eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Literature suggests that the mathematical language of teachers impacts a student’s understanding of math concepts. When teachers unintentionally use ambiguous language, students’ understanding of a subject can be negatively affected. We share background on specific instances in which teachers can create confusion with the language they use, and we investigate both pre-service teachers’ and college algebra students’ concepts of three common terms in mathematics: Solve, Evaluate, and Simplify by asking both groups to unpack their understanding of these terms through a writing prompt. We compare the language used by both groups in their definitions. Preservice teachers’ reflections on their experience with the writing prompt are also examined to identify ways that such a task can help them identify gaps in their own understanding and in their thinking… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Specialized secondary schools in the United States focusing on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) are becoming commonplace in the United States. Such schools are generally referred to by U.S. teachers as Academies. In a purposeful effort to provide a resource to educators building new STEM Academies, this study provides both a review of scholarly literature and the interview results from five successful STEM Academy educators from across the United States. This research addresses two overarching questions, (a) what are the best practices of STEM Academies, and (b) what are the key learning objectives of STEM Academies? Subject integration, in-house engineering curriculum design, student cohorts, community involvement, and internships were all revealed as being consistently reflective of best practices used in successful STEM Academies. Key learning objectives… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Several studies on learning mathematics for rural area’s student indicate that students have difficulty in understanding the concept of division operation. Students are more likely to be introduced by the use of the formula without involving the concept itself and learning division separate the concrete situation of learning process. This underlies the researcher to design division operation learning in the Mathematics of GASING (Math GASING), which always starts from concrete to abstract level. The research method used is a design research which describes how the Math GASING make a real contribution of students understanding in the concept of division operation. Link til kilde
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The plane problem is a real-world problem, presented without any suggestion as to how it might be solved. It arose unexpectedly as the author was messing around on the internet, not thinking about maths at all. She did not encounter the problem in a maths lesson, nor as homework in the middle of a unit on a particular topic, and so she had no clues about what method was going to be useful, or even if she would be able to solve it. All she had–initially at least–was the image of the plane and a mystery: at what altitude is it flying? There is something satisfying about seeing how mathematics can solve a mystery that may appear, at first sight, to be intractable. Students need the opportunity… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In this paper, we present an analysis of student interview data focusing on students’ ideas about mathematics and their experiences learning mathematics. We draw on the idea of “personal identity” (Cobb, Gresalfi, & Hodge, 2009) to capture the differences and similarities in students’ views of math and themselves as math learners, although all student participants would be considered members of the same broad, identifiable community. The purpose of our analysis is to contribute to ongoing educational research efforts that challenge processes of essentializing and to use the construct of identity in informing how we design learning experiences and resources for working class students as they learn mathematics. Link til kilde
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This paper is based on data gathered during visits to Uganda and Malawi, conducted by the International Math-teacher Professionalization Using Lesson Study (IMPULS) project and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The author’s observations and experiences highlighted misconceptions about lesson study. The paper concludes that some key factors can be viewed as either affordances, or constraints, on practice, while others are best understood against several misconceptions that seem to be common outside Japan. Link til kilde
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: A project adapted an existing problem-solving curriculum to help unemployed or underemployed displaced homemakers and single parents qualify for job placement and training. Forty-five adult learners from the New Choice program participated. Handouts adapted from a prior Math Employment project and instructor-created materials were used. Handouts from level 1 of the previous project were simplified even further. Instruction was supplemented with self-help groups. Findings indicated the following: 43 of 45 participants increased their math scores; 15 raised their scores 1-2 grade levels; and 28 raised their scores 3-5 grade levels using the Test of Adult Basic Education. Test scores from completion of teacher-generated word problems were substantially increased. Of the 45 participants, 28 entered training and 2 entered full-time employment. (Appendixes to the 11-page report include sample… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The teaching of Mathematics in the context of the Mathematical Olympiads in Brazil constitutes a context of research still little considered, with particular interest in the teaching and the learning phenomena. In Brazil, we identified a large number of teachers and students who do not participate in official math competitions, such as the Brazilian Olympiads of Mathematics of Public Schools (OBMEP). On the other hand, it is important to implement didactic resources that allow other forms of didactic transposition to the mathematical knowledge addressed for the Olympic Problems (OP). In this way, the present work presents and introduces the notion of Olympic Didactical Situation (ODS), from a perspective of didactic transposition necessary for the teacher, who must transmit the mathematical knowledge characteristic of the Mathematical Olympiads to… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This paper articulates a stance on the study of students’ meaningful mathematics understanding with multiple representations. We integrate Thompson’s theory of quantitative reasoning and Dreyfus’ theory of multiple representations in our approach to frame and conduct empirical investigations of the study of meaningful understanding of function. We provide empirical data to support our approach to examining representational fluency and functional thinking from this networked stance. Our research articulates how the coordination of theories can be productive in informing the design, conduct, and analysis of contexts aimed to understand students’ meaningful math learning with a focus on functional thinking. [For the complete proceedings, see ED606556.] Link til kilde
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: As today’s classrooms become more and more diverse, there is a growing need to explore the intersection between English Learners (ELs) and students with learning disabilities (LD) in the content-specific instruction of mathematics problem solving. The aim of this study was to determine which types of instructional scaffolds may be used by math teachers to effectively support ELs with LD learning multiplicative reasoning. To this end, we employed an exploratory case study based on a frequency count analysis of four scaffold types used by the students and the teacher in their sessions. The results showed that kinesthetic and linguistic scaffolds were the most beneficial for helping ELs with LD to cultivate mathematical thinking with both concrete and abstract units, while also helping to increase the sophistication of… Continue Reading →
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