Education Commons^™

The International Crisis In Numeracy Education, Nathan D. Grawe

Numeracy

The OECD recently released results from the 2022 administration of the Programme for International Student Assessment test. As other studies suggest, pandemic mitigation policies resulted in deep learning loss including in basic mathematics which forms the foundation of numeracy. Perhaps of greater concern, however, in many countries pandemic effects amplify declining performance that dates back a decade or more. Losses of two or more years' worth of mathematics education are not uncommon among developed countries. The editorial makes an urgent call for research that identifies practical steps to reverse these trends.

Catalyzing Change For Equitable Participation, Liza Bondurant, Seema Rivera

Journal of Practitioner Research

This manuscript discusses the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycles designed to help math teacher-researchers (TRs) create more equitable discourse patterns in their classrooms. Before the first cycle, TRs were asked to complete gender and race implicit assessment tests (IATs). Then, TRs planned and recorded a video of themselves facilitating a math discussion. Next, math teacher educators (MTEs) used the Equity QUantified In Participation (EQUIP) classroom observation instrument to code and analyze the discussion. Subsequently, TRs had an opportunity to reflect on the EQUIP and IAT results and set goals for making their teaching practices more equitable. MTEs provided guidance …

An Introduction To The Algebra Revolution, Art Bardige

Numeracy

Bardige, Art. 2022. The Algebra Revolution: How Spreadsheets Eliminate Algebra 1 to Transform Education; (Bookbaby) 135 pp. UNSPSC 55111505.

The Algebra Revolution: How Spreadsheets Eliminate Algebra 1 to Transform Education argues that Algebra 1 can be eliminated by teaching mathematics through spreadsheets. Such a change would eliminate the greatest roadblock to student achievement.

Covid Learning Loss: A Call To Action, Nathan D. Grawe

Numeracy

The COVID-19 pandemic and policy responses designed to mitigate transmission have caused deep and persistent mathematics learning loss among K–12 students. While initial data might have been read optimistically as a blip that would reverse once schools returned to normal, 2023 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that losses persist. While the NAEP does not directly measure quantitative reasoning (QR), the data present a disturbing picture for QR instruction and call for new lines of research that inform QR pedagogical response.

Bite-Sized Quantitative Reasoning Essays: A Review Of Numbers Don’T Lie: 71 Stories To Help Us Understand The Modern World (2020), By Vaclav Smil, Samuel L. Tunstall

Numeracy

In Numbers Don’t Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World (2020), Vaclav Smil draws on his interdisciplinary background in science, public policy, and history to provide readers with 71 short essays that help us better understand aspects of the world–including its people, environment, energy consumption, and present crises (among other things). In most of his essays, Smil utilizes both data and reasoning with data to shed light on diverse topics, with issues ranging from happiness rankings and vaccine payoffs to chicken production and diesel engines. Though the book arguably has some flaws, its easy-to-digest essays–many of which …

Shared Philosophies, Conflict, And Critical Reflection: Developing Productive Teacher Collaboration, Erin Nerlino

Journal of Practitioner Research

As top-down mandates regarding what collaboration should look like continue to evolve from the policy level, it is critical to engage the knowledge of teachers – the ones experiencing the collaboration – to inform teacher learning as well as the conditions within schools that help productive collaboration partnerships to evolve. This article seeks to examine the foundational aspects that underpin a mutually productive collaborative relationship between myself – a full time high school English teacher – and another full-time English teacher at the public, regional school in the Northeast where we taught. Utilizing a participant research design, I drew upon …

Rethinking In-School Suspension Through Restorative Practices, Lacey Bass, Rachel E. Gaines

Journal of Practitioner Research

This self-study focuses on the implementation of restorative practices (RP) with high school students assigned in-school suspension (ISS) for violating school rules. The investigation focuses on the use of two restorative practices (community circles and digital modules) as modes of restoration and behavioral change. Analysis of school disciplinary records and teacher reflections indicate that, overall, students were less likely to be referred to ISS again after completing the RP program and remained invested in meeting their behavioral goals. The success of the program appeared to be rooted in the ways the teacher built trusting, collaborative relationships through community circles and …

Engaging Teacher Candidates In Teacher Inquiry: Questions And Responses, Hilarie B. Welsh

Journal of Practitioner Research

This article reports on transitioning the focus of a general secondary methods course to incorporate teacher inquiry. The author describes the shifted nature of the course, which led to empowered teacher candidates who benefited from engaging in teacher inquiry cycles even after graduation. The author then uses a question and response format to address common questions that arise in conversations about incorporating teacher inquiry for the first time.

How The Number Line Can Be Used To Promote Students' Understanding Of The Normal Distribution, Danri H. Delport

Numeracy

A strong foundation in early number concepts is crucial for students’ future success in statistics. Despite its importance in statistics, many first-year students struggle to comprehend the normal distribution due to a lack of basic number sense. Students get confused about the order and magnitude of negative z-scores on a standard normal curve or when problems about normally distributed random variables are presented in word questions which involve phrases that indicate inequalities. As a result, students shade wrong areas on the bell-shaped curve when they have to calculate probabilities for normally distributed variables. Visual representations such as the number …

Covid-19: A Developing Crisis For Quantitative Reasoning, Nathan D. Grawe

Numeracy

Assessment data show substantial learning losses resulting from pandemic-era teaching and learning. While all learning domains have been affected, mathematics performance shows particularly large losses among elementary and secondary school students. Advocates for quantitative reasoning in high schools and colleges should anticipate weaker levels of basic numeracy among entering cohorts for a decade to come. As a consequence, the urgency to reform curricula and student support has never been greater.

Book Review: Integrations: The Struggle For Racial Equality And Civic Renewal In Public Education, Michael A. Ready

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Investigation Of School Dropout Among Secondary School Institution, Hasan Dirik, Hasan Arslan

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

The aim of this study is to examine the reasons for school leavers at the secondary education level, to make suggestions to prevent these dropouts, and to reveal the opinions of individuals having left school about school dropout. In this study, both qualitative and quantitative research models were used. The sample consists of 221 students studying at eight secondary education institutions and 38 individuals who have dropped out of the school, also to deepen the research results eight individuals dropped out. To collect data, two scales and a semi-structured interview form were used. Quantitative data were analyzed, parametric and non-parametric …

Using Avatars To Address Teacher Self-Efficacy, Chancey Bosch, Trevor Ellis

Journal of Global Education and Research

Technology-enhanced learning continues to provide opportunities for increased interventions in educational programing. For teacher education programs, novelty pales in comparison to providing meaningful instruction and enduring outcomes. The use of avatars has provided integration of research evidence that increases intended behaviors; however, research is lacking on teacher self-efficacy change via an avatar experience. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between teacher self-efficacy and avatar use in a teacher education program. A relational study using both parametric and non-parametric designs for four different samples indicated a significant relationship between avatar intervention and teacher self-efficacy in classroom management, …

Simplified But Not The Same: Tracing Numeracy Events Through Manually Simplified Newsela Articles, Ellen C. Agnello

Numeracy

New York-based education startup Newsela has quickly gained popularity with K-12 educators in the six years since its launch. Its website boasts that it serves 90% of schools in the United States including the 1.5 million teachers they employ and their 20 million students. But what makes it so popular? Teachers are drawn to its Common Core-aligned informational texts which facilitate content-area connections while exposing students to important current events. Likely the most appealing aspect of the platform is its compatibility with differentiation, as it makes available five iterations of each article at varying levels of complexity or Lexile which …

Exploring Implicit Bias To Evaluate Teacher Candidates' Ethical Practice In The Internship, Jamie Silverman, Jessica Shiller

Journal of Practitioner Research

To create an equitable and ethical learning environment in the classroom requires teacher candidates (TCs) to develop positive relationships with students and to reflect on who they are. Using the elements of Richard Milner’s (2007) Framework of Researcher Racial and Cultural Positionality, this article presents an account of an innovative practice in how to engage secondary education TCs in a reflection of implicit biases, and how to interrupt them to become more ethical professionals. This article takes InTASC 9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice as a point of departure and describes how a new teacher mentor piloted a series of …

Differentiated Homework: Impact On Student Engagement, Gearoid Keane, Manuela Heinz

Journal of Practitioner Research

This paper describes a mixed methods practitioner research study that aimed to enhance student engagement with homework. Based on a comprehensive literature review and data from a pre-study questionnaire, a differentiated homework strategy was designed by the teacher researcher. Students were assigned homework once a week to allow them to balance homework requirements more successfully with out-of-school activities. They were given a choice of three tasks each week, ranging from lower to higher difficulty levels. Task difficulty levels were not stated, nor were tasks ordered by difficulty. Students’ attitudes towards homework improved over the course of the study and completion …

Crossing The Final Frontier: Exploring The Numeracy Demands Of Texts Read In English Language Arts, Ellen C. Agnello, Kevin M. Agnello

Numeracy

Incited by the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ 2009 Reading Framework and the Common Core State Standards, recent shifts in national education goals have urged English language arts teachers to make curriculum adjustments. One such adjustment is to shift their focus from fiction, which has traditionally dominated the curriculum, to nonfiction. Doing so has the potential to increase students’ exposure to informational texts which often employ numeric modes to represent quantitative data, thus necessitating numeracy knowledge. This article presents a study of 60 nonfiction texts taught in secondary ELA classrooms. Through analysis of these texts, it addresses the questions: Which …

Developing Mathematics Teachers’ Attention To Quantitative Reasoning In Task Design: A Modeling Approach, David Glassmeyer

Numeracy

This study examines how a models-and-modeling perspective affected teachers' attention to quantitative reasoning in task design. A Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA) was implemented with 21 teachers over four weeks, challenging teachers to design a quantitative reasoning task for their students. Teachers’ initial quantitative reasoning tasks did not incorporate quantities or quantitative relationships, two essential components of quantitative reasoning. As teachers revised their tasks through the MEA, most teachers began attending to these components. This article details how a modeling approach to teacher education provided a method to describe and support teachers to incorporate quantitative reasoning in their classroom tasks, though attending …

On "Icky" Data, The Political Classroom, And Towards Equity And Social Justice In Mathematics Education: A Conversation With Tonya Bartell, Samuel L. Tunstall, Oyemolade Osibodu, Tonya Gau Bartell

Numeracy

Tonya G. Bartell, ed. 2018. Towards Equity and Social Justice in Mathematics Education (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing) 341 pp. ISBN 978-3319929064.

This brief interview with Tonya Bartell introduces Towards Equity and Social Justice in Mathematics Education to the Numeracy audience. The interviewers also discuss with Tonya connections between quantitative literacy and mathematics for social justice, particularly in the context of US K-12 schooling. Tonya shares her perspective on topics ranging from the placement of quantitative literacy in K-12 mathematics education and how one might get started in incorporating a social justice lens into their teaching to paradigms for research …

A Pre-Service Math Teacher's Analysis Of Practice Through The Lens Of Research, Andre Vaquero, Laura D. Sabella

Journal of Practitioner Research

Understanding the prior knowledge and schema students bring to a lesson is important (Veenman, 1984), and without that crucial understanding, a teacher can create a gap between what students can actually learn and what the teacher is trying to teach (Schraw, 2006). After a pre-service math teacher realized valuable instructional time was wasted when students could not follow his instruction, he undertook this study to examine scaffolding as a problem of practice. In a high school Algebra 1 class, he taught a series of lessons during a unit on rational functions with a focus on understanding student foundational knowledge and …

Impact On Student Learning: Monitoring Student Progress, Deanna T. Vaccaro, Laura D. Sabella

Journal of Practitioner Research

Monitoring each individual student’s learning can be a challenge. It is easy for a teacher to ask the whole group a question, but doing so is not an effective strategy to determine an individual student’s progress. In Florida, student teachers are required to ask the question, “What is my impact on student learning?” as a part of his/her final internship experience. This study takes place in the final internship of a Secondary English Education major’s eleventh grade English Honors class at a high performing, high achieving high school in one of the largest school districts in the country. A class …

Inquiry, Discovery, And The Complexities Of Teaching: Learning From The Research Of Practitioners, Angela Hooser, Laura Sabella

Journal of Practitioner Research

In this opening article, Guest Editors Angela Hooser and Laura Sabella define the purpose of this special themed issue of Journal of Practitioner Research: Inquiry, Discovery, and the Complexities of Teaching: Learning from the Research of Practitioners and introduce the seven pieces of teacher research published in this volume that encapsulate this theme.

Quantitative Map Literacy: A Cross Between Map Literacy And Quantitative Literacy, Ming Xie, H. L. Vacher, Steven Reader, Elizabeth Walton

Numeracy

We define quantitative map literacy (QML), a cross between map literacy and quantitative literacy (QL), as the concepts and skills required to accurately read, use, interpret, and understand the quantitative information embedded in a geospatial representation of data on a geographic background. Long used as tools in technical geographic fields, maps are now a common vehicle for communicating quantitative information to the public. As such, QML has potential to stand alongside health numeracy and financial literacy as an identifiable subdomain of transdisciplinary QL.

What concepts and skills are crucial for QML? The obvious answer is, “It depends on the type …

Critical Collaborative Inquiries In Social Studies: Fostering Inclusion, Engagement And Literacy, Sara Lewis-Bernstein Young Ed.D.

Journal of Practitioner Research

Collaborative inquiry groups are a well-advocated tool to support comprehension and collaboration, but how do critical collaborative inquiries support students with different levels of engagement and academic performances in social studies to develop critical literacies? This article responds to the research question through case studies of two high school students who engaged in a critical collaborative inquiry project. One student was a senior labeled with disabilities, who struggled with academic literacies, graduated at the bottom of her class, and said that she hates school. The other student was a junior who thrived in school, mastered a range of academic literacies, …

Numeracy Across The Curriculum In Australian Schools: Teacher Education Students’ And Practicing Teachers’ Views And Understandings Of Numeracy, Helen J. Forgasz, Gilah Leder, Jennifer Hall

Numeracy

In this article, we confront the challenges to teacher education students and practicing teachers raised by the concept of numeracy and its place in the curriculum. In the Australian Curriculum, there is an expectation that teachers at all grade levels and in all subject areas develop students' numeracy capabilities. At Monash University, a public, research-intensive university, the largest university in Australia, graduate level teacher education students are now required to complete a course entitled Numeracy for Learners and Teachers. We describe the content of this course and, from an online survey, report findings of the impact on students' understandings …

Reception Of "Mecanoscrit" By Secondary School Students: A Case Study, Anna Moreno-Bedmar

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

És ben sabut que Manuel de Pedrolo ha Estat dels ONU autors MÉS llegits pèls Lectors catalans joves durante dècades, sevamajoria Gràcies a su més emblemàtics llibre de ciència ficció, Mecanoscrit del segon origen (1973), que originalment no hi ha a els dirigeixen. Independentment de les Raons, l'escriptor De La regi de Segarra a Catalunya ÉS VA Fer famòs Quan EL llibre VA Ser Triat bany les Aules de Primària i la notícia ÉS VA estendre rapidament Entre a els mestres A la fi dels anys i Setanta Vuitanta. A partir d'Llavors és va Fer muden popular. Originalment és tractava …