0

Eric.ed.gov – Studies in Teaching: 2012 Research Digest. Action Research Projects Presented at Annual Research Forum (Winston-Salem, North Carolina, June 29, 2012)

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This document presents the proceedings of the 17th Annual Research Forum held June 29, 2012, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included herein are the following 25 action research papers: (1) “Reading and Writing”: A Study Comparing the Strengths of Peer Review and Visible Author Writing Strategies (Elizabeth Behar); (2) Project Based Learning: Is this New Method an Effective Educational Approach to Learning? (Camille Collier); (3) Building a Sense of Community in a High School Physics Class (Nick Corak); (4) Seeing Double: Visual Media and Expanding Definitions of Literacy in the English Classroom (John Randall Davis); (5) Improving Student Attitudes towards Science through Scientific Module Instruction (Carson V. Dobrin); (6) Web 2.0 in High School Social Studies: What Happens? (Kate Douglass); (7) Creative Expression in… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Multiple Languages and the School Curriculum: Experiences from Tanzania

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This is a research report on children’s use of multiple languages and the school curriculum. The study explored factors that trigger use of, and fluency in, multiple languages; and how fluency in multiple languages relates to thought processes and school performance. Advantages and disadvantages of using only one of the languages spoken were explored. Data were collected in five schools in three regions in Tanzania. This context provided multilingual children for the study. Data included faculty and parent questionnaires, parent interview notes, teacher observation notes on children&’s interactions, and performance scores as secondary data. The data were processed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 15.0) as well as content analysis. Results revealed school related and family related factors that trigger and support childhood multilingualism,… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Understanding the Role of Partnership Configuration in the NSF MSP Program

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Math and Science Partnership Program (MSP) promotes the development, implementation, and sustainability of exemplary partnerships to produce high-quality math and science education at all K-12 levels. The MSP Program anticipates that the partnerships will be instrumental in improving student achievement, as well as reducing achievement gaps among student populations differentiated by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, or disability, a strategy advocated by Haycock, Hart, and Irvine (1991). This paper explores how different configurations influence the types of partnering and educational activities undertaken by partnerships. It further provides illustrative examples of education partnerships from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Math and Science Partnership (MSP) Program, which calls for inter-institutional partnerships among institutions of higher education (IHEs), local education agencies (LEAs), state education agencies (SEAs),… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – A Constructivist Approach to the Design and Delivery of an Online Professional Development Course: A Case of the iEARN Online Course

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This study examined the International Education and Resource Network Science Technology and Math (iEARN-STM) online professional development course. The study used the constructivist framework as the conceptual model to examine the way in which the constructivist theory has shaped the design and implementation of the course, as reflected by the interactions of a cohort of participants in the course. The participants were 28 educators enrolled in the course, who were either teacher educators or teachers, working in different educational institutions in different countries throughout the world. The purpose of the study was to understand how the iEARN online professional development course supported teachers’ learning through effective discourse in an online environment and to identify the constructivist learning principles that were behind the success of the course. The… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – The Influence of Testing on Teaching Math and Science in Grades 4-12.

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This booklet reports the results of a recent National Science Foundation study of the impact of mandated testing programs on curriculum and instruction in elementary and secondary mathematics and science education, especially the impact on teachers with large percentages of minority students. The study included three strands: (1) an item-by-item analysis of the most widely-used standardized tests and textbook tests in mathematics and science for grades 4, 8, and selected high school subjects; (2) a nationwide questionnaire survey responded to by 2,229 mathematics and science teachers in grades 4-12; and (3) interviews with 200 teachers and 100 administrators in 6 urban districts in 6 states nationwide. Included is a figure titled “Percent of items testing types and levels of thinking” and two tables titled “Percent of teachers… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – A Case Study: Teaching Engineering Concepts in Science

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This study was conducted to describe a high school engineering curriculum, identify teaching strategies used to increase math and science literacy, and discover challenges and constraints that occur during its development and delivery, as well as what strategies are used to overcome these obstacles. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the engineering instructor. In addition, students were observed and curriculum documents, teacher lesson plans, and teacher resources were examined. Concepts created the platform for delivery, curricular trial and error was at work, science and engineering competitions were leveraged as a basis for learning activities, and project based learning and teaching was critical. There was a clear emphasis on creative thought and work. Assessment of student learning was dubious and elusive and stakeholders tended to be uneasy with this… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Content Analysis of the Studies in Turkey on the Ability of Critical Thinking

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Critical thinking, along with other skills, is included as a basic skill in the constructive education program that has been in use in Turkey since 2005. Therefore, a large increase has been observed in studies on critical thinking skills since 2005. In this frame, the present study was conducted in order to systematically examine research papers on critical thinking skills in terms of several variables published between the years 2005 and 2014 in national journals which are indexed by SSCI and the ULAKBIM social sciences database. In this context, a total of 93 articles from 29 different journals were analyzed using the NVivo 10, SPSS 18, and Microsoft Excel programs and performing content analysis which is widely used in qualitative studies. According to the findings, a large… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Identifying Indicators Related to Constructs for Engineering Design Outcome

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This study ranked constructs articulated by Childress and Rhodes (2008) and identified the key indicators for each construct as a starting point to explore what should be included on an instrument to measure the engineering design process and outcomes of students in high schools that use the PLTW and EbDTM curricula in Idaho. A case-study design was used. Data were collected in two stages. In the first stage, a content analysis was conducted for PLTW and EbDTM curricula to identify the indicators that are associated with the six constructs articulated by Childress and Rhodes (2008). In the second stage, the constructs and key indicators or concepts were placed on a survey and sent to experts for them to rate their importance for assessment and their difficulty to… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Instrumental Appropriation of a Collaborative, Dynamic-Geometry Environment and Geometrical Understanding

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: To understand learners’ appropriation of technological tools and geometrical understanding, we draw on the theory of instrumental genesis (Lonchamp, 2012; Rabardel & Beguin, 2005), which seeks to explain how learners accomplish tasks interacting with tools. To appropriate a tool, learners develop their own knowledge of how to use it, which turns the tool into an instrument that mediates an activity between learners and a task. The tool used in our study is the Virtual Math Teams with GeoGebra (VMTwG) environment. It contains a chat panel and multiuser version of GeoGebra. The learners are seven middle and high school mathematics teachers who participated in a professional development course in which they collaborated synchronously in VMTwG to solve geometrical tasks. We use conventional content analysis to analyze the work… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Education Supervisors’ Views on the New Curriculum and Its Implementation in Primary Schools

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Problem Statement: The literature has analyzed the new curriculum from different perspectives, and both the positive and negative sides have been taken into account. In this context, education supervisors’ views of the curriculum have been a topic of curiosity. It is expected that the analysis on of the primary schools curriculum from the angle of this research will make a great contribution. Purpose of Study: The purpose of this research is to examine the curriculum in primary schools, instructional methods and techniques, instructional evaluation, extracurricular activities and the education of first literacy according to the views of the education supervisors. Methods: Research data was obtained using a qualitative research method. Open-ended questions were answered by education supervisors. The study’s population was composed of education supervisors and the… Continue Reading