Education Commons^™

Music In Steam: Beyond Notes, Hao Huang

The STEAM Journal

Given current debates about STEAM, it would be well to remember that more than five centuries before STEM was conceived, the original Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci, wrote in one of his notebooks that "To develop a complete mind, study the science of art, study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else." (Spong 2006) A discussion of the effectiveness of teaching music and its accompanying technology in conjunction with math and the science education follows. .Given the recent shift from in-classroom teaching to online instruction compelled by the Covid 19 pandemic, an …

Three Creativity-Fostering Projects Implemented In A Statistics Class, Margaret Adams

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Undergraduates in an introductory statistics class at a rural Southeastern college were assigned three creativity-fostering projects: statistics vocabulary crossword puzzle, word wall, and graffiti art poster. Given math anxiety, fear of failure, and lack of enthusiasm, it seemed imperative to spark interest and involvement. Rhodes 4P’s model (1961) served as the framework for this intrinsic case study involving 62 students. Independent thinking and research, peer collaboration, and use of art supplies within this model (person, press, process and product) generated remarkable learning outcomes. Grading rubrics focused on originality, quality and statistics content. Projects were classified into three qualitative categories ranging …

Tactivities: Fostering Creativity Through Tactile Learning Activities, Angie Hodge-Zickerman, Eric Stade, Cindy S. York, Janice Rech

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

As mathematics teachers, we hope our students will approach problems with a spirit of creativity. One way to both model and encourage this spirit – and, at the same time, to keep ourselves from getting bored – is through creative approaches to problem design. In this paper, we discuss ``TACTivities'' – mathematical activities with a tactile component – as a creative outlet for those of us who teach mathematics, and as a resource for stimulating creative thinking in our students. We use examples, such as our ``derivative fridge magnets'' TACTivity, to illustrate the main ideas. We emphasize that TACTivities can …

Going Beyond Promoting: Preparing Students To Creatively Solve Future Problems, Kristin M. Arney, Kayla K. Blyman, Jennifer D. Cepeda, Scott A. Lynch, Michael J. Prokos, Scott Warnke

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

While we cannot know what problems the future will bring, we can be almost certain that solving them will require creativity. In this article we describe how our course, a first-year undergraduate mathematics course, supports creative problem solving. Creative problem solving cannot be learned through a single experience, so we provide our students with a blend of experiences. We discuss how the course structure enables creative problem solving through class instruction, during class activities, during out of class assessments, and during in class assessments. We believe this course structure increases student comfort with solving open-ended and ill-defined problems similar to …

Does Your Course Effectively Promote Creativity? Introducing The Mathematical Problem Solving Creativity Rubric, Kayla K. Blyman, Kristin M. Arney, Bryan Adams, Tara A. Hudson

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

As believers in the power of blending the creative with the quantitative, we design our courses with an eye towards developing creative problem solvers. However, when it comes time to evaluate our course's success in developing creative problem solvers we come away with a plethora of qualitative evidence and yet we are left hungry for the quantitative evidence we desire as mathematicians.

In this article we describe the development of the Mathematical Problem Solving Creativity Rubric and its pilot use in a freshman-level Mathematical Modeling and Introduction to Calculus course at the United States Military Academy. We not only come …

College Students’ Images Of Mathematicians And Mathematical Careers, Katrina Piatek-Jimenez, Miranda Nouhan, Michaela Williams

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this paper we report our findings of college students’ images of mathematicians and we reflect on different methodologies used to assess this information. The study reported in this paper was conducted in two stages. During the first stage, we asked 179 college students to “draw a mathematician” and also asked them to list five characteristics and five careers for a mathematician. In the second stage of the study, we conducted four focus group interviews with a total of twelve college students. During the focus group interviews, we showed the students 16 photos of real people and asked them to …

Career Funneling, Perceptions Of Success, And Their Impact On College Students At Scripps, Pitzer, And Claremont Mckenna Colleges, Carina A. Schick

Scripps Senior Theses

The U.S. News top college ranking lists have created a narrowing definition of collegiate and career success. Students are told an elite education is the ticket to a successful life, one filled with a high achieving career, meaning, and happiness. Through peer, familial, and media interfaces students are inundated with societal definitions of success such as fame, wealth, and status. Socialization primes adolescents to work towards these goals. This idealized type of success is only accessible to a select few, leading to dissatisfaction and creating pressures on students to work towards their college admission at early ages. This thesis examines …

Cultural Social Capital Impact For Male Latino Students At The Community College, Lisa Christine Nashua

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to apply Yosso’s community cultural wealth framework to understand the role of cultural social capital on the successful attainment of the higher education goals of Latino male students at the Community College while identifying the best methods to increase engagement including creating a sense of belonging. The researcher conducted 24 semi-structured face to face interviews with 20 Latino male students enrolled full or part time, three tenured faculty members and one staff member at a single community college in southern California. Findings revealed that the important role the development of cultural social capital on …

Organizational Readiness, Resistance And Race: Examining Faculty Attitudes Toward Faculty Diversification In Higher Education, Krystal Denise Miguel Rawls

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The national demographic is changing, and institutions of higher education must prepare to change if they are to meet the needs of their new population. Identifying change readiness and potential resistance factors are primary steps in motivating organizational change. This study will investigate the academy’s organizational readiness for change using historical analysis to ascertain: 1) does the demographic mismatch require a change? 2) is faculty diversification the best solution to the demographic mismatch? And statistical analyses to determine: 3) the extent to which faculty feel they benefit or are harmed by faculty diversification? 4) does administration tangibly support development of …

The Triumvirate Woman: Reconceptualizing Academic Career Messages For African American Women In Engineering, Latrice Diane Bonner

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand the importance of access, equity, inclusion, and diversity in engineering by intentionally focusing on academic career messages for African American women who are tenured and tenure-track in engineering through the lens of Critical Race Theory, Black feminist thought, and intersectionality. This study illuminates within-group differences at the intersection of race, gender, field, and rank, while incorporating a conceptual framework that examines both the macro and micro perception of higher education. There was also a need to transform simultaneous forms of oppression into sources of empowerment. Therefore, this study utilized empirical research to …

Examining Intergroup Relationships Between Black And Latino Males At A 4-Year Public University, Matthew Smith

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Heightened competition between racial groups, coupled with negative perceptions of one another, has led to increased conflict between people of color in urban communities. Often at the center of conflicts are men of color. Despite vast research studying experiences of men of color, very little research has explored how men of color build relationships across racial differences. This study examines how Black and Latino males in a Male of Color Initiative (MCI) at a public 4-year university developed intergroup relationships across racial differences. This study used a phenomenological approach consisting of in-depth interviews with current and former participants in MCIs. …

Understanding The Personal And Academic Experiences Of Graduate Students With Disabilities, Andrea Mozqueda

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative research study explored current graduate students with disabilities personal and academic experiences. The three theoretical frameworks utilized were Disability Studies in Education (DSE), intersectionality and Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) to connect how race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability identities impact graduate students with disabilities experiences. This dissertation study had a total of four research questions to explore the impact of graduate students with disabilities higher education experiences. This research study was conducted at three different California higher education institutions: two private universities and one public university. There was a total of twenty graduate student participants interviewed that …

Exploring Community College Stigma: A Phenomenology Of The Lived Experience For Community College Transfer Students Attending The University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Eric M. Michael

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Despite impressive statistics related to community college transfer student achievement, negative perceptions and stigma attached to attending community college persist. The problem addressed by this phenomenological study is the community college stigma experience for transfer students attending the most highly-ranked public university in Massachusetts: UMass Amherst. This dissertation pioneers use of a conceptual framework built from the elements of stereotype threat to illustrate experienced community college stigma; Specifically, it begins to address the forty-year-old unsubstantiated contention of William Neumann and David Riesman, that there is less stigma attached to attending community college in California than in Massachusetts. Broken down to …

A Legacy Cut Short The Impact Of Pepperdine University On African Americans And South Los Angeles From 1937 – 1981, Elizabeth Craigg

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Due to the California gold rush in the 1800s, White Southerners seeking quick wealth flocked to the “free-state” of California. These new settlers included enslaved Africans, religion, and Southern attitudes that set the foundation for California to be a Southern-attitude state, which eventually attracted generations of free African Americans and a large White Southern population. White Southerners shaped California through passing discriminatory housing, education, banking, and employment policies against African Americans with the intention of marginalizing African Americans' existence and limiting their economic opportunity. The Church of Christ was largely a Southern and Midwestern religion that was one of the …

Diversity As Contingent: An Intersectional Ethnographic Interrogation Of And Resistance Against Neoliberal Academia’S Exploitation Of Contingent Faculty In General Education Diversity Courses, Kelly Louise Opdycke

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Since its inception in the late 1970s, neoliberal academia has increasingly relied in under-paid contingent faculty to carry its teaching workload. During this same time, neoliberal academia began to take up ‘diversity’ as a way to sell its brand. This dissertation stands at the crux between diversity branding and the exploitation of contingent faculty. Specifically, I explore how teaching General Education diversity courses through precarity impacts contingent faculty affectively and emotionally. Michel Foucault (1979) describes those who live in the context of neoliberalism as homo economicus, or entrepreneur of the self. As one becomes stuck in contingency, they begin to …