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Eric.ed.gov – Dimensions of Math Avoidance among American Indian Elementary School Students. Final Report.

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Using a cross-cultural perspective, researchers studied the “math avoidance syndrome,” which has reached crisis proportions among American Indians, at two elementary schools on Utah’s Northern Ute Reservation and Wisconsin’s Oneida Indian Reservation in 1980. Researchers gathered data by observing math instruction at the schools and by interviewing parents, teachers, tribal officials, and a group of students from third and fourth grade classrooms. They also discussed with tribal elders each tribe’s style of computation and problem solving. Results showed that, contrary to widely held beliefs, neither degree of traditionality nor sex of student served as an accurate predictor of student math attainment or interest in math. Perceived conflicts between school and home regarding function and purpose of education, social organization of math lessons, incompatibility of classroom management styles,… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Math Avoidance: A Barrier to American Indian Science Education and Science Careers.

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: For American Indian students, math anxiety and math avoidance are the most serious obstacles to general education and to the choice of scientific careers. Indian students interviewed generally exhibited fear and loathing of mathematics and a major lack of basic skills which were caused by a missing or negative impression of the mathematics capabilities of Native Americans, a generally negative image of mathematicians and scientists, dislike and fear of math forms without visible application to daily life and which require abstraction as a major tool, a perception of math courses and requirements as rigid, and a self-perception, often fostered by school couselors, of hopeless inadequacy in math skills. Because most of the students interviewed had attended public schools the implication is that public school math and science… Continue Reading

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tandfonline.com – Looking for the ordinary? Parental choice and elite school avoidance in Finland and Germany

tandfonline.com har udgivet en rapport under søgningen “Teacher Education Mathematics”: ABSTRACT ABSTRACT Middle-class parents’ strategies of reproduction and social closure and their role as a driver of school segregation are already well-reported. Our two independent research projects in Finland and Germany have additionally revealed a somewhat surprising and not yet fully understood tendency of certain middle-class parents to actively avoid the most reputable schools. Using these findings as a starting point, the paper investigates the motives and reasoning behind middle-class parents’ avoidance strategies in the cities of Espoo (Finland) and Mülheim an der Ruhr (Germany). The analysis shows that in educational transitions where choice is not constrained by a risk of children being left behind, some families with high educational resources and imbued with a certain ethos give precedence to… Continue Reading