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The Impact Of Using Relevant Context On Student Comprehension And Attitude In A Collegiate Introductory Statistics Unit On Probability, Ryan F. Rzeszutko, Jennifer L. Petrie, Dwayne T. James

Dissertations

The typical collegiate introductory statistics course poses significant challenges for students. Many do not fully comprehend key course skills, and it is common for students to exit the class with a neutral or negative attitude toward statistics. To measure the impact of using relevant contextual examples as an instructional strategy during a probability unit, in-class activities were designed to align with areas of interest for participants as identified by a student interest inventory. It was hypothesized that the use of relevant context would create a significant difference in the comprehension or attitude of students enrolled in an introductory statistics course …

The Look Of Pedagogical Content Knowledge In Middle School Statistics, Dhimitraq Duni

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I attempt to examine the nature of pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986) that teachers exhibit while observing computer-animated animations that bring up pedagogical issues in the classroom. In-service teachers were asked to view different animations and react to different prompts about the animations. Later, teachers were interviewed to prompt more discussion of pedagogical issues with the intention of clarifying their stance and their knowledge of pedagogy. The computer animations were utilized as a surrogate for classroom teaching, highlighting issues that could be otherwise overlooked during live teaching observation.

Students’ Interpretations Of Categorical Data Using Dynamic Graphical Representations, Adam Eide

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Statistical association is an important concept in statistics. An exploratory study examined how students reason about statistical association utilizing graphical representations constructed with CODAP, a dynamic statistical graphing software. Task-based interviews were conducted with three 6th grade students prior to formal instruction. Students’ conceptions of a statistical relationship, proportional reasoning skill level, ability to interpret bivariate categorical graphs (particularly segmented bar graphs and two-way binned plots), and ability to identify association of two categorical variables were all investigated through interview tasks and responses to inquiry. Students were found to have developing proportional reasoning skills and struggled to correctly define and …

Effect Of An Interactive Component On Students' Conceptual Understanding Of Hypothesis Testing, Sarah Anne Inkpen

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Premier Technical College of Qatar (PTC-Q) has seen high failure rates among students taking a college statistics course. The students are English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in business studies and health sciences. Course delivery has involved conventional content/curriculum-centered instruction with minimal to no interactive components. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to assess the effectiveness of an interactive approach to teaching and learning statistics used in North America and the United Kingdom when used with EFL students in the Middle East. Guided by von Glasersfeld's constructivist framework, this study compared conceptual understanding between a convenience sample …

Analysis Of English Language Learner Student Reasoning About Measures Of Center And Variation: A Triangulation Of Quantitative And Qualitative Data, Lorena Galvan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The population of Spanish-speaking English Language Learner (ELL) students has been growing rapidly in the past 20 years. It has been estimated that by the year 2018, 1 out of 4 students in grades K-12 will be an ELL. There is a large body of research about assessment of Spanish-speaking ELL students in mathematics; however, there is little that focuses on statistics only. Statistics courses are frequently confused and/or classified under mathematics courses. However, students taking an introductory statistic course are required to know a new set of concepts, words and vocabulary that are not always used in mathematics courses. …

Secondary Mathematics Teachers’ Attitudes And Beliefs Toward Statistics: Developing An Initial Profile, Christina M. Zumbrun

Dissertations

Over the last several decades, mathematics education researchers have given increased attention to students’ and teachers’ attitudes and beliefs toward mathematics and statistics, but no work has been done that examines practicing secondary mathematics teachers’ (SMTs’) attitudes and beliefs towards statistics in light of the GAISE framework and the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM). This study begins to address this gap in the research by creating the Teacher Attitude and Beliefs toward Statistics Survey (TABSS), a synthesis of items taken from the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (Schau, 2003), the Statistics Course Attitude Scale and newly developed items …

Ucsmp Teachers’ Perspectives When Using Graphing Calculators In Advanced Mathematics, Ilyas Karadeniz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nowadays, technology plays a fundamental role in education, in general, and in mathematics education in particular. The graphing calculator has been an important technological tool in mathematics classrooms since its invention and introduction in 1985 by Casio. As graphing calculators provided so many uses, their contribution to the teaching and learning process has been investigated by many researchers who have shown the use of such technology can have a significant effect on improving mathematics teaching and learning.

Investigating the impact of graphing calculators on student learning is important. It is also essential to research teachers’ perspectives on how using graphing …

A Method For Assessing And Describing The Informal Inferential Reasoning Of Middle School Students, Joshua Michael Goss

Dissertations

Informal Inferential Reasoning (IIR) has emerged in the last decade in the study of statistics education. Developing students’ IIR ability is seen as a way of preparing students for the important topic of Formal Statistical Inference (FSI); however, research is still needed in order to investigate how students transition between informal and formal statistical reasoning. A primary difficulty is that we do not have a way of assessing and describing students’ IIR ability levels. In order to address this, an Assessment of Informal Inferential Reasoning (AIIR) was developed, along with a Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy (Biggs & …

Examining Middle School Students' Statistical Thinking While Working In A Technological Environment, Melissa Arnold Scranton

Theses and Dissertations

Examining Middle School Students' Statistical Thinking

While Working in a Technological Environment

Melissa Arnold Scranton

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how students think in a technological environment. This was accomplished by exploring the differences in the thinking of students while they worked in a technological environment and comparing this to their work in a paper and pencil environment. The software program TinkerPlots: Dynamic Data Exploration (Konold & Miller, 2005), a construction tool that middle school students use for data analysis was the technological environment. In both environments, types of critical, creative, and statistical …

Factors Related To Student Performance In Statistics Courses In Lebanon, Hiba Salim Naccache

Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to identify factors that may contribute to business students in Lebanese universities having difficulty in introductory and advanced statistics courses. Two statistics courses are required for business majors at Lebanese universities. Students are not obliged to be enrolled in any math courses prior to taking statistics courses. Drawing on recent educational research, this dissertation attempted to identify the relationship between (1) students’ scores on Lebanese university math admissions tests; (2) students’ scores on a test of very basic mathematical concepts; (3) students’ scores on the survey of attitude toward statistics (SATS); (4) course …

Using The R Library Rpanel For Gui-Based Simulations In Introductory Statistics Courses, Ryan M. Allison

Statistics

As a student, I noticed that the statistical package R (http://www.r-project.org) would have several benefits of its usage in the classroom. One benefit to the package is its free and open-source nature. This would be a great benefit for instructors and students alike since it would be of no cost to use, unlike other statistical packages. Due to this, students could continue using the program after their statistical courses and into their professional careers. It would be good to expose students while they are in school to a tool that professionals use in industry. R also has powerful …

Probability And Statistics For Third Through Fifth Grade Classrooms., Melissa Taylor Mckinnon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This document contains a variety of lesson plans that can be readily used by a teacher of intermediate students. This thesis contains two units in Probability and one unit in Statistics. Any educator can supplement this document with any curriculum to teach lessons from vocabulary to concept.

Teaching Probability And Statistics To English Language Learners In Grade Five., Mary Jo Johnson Neal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An increasing number of English Language Learners enrolling in the Washington County Virginia Public School System during the past several years prompted the idea of this thesis. These students are currently mainstreamed in the regular academic classroom. Adapting to their needs is a new challenge in education for teachers in Southwest Virginia. This thesis offers an opportunity for teachers to prepare for a multicultural classroom setting providing English Language Learners with learning strategies necessary to gain confidence in their mathematical ability and academic success in the areas of probability and statistics. Lesson plans have been specifically designed emphasizing teaching strategies, …