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Eric.ed.gov – Perspectives on Education from a Person on the Autism Spectrum

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The author is an associate professor of animal studies at Colorado State University, but experienced learning difficulties in high school due to her place on the autism-Asperger’s spectrum. She had uneven skills, and while algebra was impossible, she did well in courses in which she could use her visual-thinking and associative-thinking skills. Her visual thinking skills enabled her to excel at her chosen career of designing livestock equipment. The author describes how visual thinkers like her are good at hands-on work. While she finds mathematical word problems to be difficult, she can conceptualize research experiments only if she has a concrete example such as a weight gain and different breeds of cattle. She cannot think about experimental designs in the abstract. Her success in her career ensued… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – If a Student Thinks, “I’m Not a Math Person”, Do Preservice Teachers Notice?

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Students’ beliefs that mathematical abilities are fixed can cause long-standing problems with motivation and learning. Hence, teachers should notice such problematic beliefs about identity among their students and handle them adequately. We used written descriptions of classroom situations to determine whether preservice mathematics teachers (n = 80) noticed fixed beliefs about mathematical abilities and whether they had strategies for dealing with them. The qualitative data were coded and transformed into a score for noticing. We found that most of the preservice teachers did not notice problematic beliefs. Thereby, preservice teachers who believed that mathematical abilities are malleable were more likely to notice fixed beliefs among students. When describing beliefs, few participants referred to theoretical concepts. Hardly any preservice teachers suggested strategies for handling students’ beliefs. However, the… Continue Reading