eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The purpose of this practicum was to increase motivation and self-confidence of grade four students in mathematics achievement. Measured were the increase in the number of students displaying mastery of the times-tables, increase in the number of students making a gain on a math post-test, and increase in the number of students liking mathematics. Administered to the students were a math attitude questionnaire and a math pretest on basic math skills to determine the students’ attitude toward math and to determine the students’ performance level. Mental Math activities, math games design contests, in-class competitions, grade level competition, computer, calculators, systematic reviews, student-teacher interaction, and projects were used to help increase students’ interest and to increase math achievement. This study includes the following chapters: (1) “Introduction”; (2) “Study… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Constructivist approaches to mathematics instruction based on the standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) have been widely advocated and are expanding in use. However, many educators express a need for constructivist approaches that provide specific student materials, assessments, teachers’ manuals, professional development, and other supports to enable a broad range of teachers to succeed with a broad range of children. MathWings, part of a comprehensive school reform effort funded by New American Schools, was designed to accomplish this goal. In grades 3 through 5, MathWings provides a practical, comprehensive approach based on the NCTM standards. Three evaluations have examined the impact of MathWings. One, involving four rural Maryland schools, found substantially greater gains on the mathematics sections of the Maryland School Performance Assessment… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In the axis of basic skills and values, students’ enjoyment of mathematics lesson and the realization of learning by taking a certain distance depend on the appreciation of the effort of the individual. Cooperative learning provides this requirement with a great deal of reward and success. Success increases individual’s self-confidence and making him/her more powerful and positive in mathematical learning. By developing an individual’s positive attitude, mathematical barriers that may adversely affect his/her success in social interaction with friends might be removed. An individual can also help his/her friends in learning and reinforce his belief and self-esteem. This study aims to reveal the effect of cooperative learning method on students’ academic achievement and attitudes towards mathematics in primary school fourth grade math class. The study was carried… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: According to the United Nations Human Development Report (2016), poor, marginalized, and vulnerable groups still face substantial barriers to access post-secondary education and employment. These marginalized and vulnerable groups include women, girls, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, migrants and refugees, the LGBTI community, and those discriminated because of their socio-economic status (UN Human Development Report (2016). Increasingly, proficiency in mathematics is required for careers and for solving daily problems in life (Starkey & Kline, 2008; Ramaa, 2015). Basic numerical, mathematical, and scientific skills are an important mechanism to further education and to enable individuals to improve their job market potential. The risk of underachievement in mathematics around the world is greatest for students from low-income backgrounds, as well as linguistic and ethnic minorities (Ramaa, 2015;… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Education researchers and policymakers agree that teachers differ in terms of quality and that quality matters for student achievement. Despite prodigious amounts of research, however, debate still persists about the causal relationship between specific teacher credentials and student achievement. In this paper, we use a rich administrative data set from North Carolina to explore a range of questions related to the relationship between teacher characteristics and credentials on the one hand and student achievement on the other. Though the basic questions underlying this research are not new–and, indeed, have been explored in many papers over the years within the rubric of the “education production function”–the availability of data on all teachers and students in North Carolina over a ten-year period allows us to explore them in more… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This paper revisits existing experimental work on Teach For America (TFA) and extends it by examining treatment effects across the distribution of student achievement. TFA is a rapidly expanding teacher preparation program that currently serves over half a million students in low-income districts across the country. Previous research results did not have notable variation by subgroup. Estimates were inaccurate due to the treatment of a non-response code as a valid response value. Revised estimates confirm positive effects for math and not reading, but show that TFA teachers were especially effective for African American students, but not Hispanics, and for females, but not males. In addition to examining differences across subgroup, others have argued that a distributional approach is important for thoroughly investigating policy interventions because examinations focused… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The Learning by Making (LbyM) project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation Fund (i3). As a five-year development project (2014-2018), Sonoma State University (SSU), in partnership with high-need schools and districts, has been developing an innovative, integrated high school Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) curriculum. The curriculum consists of Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs) in earth science and biology as described in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, 2013) and utilizes an easy-to-use Logo programming language that conducts data transfer and network communications in support of student-designed investigations. The purpose of this study is to understand how LbyM is implemented in high school classrooms in rural environments, to observe the influences of this curriculum on student learning and engagement, and to explore… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In low-income countries, private schools are perceived as superior alternatives to the public sector, often improving achievement at a fraction of the cost. It is unclear whether private schools are as effective in middle-income countries where the public sector has relatively more resources. To address this gap, this paper takes advantage of lottery-based admissions in first grade for a Mexico City private school that targets and subsidizes attendance for low-income children. Over three years, selected students via lottery scored 0.21 standard deviation higher than those not selected in literacy tests, corresponding to a normalized gain of one-half of a grade level every two years. Lottery winners also statistically outperformed those not selected in math, but the gains were more modest. Relative to the control group, parents of… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The Changing Mindsets project sought to improve academic attainment by supporting pupils to develop a growth mindset: the belief that intelligence is not a fixed characteristic and can be increased through effort. Previous research (Good et al., 2003; Blackwell et al., 2007) has suggested that holding this belief enables pupils to work harder and achieve better results. The project consisted of two separate interventions: (1) an intervention that taught pupils directly about the malleability of intelligence through six workshops, which were delivered by undergraduates from the University of Portsmouth, and four further sessions delivered by two local organisations: the Education Business Partnership, and Pompey Study Centre (now called Portsmouth in the Community); and (2) a professional development course that trained teachers on approaches to developing and reinforcing… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: California’s recent major school finance reform, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), attempts to address resource inequity by reallocating school finances on the basis of student disadvantage (rather than district property wealth) and relinquishing many of the restrictions on how revenue can be spent. Beyond a uniform “base grant” given to all districts, the LCFF reallocates additional district revenues based almost entirely on the proportion of disadvantaged students (e.g., low-income, limited English proficiency) in each district. We show LCFF significantly increased per-pupil spending, and the state now has among the most progressive funding formulas in the country. This study is among the first to provide evidence of LCFF’s impacts on student outcomes. For cohorts born between 1990 and 2000, we constructed a school-by-cohort-level panel data set of… Continue Reading →
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