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Full-Text Articles in Education

Ambiguity In Speaking Chemistry And Other Stem Content: Educational Implications, Mick D. Isaacson, Michelle Michaels Sep 2015

Ambiguity In Speaking Chemistry And Other Stem Content: Educational Implications, Mick D. Isaacson, Michelle Michaels

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

Ambiguity in speech is a possible barrier to the acquisition of knowledge for students who have print disabilities (such as blindness, visual impairments, and some specific learning disabilities) and rely on auditory input for learning. Chemistry appears to have considerable potential for being spoken ambiguously and may be a barrier to accessing knowledge and to learning. Educators in chemistry may be unaware of, or have limited awareness of, potential ambiguity in speaking chemistry and may speak chemistry ambiguously to their students. One purpose of this paper is to increase awareness of potential ambiguity in speaking chemistry and other STEM fields …


Integrating Writing In The Middle-Level Mathematics Classroom: An Action Research Study, Alyssa Beavers, Brandon L. Fox, Jamaal Young, Elizabeth M. Bellows, Leah Kahn Aug 2015

Integrating Writing In The Middle-Level Mathematics Classroom: An Action Research Study, Alyssa Beavers, Brandon L. Fox, Jamaal Young, Elizabeth M. Bellows, Leah Kahn

MLET: The Journal of Middle Level Education in Texas

Discourse in mathematics refers to the written and oral communication that occurs in the mathematics classroom. Yet, in many classrooms in the United States, writing is often taught remotely in the classroom of a language arts teacher. In this action research project, our focus was on improving students’ written expressions and explanations in the middle-level mathematics classroom. The purpose of this action research was to examine and evaluate the effect writing has on students’ mathematical thinking processes and skills. Over the course of eight weeks, students were presented with various writing assignments in mathematics. Students were given approximately 20 minutes …


What Concerns Are Secondary Mathematics Teachers Experiencing With The Implementation Of The Common Core State Standards For Mathematics And Is There A Relationship Between The Concerns And Professional Development Received?, Suzanne Therez Jennings Aug 2015

What Concerns Are Secondary Mathematics Teachers Experiencing With The Implementation Of The Common Core State Standards For Mathematics And Is There A Relationship Between The Concerns And Professional Development Received?, Suzanne Therez Jennings

Dissertations

Using the Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) as the theoretical framework, this mixed-methods study utilized three research methods, quantitative, profile interpretation, and qualitative to answer the research questions to investigate the concerns teachers were experiencing during the first year of implementing the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) and to determine if professional development affected those concerns. The Stage of Concern questionnaire which included two open-ended questions was employed to survey 88 secondary Mississippi mathematics teachers. MANOVA was used to investigate any differences in the means of the relative levels of intensity present within the subgroups which are inconclusive. …


Collaborating To Improve Inquiry-Based Teaching In Elementary Science And Mathematics Methods Courses, Paula A. Magee, Ryan Flessner Jun 2015

Collaborating To Improve Inquiry-Based Teaching In Elementary Science And Mathematics Methods Courses, Paula A. Magee, Ryan Flessner

Ryan Flessner

This study examines the effect of promoting inquiry-based teaching (IBT) through collaboration between a science methods course and mathematics methods course in an elementary teacher education program. During the collaboration, preservice elementary teacher (PST) candidates experienced 3 different types of inquiry as a way to foster increased understanding of inquiry based teaching (IBT). The experiences included a PST driven science inquiry and a mathematics inquiry where PSTs were learners and a science inquiry where PSTs were teachers. During and following the semester of the collaboration, data were collected to assess the impact of the inquiry experiences on the PSTs’ understanding …


The Effects Of Problem-Based Learning On Mathematics Achievement Of Elementary Students Across Time, Brittany Marie Crowley May 2015

The Effects Of Problem-Based Learning On Mathematics Achievement Of Elementary Students Across Time, Brittany Marie Crowley

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The present study specifically evaluated the long-term effects of problem-based learning (PBL) instruction on the mathematics achievement of students who demonstrated higher ability in the subject area than their comparable peers. Subjects included 65 students from six south-central Kentucky elementary schools who participated in Project Gifted Education in Math and Science (Project GEMS), a grant partially funded through the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program. The students were assigned to one of three conditions – PBL-Plus, PBL, or Control – based upon school of attendance. The participants were then administered baseline testing in the fall of the …


The Power Of Improvisational Teaching, Elizabeth Graue, Kristin Whyte, Anne E. Karabon May 2015

The Power Of Improvisational Teaching, Elizabeth Graue, Kristin Whyte, Anne E. Karabon

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

In this study we examine how improvisation can facilitate understanding how teachers respond to children's multiple resources, interests, experiences, and skills in early childhood programs. Improvisation is conceptualized as a responsive, partnered activity through which teachers and children generate meaning and knowledge together. In our analysis we show improvisation is taken up differently in two classrooms and how it variably provides opportunities for learning. Two cases from a professional development program designed to support culturally and developmentally appropriate early mathematics are used to demonstrate the possibilities improvisation creates in era of increasing standardization of curriculum.


Fostoria Intermediate Elementary School Family Math Night, Chelsea Nye Apr 2015

Fostoria Intermediate Elementary School Family Math Night, Chelsea Nye

Honors Projects

This is a Family Math Night that was planned and held at Fostoria Intermediate Elementary School in Fostoria, Ohio. It includes the Research Questions, Literature Review, Proposed Activity, Methodology, and Expected Results as well as the Annotated Bibliography and Timeline for Completion from my research and planning. Following the Proposal are 20 mathematical activity or game lesson plans and direction sheets that were planned for the Family Math Night. There are 5 different mathematical activities or games for each grade level 3-6, each meeting a different domain in the Common Core State Standards. At the end there is two general …


When And How To Appropriately Implement Teaching Tools And Strategies For Early Childhood Numeracy, Elizabeth Bartha, Julie Dombai Apr 2015

When And How To Appropriately Implement Teaching Tools And Strategies For Early Childhood Numeracy, Elizabeth Bartha, Julie Dombai

Education: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The Augustana/Longfellow Number Sense Project (NSP) is a collaborative action research project that was created to provide purposeful, individualized instruction for Longfellow’s kindergarteners and enhance the teacher education program at Augustana. During this program, we work with Kindergarten students on mathematical concepts and skills. Our lessons incorporate both hands-on materials and educational software into our lessons. As we became familiar with this software, we began to suggest ways we could improve the software as well as ideas for new applications designed to help meet needs the students encountered in the classroom. Because the students interacted with a variety of teaching …


Expect The Unexpected When Teaching Probability, Karen Koellner, Mary Pittman, Jonathan L. Brendefur Mar 2015

Expect The Unexpected When Teaching Probability, Karen Koellner, Mary Pittman, Jonathan L. Brendefur

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Probability has recently made its way into many textbook series and standards documents (NCTM, 2000; NGA, 2010). When students engage in probability problem solving many unexpected situations can arise due to the counterintuitive nature of probability concepts. These situations can be difficult for students and challenging for teachers to analyse during teaching. Recently, as facilitators of a Mathematics Science Partnership grant workshop on probability, we had the opportunity to engage middle school teachers in professional development workshops as well as in their classrooms. In this article, we discuss a rich probability task used with these teachers along with two scenarios …


Imagining A Future In Prek: How Professional Identity Shapes Notions Of Early Mathematics, Elizabeth Graue, Anne E. Karabon, Katherine Kresin Delaney, Kristin Whyte, Jiwon Kim, Anita Wager Mar 2015

Imagining A Future In Prek: How Professional Identity Shapes Notions Of Early Mathematics, Elizabeth Graue, Anne E. Karabon, Katherine Kresin Delaney, Kristin Whyte, Jiwon Kim, Anita Wager

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

This article describes how early childhood teachers engaged in a public preK professional development program. We examine how developing teacher identities mediated engagement with the discourses of developmentally appropriate practice, early mathematics, and funds of knowledge and how they connected present practice to an imagined future. We found that helping them to connect practice experience and new mathematical content knowledge through play allowed them to envision a meaningful place for math with young children.


A Glimpse Into Secondary Students’ Understanding Of Functions, Jonathan L. Brendefur, Gwyneth Hughes, Robert Ely Jan 2015

A Glimpse Into Secondary Students’ Understanding Of Functions, Jonathan L. Brendefur, Gwyneth Hughes, Robert Ely

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article we examine how secondary school students think about functional relationships. More specifically, we examined seven students’ intuitive knowledge in regards to representing two real-world situations with functions. We found students do not tend to represent functional relationships with coordinate graphs even though they are able to do so. Instead, these students tend to represent the physical characteristics of the situation. In addition, we discovered that middleschool students had sophisticated ideas of dependency and covariance. All the students were able to use their models of the situation to generalize and make predictions. These findings suggest that secondary students …


Teacher Mathematics Language: Its Use In The Early Childhood Classroom And Relationship With Young Children's Learning, Emma Whitman Jan 2015

Teacher Mathematics Language: Its Use In The Early Childhood Classroom And Relationship With Young Children's Learning, Emma Whitman

Dissertations

Early mathematics instruction has been linked to children's later outcomes in both literacy and mathematics. One important component of this instruction, teachers' mathematics language in the early childhood classroom, has been connected to children's mathematical gains. However, this work is lacking in both scope and depth. The objective of this study was to provide a review of the use of math language by early childhood teachers and address the issues neglected in the current literature. The study looks at: the type of content that teachers' mathematics language emphasizes, the mediating effects of settings on the mathematics language that is used, …


A Program Evaluation Of My MathTm: Improving Student Computational Fluency Through Inquiry-Based Instruction, Andrea Townsend Jan 2015

A Program Evaluation Of My MathTm: Improving Student Computational Fluency Through Inquiry-Based Instruction, Andrea Townsend

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This program evaluation study addressed a critical deficiency in early childhood math proficiency for a local urban school district. To strengthen students' skills in mathematics, the district adopted the Common Core State Standards and piloted an inquiry-based instructional program called My Math. The purpose of this project study was to determine the extent to which My Math met the goals of improving Grades K-2 students' math proficiency. The conceptual framework was based on theories of multiple intelligences, social learning, and foundations of social development. The National Program Evaluation Standards were used to guide the program evaluation. The research questions centered …


Pre-Service Elementary Teachers' Affective Dispositions Toward Mathematics, Benjamin R. Mcdermott Jan 2015

Pre-Service Elementary Teachers' Affective Dispositions Toward Mathematics, Benjamin R. Mcdermott

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to measure and report pre-service elementary teachers' affective domain of productive disposition toward mathematics during the semester they were enrolled in a reform-based mathematics methods course. The study attempted to observe and report dynamic and enduring aspects of disposition as well as the perceived reasons for any changes, or lack thereof, in disposition. The rationale for focusing on disposition is related to Kilpatrick, Swafford, and Findell's (2001) inclusion of productive disposition as one of the five interdependent strands of the mathematical proficiency conceptual framework. Furthermore, it has been argued that dispositions develop at very …


Effects Of Embedded Study-Skills Instruction On High School Students' Attitudes Toward Mathematics, Alberta Diahann Banks Jan 2015

Effects Of Embedded Study-Skills Instruction On High School Students' Attitudes Toward Mathematics, Alberta Diahann Banks

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The target school used embedded study skills in Algebra I classes to improve attitudes toward mathematics. The purpose of this sequential, explanatory mixed-methods study was to examine the effect of embedded study-skills instruction on students' attitudes toward mathematics. Metacognitive theory was used for this study's framework. Participants were 28 Grade 9 and 10 students who repeated Algebra I. Quantitative data from the Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory assessed students' pre- and post-instruction attitudes toward mathematics in 4 domains. Data were analyzed using 4 independent samples t tests for students who did and did not receive embedded instruction. Qualitative data were collected …