Education Commons^™

Exploring The Effects Of Conversational Repair As A Scaffolding Strategy To Promote Mathematics Explanations Of Students With Learning Disabilities, Jia Liu

Open Access Dissertations

Conversational repair often occurs in conversations when people attempt to address communicative breakdowns or inaccuracy by way of repeating what have been said or putting them in another way. The review of literature on conversational repair revealed that as an important concept in pragmatic aspect of language, it is an effective strategy to improve communication of different populations with disabilities. However, it is rarely studied in the domain of mathematics and with the population with learning disabilities/difficulties (LD). In current reform-based, discourse-oriented mathematics classrooms, students with LD encounter difficulties articulating or explaining well their reasoning processes due to the mathematical …

Elementary Teacher Candidates' Images Of Mathematics, Diverse Students, And Teaching: An Exploratory Study With Implications For Culturally Responsive Mathematics Education, Bernd Richard Ferner

Dissertations and Theses

Children from many culturally diverse backgrounds do not achieve in mathematics at the same rates as their counterparts from the dominant White, European-American culture (Gay, 2010). This so-called achievement gap is an artifact of an educational system that continues to fail to provide equal learning opportunities to culturally diverse children (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Nieto & Bode, 2011). Teachers who employ culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2010) may help to close this opportunity gap and hence, the achievement gap. This study investigated, "How do elementary teacher candidates perceive teaching mathematics in a multicultural environment"; Using a critical constructivism research paradigm, this qualitative instrumental …

Estimation Of The Tax Rates Based On Vehicle Miles Traveled Using Stochastic Models, Pratik Verma

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this thesis, we shall study the alternative revenue collection system which is based on the vehicle miles traveled (VMT). In various studies, it has been found that the existing revenue collection system based on gas/fuel tax is not an appropriate option in the longer run. The main reasons include no effective tax process for vehicles based on alternative fuel vehicle, no effective changes in tax due to economical inflation, and more highway expenditure than generated revenue. Our main objective is to estimate the VMT tax rates that should be charged in order to generate same amount of revenue generated …

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 …

Establishing Foundations For Investigating Inquiry-Oriented Teaching, Estrella Maria Salas Johnson

Dissertations and Theses

The Teaching Abstract Algebra for Understanding (TAAFU) project was centered on an innovative abstract algebra curriculum and was designed to accomplish three main objectives: to produce a set of multi-media support materials for instructors, to understand the challenges faced by mathematicians as they implemented this curriculum, and to study how this curriculum supports student learning of abstract algebra. Throughout the course of the project I took the lead investigating the teaching and learning in classrooms using the TAAFU curriculum. My dissertation is composed of three components of this research. First, I will report on a study that aimed to describe …

Determining The Alignment Of Math 105 - Intermediate Algebra At The University Of Wisconsin--Milwaukee To The Goals Of The Common Core State Standards, Raymond Dempsey

Theses and Dissertations

In this analysis we examine the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and compare them to content presented in Math 105 - Intermediate Algebra at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in order to determine how well the UW-Milwaukee course develops the skills described in the standards. This is done by examining the structure, textbook content, and assessments of the course. Examining relevant high school standards, we determine that many of the procedural elements of these standards are present in the course while many of the conceptual elements are absent or poorly developed. After, we discuss content that is present in the …

An Analysis Of The Common Core State Standards For Mathematics And The Content Of Math 095: Essentials Of Algebra At The University Of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Hayley Nathan

Theses and Dissertations

In this analysis we present the content in Math 095: Essentials of Algebra at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee that is aligned to the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. We find that the content in Math 095 is aligned to a small subset of the high school Number and Quantity, Algebra, and Function standards. We present a representative sample of homework and assessment items from the traditional lecture format of Math 095 and compare them to assessment items released by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and Illustrative Mathematics. We then discuss content from the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics …

Mathematical Knowledge For Teaching And Visualizing Differential Geometry, Nathan Pinsky

HMC Senior Theses

In recent decades, education researchers have recognized the need for teachers to have a nuanced content knowledge in addition to pedagogical knowledge, but very little research was conducted into what this knowledge would entail. Beginning in 2008, math education researchers began to develop a theoretical framework for the mathematical knowledge needed for teaching, but their work focused primarily on elementary schools. I will present an analysis of the mathematical knowledge needed for teaching about the regular curves and surfaces, two important concepts in differential geometry which generalize to the advanced notion of a manifold, both in a college classroom and …

Comparing The Impact Of Traditional And Modeling College Algebra Courses On Student Performance In Survey Of Calculus, Jerry West

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Students in higher education deserve opportunities to succeed and learning environments which maximize success. Mathematics courses can create a barrier for success for some students. College algebra is a course that serves as a gateway to required courses in many bachelor's degree programs. The content in college algebra should serve to maximize students' potential in utilizing mathematics and gaining skills required in subsequent math-based courses when necessary. The Committee for Undergraduate Programs in Mathematics has gone through extensive work to help mathematics departments reform their college algebra courses in order to help students gain interest in the utilization of mathematics …

Teaching Social Justice Mathematics In A Privileged Setting, Rick Mcnamee

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This practitioner action research using qualitative techniques of gathering data looks at the experiences of students in a mostly white, upper-middle class suburb who enrolled in a class that integrated mathematics with social justice issues. The researcher designed the curriculum and co-taught the one semester course. The data were collected from pre-interviews, beginning and end of class questionnaires, quick writes, field notes, and end of class focus group interviews with all the students. The author chose a practitioner action research design because he wanted to be an integral part of the study. The cyclical nature of action research allowed him …

Effective Methods Of Formative Assessment, Chelse Rae Bugg

Online Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to explore the implementation of formative assessment in the mathematics classroom. Formative assessment is considered to be any data-driven activity that an educator uses to help guide and improve instruction. While there is an abundance of research that concludes that formative assessment does indeed improve student achievement, practical methods of implementation are not thoroughly discussed. To partially determine which methods of formative assessment most positively impact student achievement, a study was conducted at Lafayette High School. The researcher compared two popular methods of formative assessment: daily exit slips and unit probing (pre-, middle-, and …

Increasing Automaticity, Sara Burns

Online Theses and Dissertations

Automaticity is defined as the process of developing fluency in mathematics and the ability to answer a basic math problem routinely. Automaticity is one of the most important skills that a student can possess in mathematics. While there are many ways that an educator can implement strategies to increase automaticity in the classroom, the purpose of this study was to determine which of these methods of implementation is more effective: requiring students to practice automaticity three times per week or requiring students to practice automaticity five times per week.

Investigating The Validity Of A Survey Intended To Gauge Mathematics Problem-Solving Disposition Along The Impulsive-Analytic Dimension, Miguel Mendoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study investigates the validity of the Likelihood-to-Act (LtA) survey developed to assess respondents' problem-solving disposition along the impulsive-analytic dimension. Sixteen pre-service teachers were strategically selected from a pool of 495 LtA survey respondents to participate in a semi-structured task-based interview approximately one hour in length. The interview consisted of three main parts: a problem solving section, a consistency section, and a classification section.

* Part 1 of the interview was developed to get interviewees to solve five open-response problems meant to elicit an impulsive response. Interviewees were also asked to verbalize their thought process in order for the researchers …