Education Commons^™

Analyzing State Attempts At Implementing The Common Core State Standards For High School Geometry: Case Studies Of Utah And New York, Edward Steltenpohl

Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes two state attempts at aligning curricula to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in secondary school geometry. The education departments of Utah and New York have approved curricula aimed at aligning to the Common Core State Standards: the Mathematics Vision Project (MVP) and EngageNY (ENY) respectively. This study measures the extent to which those curricula align with the content demands of the relevant Common Core Standards. The results indicate that, while the two curricula vary in structure and assumptions about learners, each one aligns well with the Common Core State Standards in secondary school geometry. We conclude …

The Word Problem Factor: Assessing The Ability Of Utah High School Career And Technical Education Students To Do The Math Involved In Formulating And Calculating Energy Cost Factors, Kristen Bentley

Theses and Dissertations

Much research has been done showing the difficulty people have with word problems. This has been shown to be true for many types of word problems and for different demographics. Questions have remained unanswered regarding the reasons for this difficulty. It has been unclear if the word problems were hard because the people had forgotten or had not yet learned how to do the math calculations involved or for some other reason. This study deals with high school students who are currently in a high school level math class. They were given an assessment involving word problems and number-only problems. …

Language Use In Mathematics Textbooks Written In English And Spanish, Kailie Ann Bertoch

Theses and Dissertations

Research has suggested that although mathematics is a universal language, the notation, algorithms, and language in which it is taught varies from country to country. The literature has addressed the challenges associated with understanding the language of mathematics in English. Variable is a topic of mathematics where the literature has documented students' difficulty understanding the language of mathematics. Part of that difficulty is attributed to the fact that mathematics and English each have their own register and at times the differences in these registers conflict. This study examined the introduction and use of variable in the middle school textbooks of …

The Effect Of Students' Mathematical Beliefs On Knowledge Transfer, Kristen Adams

Theses and Dissertations

Students learn many different concepts throughout their mathematical careers. In order to be successful in mathematics, students should be able to transfer these mathematical concepts learned in one situation and apply them to a new situation. There are many factors that might affect how students transfer knowledge; however research has focused mostly upon cognitive factors, even though affective factors might also exhibit a strong influence. This study examined how students' mathematical beliefs, specifically beliefs about mathematics education and self-efficacy, affect the transfer process. Data were collected from three middle school students. These data were collected through in-class observations, students' written …

The Cape Verde Project: Teaching Ecologically Sensitive And Socially Responsive Design, N Jonathan Unaka

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation chronicles an evolving teaching philosophy. It was an attempt to develop a way to teach ecological design in architecture informed by ethical responses to ecological devastation and social injustice. The world faces numerous social and ecological challenges at global scales. Recent Industrialization has brought about improved life expectancies and human comforts, coinciding with expanded civic rights and personal freedom, and increased wealth and opportunities. Unfortunately, industrialization also caused wide-scale pollution, mass extinctions and anthropogenic global climate change. Industrialization also reduced the earth's capacity to meet human resource demands - demands that are ever increasing due to population growth, …

Effective Elements Of Science Teacher Professional Development, Amy Jean Zientek

Theses and Dissertations

Educational reform efforts to improve students' learning outcomes are often present in teacher professional development opportunities; however, the structure and design of these opportunities vary and often focus on a homogenous student population; that is, White students in suburban schools. Reform efforts in teacher professional development that aim to educate teachers not only about science content and pedagogy, but also about practices that aim to reach a diverse student population is needed. This study examines three, science teacher summer professional development (PD) programs [SUN, SEPA, and CLA], and explores how programs affect teacher learning outcome(s) and any subsequent translation into …

A Qualitative Study Of Florida Tech Graduate Teaching Assistants’ Response To Coaching, Video Playback, And Coaching Paired With Video Playback With Regard To Their Concerns, Self-Reflections, And Practice Of Teaching, Angela Marie Fennell

Theses and Dissertations

Florida Tech’s campus-wide GTA professional development training, the GTA Seminar, has no clear theory on which it was designed, employs only measures of satisfaction and open-ended feedback, and performs limited follow-up on GTAs. Further, two pilot studies I conducted indicate that GTAs’ concerns may not be fully addressed by this seminar. This is notable because the GTA Seminar is often the only means of professional development available to more than half of the GTAs on campus. The purpose of my study was to investigate 13 GTAs’ teaching concerns, self-reflections, and practice when implementing three professional development sequences during their assignments …

Mathematical Telling In The Context Of Teacher Interventions With Collaborative Groups, Brandon Kyle Singleton

Theses and Dissertations

Teacher telling is underrepresented in the mathematics education reform literature and deserves additional scrutiny. This case study examined a skilled teacher's telling practices during a university mathematics content course for pre-service elementary teachers. I identified telling practices through discourse analysis, attending to the presence of mathematics and the contribution of new structure or ideas from the teacher. The teacher utilized seven unique types of mathematical telling while supporting collaborative group work on tasks. The study identified subtle telling, implicit telling, and explicit telling. The results suggest that mathematical telling is an integral part of the teacher's role in inquiry-based instruction …

Investigating Children's Intuitive And Analytical Thinking About Path Length As A Developmental Phenomenon, Cheryl Lynn Eames

Theses and Dissertations

Children's conceptions of length measurement has been the focus of research that has built on the work of Piaget and his colleagues to produce developmental accounts for the acquisition of conceptual and procedural knowledge. Prior research focused on children's developing conceptions of length measurement for straight or rectilinear paths; however, little is known about how these conceptions grow beyond the elementary grades. The present study increased the scope of this research beyond elementary grades to include middle and secondary level students, exploring the development of students' intuitive and analytical thinking for determining the length of a curved path across a …

An Analysis And Comparison Of The Common Core State Standards For Mathematics And The Singapore Mathematics Curriculum Framework, Heidi Ann Ertl

Theses and Dissertations

In this analysis and comparison we look at the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the Singapore Mathematics Curriculum Framework, standards documents that guide primary and secondary mathematics education in the United States and Singapore respectively. The official Common Core State Standards for Mathematics website claims that the standards have been developed to be "internationally benchmarked, so that all students are prepared for the 21st century". Singapore has recently been recognized as a world leader in mathematics education. We investigate the claim that the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics are internationally benchmarked by comparing the Common Core State …

Self-Regulated Learning (Srl) Microanalysis For Mathematical Problem Solving: A Comparison Of A Srl Event Measure, Questionnaires, And A Teacher Rating Scale, Gregory Lee Callan

Theses and Dissertations

The current dissertation examined the validity of a context-specific assessment tool, called Self-regulated learning (SRL) microanalysis, for measuring self-regulated learning (SRL) during mathematical problem solving. SRL microanalysis is a structured interview that entails assessing respondents' regulatory processes as they engage with a task of interest.

Participants for this dissertation consisted of 83 eighth grade students attending a large urban school district in Midwestern USA. Students were administered the SRL microanalytic interview while completing a set of mathematical word problems to provide a measure of their real-time thoughts and regulatory behaviors. The SRL microanalytic interview targeted the SRL processes of goal-setting, …

An Investigation Of How Preservice Teachers Design Mathematical Tasks, Elizabeth Karen Zwahlen

Theses and Dissertations

The tasks with which students engage in their mathematics courses determine, for a large part, what students learn. Therefore, it is essential that teachers are able to design tasks that are worthwhile for developing mathematical understanding. Since practicing teachers seldom incorporate worthwhile mathematical tasks in their lessons, we would expect that they did not become proficient at designing worthwhile tasks while in their teacher education programs. This thesis describes a study that investigated what preservice secondary teachers attend to as they attempt to design worthwhile mathematical tasks. Three participants were selected from a course at a large private university where …

An Examination Of Teachers' Perceptions And Implementation Of Learning Trajectory Based Professional Development, Megan Hope Wickstrom

Theses and Dissertations

The aims of this study were to investigate how teachers incorporated learning trajectory based research into practice, specifically how they made sense of students' thinking in relation to classroom instruction. To conduct this study, I used an ethno-methodological approach (Garfinkel, 1967) across several months, with three fourth-grade teachers in a diverse, high needs school. Each of the teachers participated in professional development on using learning trajectories (Sarama & Clements, 2009) as a tool to formatively assess individual student's thinking as a means to inform classroom instruction. During the study, the teachers were asked to conduct clinical interviews with students in …