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Eric.ed.gov – Assessing Academic Rigor in Mathematics Instruction: The Development of the Instructional Quality Assessment Toolkit. CSE Technical Report 672

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The development of an assessment tool to measure the quality of instruction is necessary to provide an informative accountability system in education. Such a tool should be capable of characterizing the quality of teaching and learning that occurs in actual classrooms, schools, or districts. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the Academic Rigor in Mathematics (AR-Math) rubrics of the Instructional Quality Assessment Toolkit and to share the findings from a small pilot study conducted in the Spring of 2003. The study described in this paper examined the instructional quality of mathematics programs in elementary classrooms in two urban school districts. The study assessed the reliability of the AR-Math rubrics, the ability of the AR-Math rubrics to distinguish important difference between districts, the… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Using VoiceThread for Communication in Mathematics Writing

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: ‘This action research study was conducted on a fourth grade rural classroom in Orange County, N.Y. for the purpose of determining if the use of the VoiceThread program will affect student performance in mathematics writing. A baseline of student performance on this measure was administered in the fall of 2010 using the NYS Holistic rubric of a 3 point total value as provided from the NYS 2009 4th grade Math Test. Four questions on varying topics were pulled from the same test as the rubric mentioned here. In addition, a graphic organizer was utilized to support organization of student thoughts on the problem. A survey was administered to the students at the end of this study which demonstrated positive attitudes towards the use of graphic organizers and… Continue Reading

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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

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Eric.ed.gov – Using a Four-Point Scaled Writing Rubric: Improving the Quantity and the Quality of the Writing in a First Grade Specialized 8:1:1 Classroom

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Educators today are faced with learning to implement the Common Core Standards in Language Arts and Math. Administrators are requiring grade level general education teachers/special education teachers to meet in Private Learning Communities in order to discuss the best ways to implement the CCS as well as to discuss best practices for writing instruction through close analysis of student writing. Research suggests that students use both cognitive and social processes when composing a writing piece (MacArthur, Graham, & Fitzgerald, 2006). Therefore, this study evaluates the importance of first using the social cultural writing process in order to enhance the cognitive writing process of students before they responded to a writing prompt. The study involved administering a journal entry pre-test, post-test, and final test over a four-week time… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – No Common Denominator: The Preparation of Elementary Teachers in Mathematics by America’s Education Schools

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The nation’s higher goals for student learning in mathematics cannot be reached without improved teacher capacity. To accomplish these goals an analysis of current teacher preparation in mathematics is necessary, along with the development of an agenda for improvement. Based on groundwork laid during a meeting in Washington, D.C. in March 2007, the eight members of this study’s Mathematics Advisory Group guided the National Council on Teacher Quality’s evaluation of the mathematics preparation of elementary teachers. The Mathematics Advisory Group consists of mathematicians and distinguished teachers with a long history of involvement in K-12 education. The study sample included 77 institutions representing programs of all types and in 49 states and the District of Columbia (excluding Alaska), constituting more than 5 percent of those institutions offering undergraduate… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Developing Robust Forms of Pre-Service Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge through Culturally Responsive Mathematics Teaching Analysis

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This study documents and describes efforts to develop robust forms of pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge through a culturally responsive mathematics teaching approach. Embedded in a university K-8 mathematics methods course emphasising the connections among mathematics, children’s mathematical thinking, and children’s cultural/linguistic funds of knowledge, pre-service teachers (N = 40) were given an assignment to analyse their own mathematics lessons utilizing a rubric tool with categories about children’s mathematical thinking, academic language supports, cultural funds of knowledge, and critical math/social justice. Utilizing a mixed methods approach to analyse the pre-service teachers’ (PST) work, we found the highest average self-ratings across the categories associated with children’s mathematical thinking and high variability in the categories related to language, culture, and social justice. To understand the variation within the latter… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – The Implementation and Effects of the Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC): Early Findings from Kentucky Ninth-Grade Algebra 1 Courses. CRESST Report 845

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: With support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, researchers and experts in mathematics education developed the Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC) as a strategy to support the transition to Common Core State Standards in math. MDC provides short formative assessment lessons known as Classroom Challenges for use in middle and high school math classrooms. UCLA CRESST’s study of ninth-grade Algebra 1 classrooms in Kentucky implementing MDC showed strong support from teachers for the intervention and a statistically significant positive impact on student scores on the PLAN Algebra assessment, as compared to similar students statewide in Kentucky. The following are appended: (1) MDC Instruments and Rubrics, (2) MDC Teacher Log Descriptives; (3) MDC Teacher Survey Descriptives; (4) Analysis of MDC Student Work Artifacts; and (5) Quasi-Experimental Analysis of… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – The Content, Predictive Power, and Potential Bias in Five Widely Used Teacher Observation Instruments. REL 2017-191

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: School districts and states across the Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic Region and the country as a whole have been modifying their teacher evaluation systems to identify more effective and less effective teachers and provide better feedback to improve instructional practice. The new systems typically include components related to student achievement growth and instruments for observing and rating instructional practice. Many school districts and states are considering adopting commercially available instruments for the instructional practice component of their evaluation systems. Yet little data are available to help districts and states choose among available instruments or determine which dimensions of instructional practice merit the greatest emphasis. Most existing data comparing different observation instruments, including their statistical characteristics and their relationship to student achievement, come from the Bill & Melinda… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – An Investigation of How Teachers Score Constructed-Response Mathematics Assessment Tasks

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This study identified some factors associated with teachers’ knowledge and beliefs that are related to scoring mathematics constructed-response (CR) assessment tasks. Five groups of teachers (n = 274) who either had different teaching experiences or had different cultural beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics were selected to score 28 students’ responses to seven CR math tasks. Among the 274 teachers, the first four groups (n=222) were selected from China. Group 1 was composed of pre-service elementary school teachers; group 2, pre-service secondary teachers; group 3, elementary in-service teachers; and group 4, secondary in-service teachers. The fifth group (n = 52) was composed of in-service middle school teachers from the United States. A number of analyses of variance (ANOVA) on teachers’ scores of the 28 responses and subsets… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Teacher’s Guide to the Math Forum’s Problems of the Week

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The Problems of the Week (PoWs) are creative, non-routine math challenges for elementary-, middle-, and high-school-level students. They are designed to stimulate student interest in problem solving and to encourage them to communicate their mathematical thinking. This Teacher’s Guide describes program features and provides strategies for beginning the program with students, creating a problem-solving classroom culture fitted around the existing classroom schedule. The Guide also introduces the Math Forum’s scoring rubric and feedback process. The appendices offer step-by-step instructions and additional detailed information about the Math Forum. They include: (1) details on how to search by by level/topic, standard, or textbook and perform Write Math searches; illustrated page how-tos; details about the registration process, how to start students using their subscriptions, and monitoring students’ work; (2) How… Continue Reading