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Eric.ed.gov – Boosting the Supply and Effectiveness of Washington’s STEM Teachers. Executive Summary

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In the spring of 2009, the Partnership for Learning (PFL) asked The New Teacher Project (TNTP) to analyze challenges Washington faces in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) instruction and to make recommendations to overcome these challenges as part of a new STEM initiative. This initiative aims to dramatically raise student achievement in STEM subjects and close the achievement gap in math and science–ensuring that all Washington students graduate from high school college- and career-ready. Research has shown that teachers have a greater impact on student success than any other school factor, which means that teachers are a critical part of any solution to Washington’s STEM challenges. With this in mind, TNTP drew on its experience studying human capital challenges in education to identify the policies and… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Exporting English Pronunciation from China: The Communication Needs of Young Chinese Scientists as Teachers in Higher Education Abroad

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: China has become an exporter of material goods to the world, particularly to the United States. It is time for the exploration of a mutually beneficial relationship in a strikingly different realm, that of human capital in higher education and its contributions to the quality of university teaching. To faculty members and students at U.S. universities the human face of this relationship is Chinese international teaching assistants (ITAs) who are graduate students in science and math, and who are also being supported as teachers of basic undergraduate courses within their academic disciplines. Chinese ITAs are the largest single group of international graduate students, and they make American undergraduate education possible in chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, business, and computer science. The quality of the performance of native English… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Recruitment of Early STEM Majors into Possible Secondary Science Teaching Careers: The Role of Science Education Summer Internships

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: A shortage of highly qualified math and science teachers pervades the U.S. public school system. Clearly, recruitment of talented STEM educators is critical. Previous literature offers many suggestions for how STEM teacher recruitment programs and participant selection should occur. This study investigates how early STEM majors who are not already considering teaching careers experienced a summer teaching recruitment internship and how it influenced their ideas about teaching and learning and interest in teaching high school as a possible future career. Using multiple qualitative data sources including interviews and daily internship reflections, a multi-case comparative case study was developed. The findings support that some interns substantially increased their interest in teaching careers, while other interns’ interest did not change or decreased. The impact of the recruitment internship was… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – New Mexico Higher Education Department Annual Report, 2015

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The New Mexico Higher Education Department (HED) and higher education institutions (HEIs) have set long-term statewide goals to increase 4-year graduation rates, improve transfer and articulation, and improve remedial education outcomes. HED is pursuing these goals through the following initiatives: (1) Statewide common course numbering and alignment of lower division coursework; (2) Developing meta-majors and transfer modules; (3) Reforming the general education core curriculum; (4) Co-requisite remediation and Math pathways; (5) Decreasing the number of hours required for both associate’s and bachelor’s degrees; (6) Incentivizing 4-year graduation; and (7) Implementation of outcomes based funding. This annual report outlines each of the initiatives. Accomplishing these timely and aggressive goals requires remarkable collaboration among all the HEIs and between the HEIs and the HED. With the Governor’s leadership, the… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Common Errors and Misconceptions in Mathematical Proving by Education Undergraduates

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Ninety-seven education students majoring or minoring in mathematics had their math homework examined in a Number Theory or Abstract Algebra course. Each student’s homework was observed for the purpose of identifying common errors and misconceptions when writing mathematical proofs. The results showed that students collectively made four recurring errors: assuming the conclusion in order to prove the conclusion, proving general statements using specific examples, not proving both conditions in a biconditional statement, and misusing definitions. In the same courses taken subsequently by 91 new students, we informed them about these common errors prior to assigning their homework to see how the students’ proving processes would differ. The results showed that more exercises were left blank with comments such as “I’m not sure how to start the proof”,… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – A Rural Community’s Perceptions of the Importance of Math and Math Education in Appalachia. Summary Report. The Padua Project

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In an effort to discern the perceptions of the importance or value of mathematics education held by ordinary people in Appalachia, a qualitative research study was performed in accordance with an agreement with the ACCLAIM Research Initiative. The study engaged the qualitative research method known as “folknography” and targeted the community of Padua (a pseudonym), in a state in the Appalachian south. The study was conducted in late March, 2004, by undergraduate students previously enrolled in a related course taught by the principal investigator. This report was developed from data analyzed after the completion of the field work. The student researchers collected nearly 650 surveys and conducted nearly 250 interviews with informants in three age groups (youth, adults, seniors). Overall, Padua residents were quick to respond and… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – (Mis)Conceptions about Geometric Shapes in Pre-Service Primary Teachers

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: During the last reform, Slovakia has reduced geometry in curriculum in primary mathematics education. Pre-school education schools devote more time to geometry in curriculum, but this is not mandatory for all the children. In the primary schools, teachers devote very little lessons time to this problem. These lessons are mainly focused on technology of drawing rather than on creating the right conceptions, which results in below the average scores on international test results in Slovak students. One possible solutions is to improve the level of geometrical knowledge of primary education teachers and pre-service primary education teachers. This paper is focused on the knowledge of plane geometric figures and their properties. We found out that pre-service teachers in primary education have many misconceptions that started when these students… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Pathfinder Analysis of Knowledge Structures: An Exploratory Investigation of Math and Science Teacher Educators.

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The present study was an exploratory study of the content-specific knowledge structures of three teacher educators (two in math and one in science). Pathfinder, a method for eliciting associative memory networks, was used to describe the knowledge structures of the teacher educators. Pathfinder was also used to determine changes in knowledge structures of students enrolled in a teaching methodology class taught by each educator. Finally, a measure of the correspondence between students’ knowledge structures and those of the teacher educators was correlated with students’ performances in the courses. For two teacher educators, students’ knowledge structures corresponded more closely with that of the teacher educator after the course than before. For one teacher educator, students exhibited little change in knowledge structure correspondence. Also, students who corresponded most to… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions about Teaching Mathematics through Music

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This study examined preservice teachers’ perceptions about teaching elementary level mathematics lessons integrated with music. It also sought to determine how preservice teachers would strategize the integration of music activities when introducing elementary level mathematics lessons. The participants, 53 undergraduate preservice teachers at a large public university in a southern metropolitan area, were provided a series of six 40-minute interactive music-math integrated activities. Results of qualitative data analyses revealed that the majority of preservice teachers provided positive feedback about music-integrated pedagogy for teaching mathematics because it allowed them opportunities to escape from the limitations of traditional mathematics instruction. Link til kilde

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Eric.ed.gov – Pre-Service Teachers’ Attitudes toward Graphing Calculators in Math and Science. Case Study 10

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The need exists for methods courses to address the pedagogy issues of using graphing calculators. There needs to be a teacher candidate forum to examine their pedagogical perspectives on using graphing calculators in teaching, to explore when and how to use graphing calculators in the classroom, and to provide opportunities to practice teaching with graphing calculators. A recent study by Lyublinskaya, Donoghue and Zhou (2006) tracked the effects of such training on elementary and secondary pre-service teachers in methods classes for math and science. All students were divided into two groups. The first group consisted of undergraduate and graduate students preparing to teach secondary science and math, and who were enrolled in math and science methods courses. The second group consisted of undergraduate students preparing to teach… Continue Reading