0

Eric.ed.gov – Lessons Learned from the Middle School Matters Initiative

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The George W. Bush Institute began the Middle School Matters (MSM) initiative in 2010 with the goal of increasing the number of students who are prepared for high school and postsecondary success. The initiative accomplishes this by drawing upon evidence-based research to develop practical tools and engaging support opportunities for middle grade campuses, allowing research-based practices to be brought to life in classrooms across the nation. The heart of the initiative is the deliberate connection between research and the instructional practice of educators. More specifically, MSM turned high-quality research into actionable strategies for districts, schools, and teachers to use to improve reading, writing, and math instruction — and to improve use of data systems to identify students who are at-risk of dropping out. This report continues the… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Oregon MESA: Improving Grades in Science and Mathematics

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Oregon Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) focuses its afterschool programs with middle and high school students on inventions that address key problems in developing countries, such as sustainable lighting, water transportation, water filtration, and prosthetics. With the support of a grant from the Oregon Community Foundation, MESA expanded its afterschool program to four Salem-Keizer Public Schools middle schools in the 2014/15 and 2015/16 school years. The goal of this expansion was to help underrepresented minority and low income students achieve scholastic success, leadership skills, and social support for college enrollment through (1) afterschool STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs led by teachers from the school served; (2) science and technology competitions; (3) family involvement and advocacy; and (4) mentorship by local college students. At the request… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Pathways to STEM Initiative (PSI): Evaluation Report for an Investing in Innovation (I3) Development Grant

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of the Pathways to STEM Initiative (PSI) on students and science teachers and to describe the level of PSI implementation. One group of middle schools participated in PSI, which included project-based science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) coursework; extra-curricular STEM opportunities for students; and teacher professional development. A multivariate matching algorithm was used to identify a comparison group of schools that received the participating district’s standard science curriculum. The students in the study schools were 62% Hispanic/Latino, 17% Black/African American, and 12% White. Additionally, 23% of the students were English language learners. The study compared students’ science achievement and teachers’ beliefs about science and attitudes toward STEM across the treatment and comparison schools and assessed the fidelity… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – (Dis)empowerment: The Implementation of Corrective Mathematics in Philadelphia Empowerment Schools

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The need to improve math education around the country has been well documented, especially in urban school systems like Philadelphia. In Spring 2010, only 56.6% of students in Philadelphia Public schools scored proficient or advanced on the Pennsylvania State Standardized Assessment (PSSA). In Philadelphia Empowerment Schools, the 107 lowest performing schools in the Philadelphia School District, only 45.8% of students scored proficient or advanced (PSSA preliminary results). Yet, across these schools, there is wide variation. While over 80% of students in some Empowerment schools scored proficient or advanced in math, in other schools less than 20% of the student population reached math proficiency. In October 2009, former Philadelphia Public School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman implemented the Science Research Associates (SRA) Corrective Mathematics and Corrective Reading curriculum in all… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Critical Consciousness and Schooling: The Impact of the Community as a Classroom Program on Academic Indicators

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The present study investigates the extent to which a program guided by the principles of critical pedagogy, which seeks to develop “critical consciousness,” is associated with the improved academic performance of students attending a low-performance middle-school in Buffalo, New York. The students were enrolled in an in-school academic support program called the “Community as Classroom”, which used critical project-based learning to show students how to improve neighborhood conditions. The study found that the Community as Classroom program bolstered student engagement as reflected in improved attendance, on-time-arrival at school, and reduced suspensions. Although class grades did not improve, standardized scores, particularly in Math and Science, dramatically improved for these students from the lowest scoring categories. We suspect that given increased student engagement and dramatically improved standardized test scores,… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Teach for America Impact Estimates on Nontested Student Outcomes. Working Paper 146

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Recent evidence on teacher productivity suggests teachers meaningfully influence noncognitive student outcomes that are commonly overlooked by narrowly focusing on student test scores. These effects may show similar levels of variation across the teacher workforce and are not significantly correlated with value-added test score gains. Despite a large number of studies investigating the TFA effect on math and English achievement, little is known about nontested outcomes. Using administrative data from Miami-Dade County Public Schools, we investigate the relationship between being in a TFA classroom and non-test student outcomes. We validate our use of nontest student outcomes to assess differences in teacher productivity using the quasi-experimental teacher switching methods of Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff (2014) and find multiple cases in which these tests reject the validity of candidate… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Evaluation of the Computer and Team Assisted Mathematical Acceleration (CATAMA) Lab for Urban, High-Poverty, High Minority Middle Grade Students. Final Report to the Institute of Education Sciences

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This project entailed a three-year efficacy evaluation of the Computer and Team Assisted Mathematical Acceleration (CATAMA) Lab developed by the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University. The CATAMA Lab was proposed as an immediate and practical approach to addressing the different types of math deficits held by students at urban high-poverty schools. The Lab required only 1 teacher per school reducing staff and professional development requirements. It used multiple instructional techniques (including individualized computer instruction, direct instruction, pair and team learning, and individual instruction) to teach math concepts and skills. By taking the place of an elective it allowed students to continue with their on-grade math class. For a more detailed description of the Lab see Appendix 2. The original goal of the… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Using the Scientific Method to Engage Mathematical Modeling: An Investigation of pi

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The purpose of this paper is to explain how to use the scientific method as the framework to introduce mathematical model. Two interdisciplinary activities, targeted for students in grade 6 or grade 7, are explained to show the application of the scientific method while building a mathematical model to investigate the relationship between the circumferences and the diameter of circular objects. In the first activity, a research question is pursued as it relates to the stated hypothesis. In the second activity, the same research question is retained; however, the use of exploration helps to build the hypothesis. The activities serve as examples to show how middle school math teachers may use scientific inquiry to motive students’ understanding of mathematical models as well as engage in science beyond… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – Investigation of the Reasons for Students’ Attitudes towards the Interactive Whiteboard Use in Mathematics Classrooms

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The aim of this study is to investigate the reasons of the students’ attitudes towards interactive whiteboard (IWB) use in mathematics classrooms in middle schools and high schools. For this purpose the effect of IWB’s features, students’ mathematics anxiety, teachers’ ICT integration, students’ mathematics achievement and gender to students’ attitudes towards use of interactive whiteboard were investigated. This study is a descriptive research designed as a relational survey method. The research sampling consisted of 350 students in middle schools and 557 students in high schools in Balikesir. The Attitude and Characteristics of IWB scale to measure the students’ attitudes and the perceived features of IWB was used. Also the Mathematics Anxiety scale that consists of five items was used to measure students’ mathematics anxiety. To determine the… Continue Reading

0

Eric.ed.gov – The Results of Implementing Zone of Proximal Development on Learning Outcomes

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: With the development of personalized learning in technological platforms, more data and information are given to instructors on what contents are appropriate for a learner’s next step, with an aim of helping them support their students in navigating an optimized learning path that can promote an enhanced learning outcome. In this study, we collected data from an online learning platform, Learnta® TAD , which allows teachers to distribute tasks based on system recommendations. The recommendations are directed by the system’s knowledge graph algorithm, determining whether the student is ready to learn the task (i.e. the task is within the student’s Zone of Proximal Development), whether the student is not yet ready to learn the task, or whether the student has already mastered the task. We used the… Continue Reading