Education Commons^™

Assessing Students' Understanding Of Variability And Graph Interpretation Through An Authentic Science Investigation, William M. Schlager

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis research combined efforts of two existing projects at the University of Maine in collaboration with the Schoodic Institute, the Acadia Learning Snowpack Project and the Maine Data Literacy Project. The Snowpack Project provided a context to explore student learning of variability and graphing skills by gathering data on snowfall and accumulation throughout the winter and using the data to ask and answer a scientific question. The Maine Data Literacy Project provided a framework and instruments for assessing students’ understanding of variability and graph interpretation skills.

The first goal of this research was to measure student learning about variability …

Choice-Based Assessments And Their Use With 1:1 Technology Devices, Joshua Ottow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Choice-based assessments are classroom activities in which students are given some element of choice in how they meet defined learning objectives. As educators seek to adequately prepare students for the rapidly changing world that they will enter after high school, they have placed a greater focus on the types of assessment practices used in the classroom. Choice-based assessments, particularly when used with a 1:1 technology device, may have the impact of increasing student motivation to learn and enhancing the development of skills that they may need after high school (Schwartz & Arena, 2013; Tapscott, 2008). To date, there has been …

A Promising Candidate: An Exploration Of Graduate Matriculation Genres, Megan D. Bishop Gervais

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study emerges from the author’s personal experience of interacting with unfamiliar genres as she prepared her application for a graduate program in English. In a liminal space between graduating from her undergraduate program and applying for admission to a graduate program, her interaction with graduate admission genres was fraught with tension and a lack of the assumed knowledge that would inform her on how to strategically interact with these genres. This lack of tacit knowledge and absence of scaffolding lead her to compose a “statement of purpose” that did not adequately demonstrate that she was a “promising” graduate student, …

Inconsistent Conceptions Of Acceleration Contributing To Formative Assessment Limitations, Gregory D. Kranich

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education has become a national priority in light of measures indicating marginal student interest and success in the United States. Just as evidence is integral to policy decisions, so too do teachers depend on evidence to inform instructional choices. Classroom assessment remains a touchstone means of gathering such evidence as indicators of students’ progress, and increasingly, teachers are designing, implementing, and interpreting assessments in collaboration with one another.

In rural Maine, the work of the Maine Physical Sciences Partnership (MainePSP) has enabled science educators to come together as a supportive professional community. We focused …