CAM will provide 15 hours of professional development on mathematics to early educators for PDP/CEU each year.

Principal Objectives: CAM will increase early educators’ content knowledge in mathematics and application of pedagogy into practice. CAM will integrate the Building Blocks Mathematics (BBM) into the Opening the World of Learning (OWL) Curriculum framework. The merging of two scientifically based research curriculum will improve teachers’ effectiveness and student outcomes in mathematics, language, and …

Wipro Science Education Fellowship Teacher Leadership Program, Center Of Science And Math In Context, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The WIPRO Science Education Fellowship (SEF) is a 2 year science teacher-leadership program funded by the Wipro Ltd. Wipro committed $5.1million to COSMIC, over seven-years, to train three (3) cohorts of 180 school teachers, fostering leadership and teaching excellence in science education among K-12 teachers from Greater Boston, Northern New Jersey and Greater New York. Through engagement and collaboration with teams of teachers from different districts, teachers reflect on their own practice and that of their peers through the use of video; they identify opportunities for themselves to take a leadership role within the district, in their building or with …

Upward Bound Math-Science At Umass Boston, Upward Bound, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Lawrence High School

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

We seek to increase the number of low-income and first-generation college students majoring in mathematics and the sciences at the undergraduate level. We motivate students to achieve at their highest potential by facilitating exploration and discovery in an active learning environment drawing on values embedded in the complementary philosophies of UMass Boston and the Noble and Greenough School.

Adopting Evidence-Based Practices In Elementary School Math: The Collaborative For Improvement Of Problem Solving (Cips), Scott Methe, Meghan R. Silva, Kristin Iodice, Carrie Fortunato, Sheila Desai

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Two key activities in building and sustaining a change-based model are (a) enhancing buy-in for the change and (b) evaluating capacity to evaluate the change before, during, and after adoption. Unfortunately, the construct of buy-in is frequently used but poorly defined. Furthermore, adopting precise methods to evaluate implementation of evidence-based practices is challenging for schools. Partnerships with universities have been shown to help schools better understand the complexity of sustained change (Shernoff et al., 2011). This poster discusses methods used by the UMass-Boston and Burlington Public Schools Collaborative for the Improvement of Problem Solving (CIPS) to enhance the use of …

This Is Your Brain On Civically-Engaged Chemistry, Hannah Sevian

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

This Freshman Seminar course for Chemistry majors is designed to introduce students to the college experience as well as to foster an interest in chemistry. The science of learning chemistry is the integrating theme. In Fall 2013, Professor Sevian customized the curriculum by linking her undergraduates with students at the Dever-McCormack School. Undergraduates apply basic chemistry concepts they learn in class to content-focused outreach activities in K-8 science classrooms. This course is part of the Civic Engagement Scholars Initiative (CESI), a three-semester UMass Boston program designed to support faculty with integrating community engagement into undergraduate courses.

Understanding The Neuronal Controls Behind Heart Rate And Respiration, Sowmya Anjur

Faculty Publications & Research

Students in the course Physiology and Disease at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy learn physiology by designing, executing and evaluating their own experiments based on evidence. This semester, students designed laboratory experiments that involved the use of the same type of exercise to increase both heart rate and respiration rate. Students will collect quantitative data from these experiments to make conclusions regarding the correlation of heart rate and respiration rate. This will be followed by student research into the neuronal controls in the brain that were responsible for these correlations.

Increasing Interest Of Young Women In Engineering, Diane Hinterlong, Branson Lawrence, Purva Devol

Publications & Research

The internationally recognized Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) develops creative, ethical leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. As a teaching and learning laboratory created by the State of Illinois, IMSA enrolls academically talented Illinois students in grades 10 through 12 in its advanced, residential college preparatory program. IMSA also serves thousands of educators and students in Illinois and beyond through innovative instructional programs that foster imagination and inquiry. IMSA also advances education through research, groundbreaking ventures and strategic partnerships.

High School Students’ Stereotypic Images Of Scientists In South Korea, Eunjin Bang, Sissy Wong, Tonya D. Jeffery

Faculty Publications

This study explored stereotypical images of scientists held by tenth-grade students at three different gender organized institutions. The three institutions included an all-male, an all-female, and a co-educational high school located in South Korea. A total of 393 tenth-grade students from these three respective schools participated in a Draw-A-Scientist-Test (DAST), which was designed to reveal students’ perceptions about what scientists look like. After initial assessment of the DAST results, small numbers of students from each school were selected for follow-up focus group interviews. A mixed methods technique was used in order to analyse the DAST scores and data from the …

Section Abstracts: Education

Virginia Journal of Science

Abstracts of the Education Section for the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science, May 13-15, 2014, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia

Study Of The Design Of A First Generation Community College Stem Learning Community, Susan M. St. Pierre

Higher Education Student Work

First generation students attending college have difficulties achieving academic success, engaging with their peers and persisting (Jehangir, 2010); are growing in number on college campuses; and are significantly underrepresented in STEM programs of study. This research examined the role that a STEM focused Learning Community (STEM LC) and student participation in Early College programs with STEM exposure have on first generation student achievement engagement and retention. The purpose of the project was to research and design a framework for a community college STEM LC for first generation students as a means to increase academic achievement and student retention for this …

Ua64/2 The Challenge: Magazine For The Center For Gifted Studies (No. 34, Spring 2014), Center For Gifted Studies, Tracy Inman Editor

Gifted Studies Publications

No abstract provided.

Mapcores 2013-2014 Assessment Report, Kristen Nairn, Pamela L. Bacon, Jim Crumley, Yu Zhang

MapCores Faculty Publications

This is a report showing the assessment results for the MapCores (MAthematics, Physics, COmputer science REsearch Scholars) program at the College of Saint Benedict. Started in 2009, MapCores is a cohort-based program designed to increase women's interest and achievement in mathematics, physics, computer science and engineering. The report was submitted for the National Science Foundation grant number 0965705.

Mastery Learning In Calculus I Affects Student Learning, Grade Improvement, And Professor Exhaustion, Judith Puncochar, Don H. Faust

Conference Presentations

Three Calculus I courses were taught under conditions of either traditional teaching, 2/3 mastery, or full mastery to test four hypotheses. Under conditions of mastery learning on exams, students should attain appropriate higher-level mathematical concepts, achieve more learning of higher-level mathematical concepts, learn higher-level mathematical concepts more quickly, and evaluate mastery learning favorably. Support for all hypotheses occurred only in the 2/3 mastery condition. A shift toward higher grades was attributed to grade improvement, not grade inflation, as determined by six mathematicians with blind review of final exam items. Final exams in mastery learning courses were significantly more …

An Investigation Of Teacher Response To National Science Curriculum Reforms In Turkey, Ridvan Elmas, Nilay Öztürk, Meltem Irmak, William W. Cobern

Scientific Literacy and Cultural Studies Project

Major science education curriculum reform is taking place in Turkey involving a substantial break with past science curricula. Such reform has significant implications for teachers but to date there has been little research on teacher response to these reforms. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the impact on the teachers who are charged with implementing reforms. Semi-structured interviews with 18 elementary science teachers were conducted and additional observational data was recorded. The interview schedule comprised 23 questions in 9 themes. According to the data analysis, the main problem for teachers is that curriculum reforms involve overly big …

The Value Of Creating An Innovation Talent Pipeline, Britta Mckenna

Publications & Research

Investing in the innovation pipeline today translates to Illinois business tomorrow. Somewhere between the rise of “STEM” and “staying globally competitive” in a time after Millennials is Generation Z. Gen Z digital natives are now making their way to and through primary and secondary education and we need to be ready to nurture the emerging talents of these and other future innovators. This is particularly important in Illinois where developing – and retaining – top talent will be a key driver of the state’s knowledge-based economy. There is hard work ahead reimagining what education should look like to support this …

Case Study Of A Successful Educational Partnership: University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign And The Illinois Mathematics And Science Academy, Dave Devol

Faculty Publications & Research

This article describes partnerships between an NCSSSMST member institution and a research university and the use of student-generated survey data as a means of both professional self-reflection and asking further questions. As a chemist, I have been trained to write in the style of scientists, and in fact I teach a course at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy on the methods of science and scientific writing. This article is intentionally not written in a scientific style; rather is written to convey a story of how a partnership between institutions naturally progressed into my current area of research into motivational …

Program And Proceedings: Nebraska Academy Of Sciences 1880–2014, 134th Anniversary Year, One Hundred-Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting, April 11, 2014

Nebraska Academy of Sciences: Programs and Proceedings

Program

Aeronautics and Space Science

Collegiate Academy: Biology

Chemistry and Physics

Collegiate Academy: Chemistry and Physics

Applied Science and Technology

Biological and Medical Sciences

Aeronautics and Space Science, Poster Session

Anthropology

Maiben Memorial Lecture: "Education, Careers and Opportunities in Engineering and Metallurgy in Nebraska," Terry Rasmussen, Nucor Steel, Norfolk, Nebraska

Teaching of Science and Mathematics

Anthropology

Earth Science

Preparation For Practice: Elementary Preservice Teachers Learning And Using Scientific Classroom Discourse Community Instructional Strategies, Elizabeth Lewis, Oxana Dema, Dena Harshbarger

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Despite historical national efforts to improve elementary science education, science instruction continues to be marginalized, varying by state. This study was designed to address the ongoing challenge of educating elementary preservice teachers (PSTs) to teach science. Elementary PSTs are one of the science education community's major links to schools and science education reform. However, they often lack a strong background in science, knowledge of effective science teaching strategies, and consequently have low confidence and self-efficacy. This investigation explored the initial learning of elementary PSTs using an interdisciplinary model of a scientific classroom discourse community during a science methods course. Findings …