Digital Commons Network^™

“Statistics? Forget Those Old Ladies!!” Exploring The Nonsense Of Mathematics Education, Gustavo Bruno

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The objective of this chapter is to develop a reflection on mathematics education (ME) from a socio-political perspective, through the exploration of a parody of ME using episodes from a Mexican sitcom. Different vignettes from the sitcom, consisting of absurd, nonsensical dialogues and situations of a fictional mathematics classroom, will be described, analyzed and used as illustrations of socio-political issues previously explored in ME research (MER). These illustrations allow for a reflection on the public perception of ME as a social practice. Elements from Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense will be used to analyze the scenes. One of the conclusions …

Energy Colonialism Powers The Ongoing Unnatural Disaster In Puerto Rico, Catalina M. De Onis

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

On September 20, 2017, Hurricane María made landfall in Puerto Rico. Blasting the Caribbean archipelago with 155-mile/h winds, this, in many ways, unnatural disaster exposed the brutal consequences of energy colonialism and an extractivist economy, as well as ongoing and increasing advocacy for decentralized solar infrastructure by many local residents and other renewables supporters. This paper argues that acknowledging colonial power relations and their consequences is essential for studying the interplay of energy systems, environments, and actors. To support this claim, this essay outlines Puerto Rico’s history as a US colony by focusing on key policies and their implications; examines …

Integrating Fire And Forest Planning: A Review Of National Forest Plan Revisions, Hailey Graf

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Home Is Where The Food Is: Causes And Consequences Of Partial Migration In Elk, Kristin Jennifer Barker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Migratory and non-migratory ungulates often coexist in partially migratory populations, but the mechanisms that drive and maintain different migratory behaviors within the same herd are poorly understood. In western North America, increasing numbers of elk (Cervus canadensis) reside on low-elevation winter range year-round. These residents can cause issues associated with crop damage, potential for disease transmission to livestock, and reduced effectiveness of harvest management strategies. Because migrants transfer nutrients, alter carnivore distributions, and structure vegetative communities across seasonal ranges, reductions in migratory behavior raise ecological as well as management-related concerns. This work investigated the factors affecting migratory behavior …

A Comparison Of Three Agricultural Startups, John Dindia

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Into The Wilds: Influences From Video Games On Our Perception Of 'Nature', Toryn W P Rogers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this paper I examine how representations of human-sparse natural environments, e.g. wilderness, influence what expectations we have when we actually engage with comparable physical places. I use Don Ihde's phenomenology of technology to describe my own experiences playing three games that take place among large photorealistic human-sparse natural environments: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Horizon Zero Dawn, and theHunter: Call of the Wild. I also conduct a brief literature review on the effects of video games as interactive media on players. I argue that players are capable of applying their expectations of what constitutes realism from digital to physical environments, …

Just Open A Window: Understanding The Vulnerability To Summer Heat Of A Mountain Community In The Western United States, Missoula, Mt, Julie J. Tompkins

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

How do we conceptualize vulnerability or resiliency to a natural hazard when it has not historically been understood as such? This study focuses on Missoula, located in mountains of western Montana, which has steadily grown by 1-2% per year to almost 75,000 residents. The formerly temperate quality of its winters and summers has also been changing. Projections from the 2017 Montana Climate Assessment estimate the state will experience a 2-5°F increase in mean annual air temperature over the next two decades, prompting city and county officials to plan for scenarios not formerly in their consideration. Of further concern is the …

Preface: The Disorder Of Mathematics Education, Part Ii. Critique, Imagination And Play, Hauke Straehler-Pohl, Felix Lensing, Alexandre Pais, David Swanson

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The idea of conceiving mathematics education as a disorder evolved at a small conference held at the Freie Universität Berlin from January 15th to 17th in 2015. The conference aimed at destabilizing taken-for-granted truths that lay at the heart of mathematics education as a research field. While the "socio-political branch" proclaims a critique of "mainstream" mathematics education to be at the core of its "collective identity", the common premise of the participants of the meeting was that the radicality of this critique is more often than not domesticized for the sake of ordering its object in a way that it …

Gramsci’S Contradictions In Mathematics Education Researcher Positionality, Alyse Schneider

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This paper considers ways in which our positionality as mathematics education research (MER) scholars leads to contradictions between our theory and practice in relation to equity. I draw from Gramsci’s theorizing about traditional intellectuals and hegemony to ground the relationships between MER scholars, teachers and students in an understanding of U.S. class relations and the function of the State in mediating them. Constraints and contradictions in achieving equity are related to broader roles of education reform in maintaining the State as well as local antagonisms between MER scholars, teachers and students. For Gramsci, consent to class relations is secured in …

The Mathematical Continuum: A Haunting Problematic, Liz De Freitas

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The mathematical continuum has a number of formulations and technical definitions. Two of these reference the geometric line and the real number system. This conceptual coupling of line and number has been an enduring source for mathematical invention and paradox. The continuum captures the monstrous desire of mathematics, a desire to re-assemble the point with the line, the discrete with the continuous, the finite with the infinite. This paper explores how the continuum is a source of fundamental ambiguity fueling our desires and fears about mathematics.

The Governing Of Three Researchers’ Technologies Of The Self, Anette Bagger, Lisa Bjorklund Boistrup, Eva Noren

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This article sheds light on a number of discursive conditions relating to being researchers in mathematics education and with an interest in diversity. The data derived from a self-reflective trialogue (dialogue of three people) between the three authors, three researchers. Two of Foucault’s governing technologies were adopted: technologies of power and technologies of the self. By exploring regularities between these in our trialogue we construed formations of governing technologies in relation to subjectification and subjectivation. We uncovered five formations: “Tensions between mathematics education (ME) researchers from different traditions through processes of normalization and othering”, “Limiting space between ME researchers within …

Possibilities For Mathematics Education? Aphoristic Fragments From The Past, Hilary Povey, Gill Adams

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Our contribution to this special issue is not intended to offer a theoretical argument in conversation with the papers which form The Disorder on Mathematics Education (Straehler-Pohl, Bohlmann & Pais 2017). It is informed by much of the thinking contained therein and driven by a similar concern with the institutionalisation (and therefore the inevitable co-option and colonisation) of the socio-political dimensions of academic research in mathematics education. However, it is intended to sit alongside as a disorderly and comparatively uninvited guest at the conversation. Rather than advocating a specific set of approaches to the teaching and learning of mathematics for …

Dancing On The Junction Of Mathematics And Bodily Experience, Julia Kremling, Nadine Arndt, Anja Roman, Melanie Zilm, Hauke Straehler-Pohl

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In this experimental paper, we document an experience of artistic research, initiated by searching an answer for the question "Is it possible to learn mathematics through dance?". We reflect on three different pathways towards experiencing mathematics in dance: theory, methodology and artistic experience. Following these pathways requires us to challenge established assumptions about mathematics and research and finally allows for exploring the dancing body itself as the potential space of mathematical knowledge. While we remain far from our initial aim of being able to make concrete suggestions about how to integrate dance as an integral part of school mathematics, this …

The True Purpose Of Mathematics Education: A Provocation, David Kollosche

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This paper features an anecdotic narration in which a fictive narrator, addressing the author of this paper, explains the functional role of mathematics education in the maintenance of the bureaucratic society. Drawing from critical philosophy and critical mathematics education, it is argued that the objective of mathematics education as realised in schools is to teach students to understand, accept, follow or at least ignore pre-defined rules as they are required for the bureaucratic administration of modern society. The theory of the narrator is underpinned with explanations that students offered in an interview study conducted by the author. Rather than supporting …

Towards An Alternative Approach To Modelling In School Mathematics, Uwe Schuermann

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This article analyses the philosophical underpinnings of mathematical modelling with the focus on the modelling cycles in mainstream mathematics education. Due to its background of epistemological representation, the main focus is set on Kantian philosophy. I argue that representational thinking leads to a problematic view on mathematics and its relation to reality. Finally, I outline an alternative approach to mathematical modelling according to Deleuze’s differential ontology.

On Epistemological Violence In Mathematics Education Research – An Exemplary Study In The Journal Of Mathematics Teacher Education, Johanna Ruge

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The contribution introduces the concept of epistemological violence from critical psychology into the discourse of mathematics education research. The concept is specific to violence produced through ‘knowledge’. It addresses the negative impact of research on the Other – the group being studied as distinct from the ones studying. It holds the possibility to link research ethics and the idea of scientific correctness to each other, by focussing on the relationship between theoretical propositions about the Other and practices of data interpretation in empirical research products. An exemplary study in the Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education illuminates how easily epistemological violence …

2018-2019 Course Catalog, University Of Montana--Missoula. Office Of The Registrar

University of Montana Course Catalogs, 1895-2024

An annual catalog of courses and course descriptions offered at the University of Montana.

A Decade Of Governing The Blackfoot Community Conservation Area (Bcca): Community Involvement And Landscape Connectivity Through Public Private Partnerships, Alexander A. Barton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In recent decades, non-governmental organizations have acquired and established community forests and conservation areas in the U.S. However, there have been few empirical studies on their governance. This study focuses on the Blackfoot Community Conservation Area (BCCA) in the Blackfoot watershed of Montana, created in 2005. The BCCA is a 41,000 acre mosaic of private, state, and federal lands, including 5,600 acres known as the “Core” located near Ovando mountain and owned by the Blackfoot Challenge, a local watershed organization and leader in grassroots conservation. This research examined the definitions, activities and lessons learned over the past decade with regard …

Facies Architecture And Controls On Reservoir Behavior In The Turonian Wall Creek Member Of The Frontier Formation, Powder River Basin, Wyoming, Nathan M. La Fontaine

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Inter-well heterogeneities influencing fluid migration in deltaic reservoirs are controlled by lateral lithofacies changes and vertical complexities such as low permeability thin-beds. Subsurface tools often cannot predict the spatial and stratigraphic organization of these architectural elements, nor their influence on effective reservoir properties and connectivity. This study integrates sedimentological, stratigraphic, and fluid simulation data to 1) document the facies architecture and depositional evolution of the Turonian Wall Creek Member (WCM) of the Frontier Formation, and 2) quantify the role of multi-scale stratigraphic heterogeneity on reservoir behavior. Upscaled permeability properties derived from fluid simulation of nested, small-scale facies models condition the …

Chipping Through Time: The Evolution Of Lithic Spatial Organization At The Bridge River Pithouse Village, British Columbia, Ethan P. Ryan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Archaeological investigations at Housepit 54 within the Bridge River site have, to date, exposed 15 discreet floors primarily dating to ca. 1500-1000 cal. B.P. In this thesis, the spatial distributions of lithic artifacts from every floor are examined. Questions will be addressed specifically towards formation processes and the potential relationships between the patterning of lithic distributions as they relate to hearth-centered activity areas or domestic areas and fluctuations in estimated population. In addition, this thesis explores spatial organization as a cultural trait or concept that can be transmitted through time. Using the same methodological and theoretical approach for each floor, …

Predictive Spatial Modeling Of Wildfire Occurrence And Poaching Events Related To Siberian Tiger Conservation In Southwest Primorye, Russian Far East, Conor N. Phelan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) populations worldwide have been drastically reduced in number over the past several decades. The Primorye region of the Russian Far East remains one of the final strongholds for the estimated 400 Siberian tigers remaining in the wild. As a flagship species, Siberian tigers play a crucial socio-economic role in helping agencies and non-profits to motivate, fund, and implement broader conservation efforts. Even while defended by organizations such as the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Siberian tigers in Primorye face an onslaught of threats to their continued existence. Profound land use changes due to the …

Meat Reimagined: The Ethics Of Cultured Meat, Valan Anthos

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this paper I explore a relatively new technology that is being developed to try and solve some of the major issues with modern animal agriculture called cultured meat. I cover the short history of this technology and where it is at currently before addressing two different ways of evaluating the ethics of cultured meat. Responding to much of the praise for cultured meat based on consequentialist ethics, I lay out reasons for skepticism and how some of these estimates might be overblown due to those people advocating for it being situated in the ideology of ecomodernism. I argue that …

Understanding Changes To Glacier And Ice Sheet Geometry: The Roles Of Climate And Ice Dynamics, Caitlyn Elizabeth Florentine

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Glacier and ice sheet geometry depend on climatic and ice dynamic processes that are coupled and often highly complex. Thus, partitioning and understanding the drivers of change to glacier and ice sheet geometry requires creative approaches.

Radiostratigraphy data document emergent layers in the ablation zone of western Greenland that emulate theoretical englacial flow paths. Yet true alignment between radar layers and the englacial flow field can be uncertain because these structures have travelled hundreds of km from their original point of deposition, have been shaped by ice deformation for millennia, and have been subjected to complex and three-dimensional ice motion …

Quantum Mechanics Investigation Of The Photophysical Properties Of Ruthenium(Ii)-Based Complexes Combined With The Development Of Their Force Field Parameters Using Molecular Mechanics And Molecular Dynamics Simulation, Sanaa Saad Alabbad

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The focus of this study is to develop a theoretical strategy that can help guide the design of novel organometallics with desirable photophysical properties for molecular engineering. This computational study includes proposed complexes and others for which experimental data are available. The agreement between the computational results and the experimental observations confirms the validity of our procedure and the level of theory we applied in this study. The ground singlet (S0) and excited triplet (T1) electronic states and corresponding optical spectra of a series of cationic complexes —[RuH(CO)L(PPh3)2]+ (L=2,2´-bipyridyl) (Rubpy), 4,4´-dicarboxylic-2,2´-bipyridyl (Rudcbpy), bis-4,4’-(N-methylamide)-2,2´-bipyridyl (Rudamidebpy), bis-4,4’-(methyl)-2,2´-bipyridyl (RudMebpy), [Ru(CO)2dcbpy(PPh3)2]2+ (Ru(2CO)dcbpy), [Ru(H)2dcbpy(PPh3)2] (Ru(2H)dcbpy), …

The Earth's Magnetosphere, Soren Ormseth

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is an Earth orbiting satellite launched in 2008; designed to map the boundary of our Solar System. In this presentation, we focus on how data collected by the IBEX-Hi sensor can be used to map the distribution of hot ions within the Earth's magnetosphere. As opposed to other satellites, IBEX images the magnetosphere from afar rather than by going through it. An improvement on the previous imaging techniques was developed, and we compare the new results to the old.

Watershed Management Tools: Hazardous Site Case History, Reference Stream Analysis, And Gis Analysis Of Fire Risk, Patrick Doyle

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

My portfolio explores some tools that are used to protect or assess watershed health and the experiences and lessons I learned during my time in the Environmental Studies program. The first piece in my portfolio is a case study that looks at the history of pollution ad cleanup of the kraft pulp mill along the Clark Fork River. In my study, I look closely at the EPA’s investigation of the site and the community’s reaction to the findings. In my second piece, I describe my field and lab experience working for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. During this time, …

The Beautiful Game As A Soviet Game: Sportsmanship, Style, And Statecraft During The Golden Age Of Soviet Soccer, Caleb Wright

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

At the end of World War Two, the Soviet Union occupied a new global position and found itself in a Cold War with the West. Cold War conflict occurred in a variety of areas, including military, political, and economic. Additionally, athletics became an arena of direct competition between capitalist and communist nations. Victory in the Olympics, World Cup, and other international tournaments became just as important as economic success or advancements in military technology. In many sports, such as ice hockey, the Soviet Union achieved superiority over the West, but regarding soccer, the nation’s most popular sport, the USSR struggled …

An Inter-Watershed Comparison Study Of Bedrock Controls On Shallow Subsurface Flow And Streamflow Response, Robert Livesay

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Bedrock controls on watershed response have been actively studied in recent years, however, most conclusions are based on surface water analysis leaving unresolved questions about the nature of bedrock flow paths and ultimately their control on watershed response. In this study, we investigated bedrock controls on watershed response by simultaneously monitoring the hydrology of two adjacent watersheds underlain by dissimilar geologic formations (monzonite vs. meta-sandstone) and by characterizing subsurface conditions through bedrock drilling and fracture mapping. We hypothesized, when soils saturate, the underlying bedrock geology may influence the partitioning of shallow subsurface flow (SSF) between soil and bedrock flow paths, …

Using Astrobiology As A Platform To Study The Impact On The Mathematical Content Knowledge And Pedagogical Content Knowledge Of Elementary Education Majors, Meredith Kay Berthelson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Early mathematical skills have long been hailed as a cornerstone and as the best predictor of later success in mathematics and literacy. This perception highlights the importance of elementary educator’s mathematical content knowledge (MCK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). This study explored a novel approach to motivating and facilitating preservice elementary educators’ engagement in an interdisciplinary context. Astrobiology is a growing interdisciplinary field with extraordinary educational potential. It has the potential to provide an exciting science framework structure to mathematics for preservice educators. Due to its interdisciplinary content, astrobiology offers preservice educators an opportunity to see math content through a …

Photochemical Cycling Of Reactive Oxygen Species In Hydrothermal Systems: Impacts On Biosignature Preservation, Megan A. Mave

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Life originated on early Earth, despite harsh, highly reducing conditions. Life may have also emerged on early Mars, when conditions on the two planets were similar (i.e. before atmosphere loss and desiccation). NASA’s 2020 Mars rover mission aims to identify biosignatures (i.e. evidence of life) in early Martian deposits. Potential exploration sites include extinct hydrothermal springs, due to their high habitability and preservation potential. This study aims to better understand biosignature preservation in hydrothermal systems analogous to those on early Mars (i.e. reducing and Fe-rich).

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are highly reactive molecules formed primarily by photochemical reactions. ROS are …