Student performance and attitudes using personalized mathematics instruction

This study investigated the effects of personalized instruction on the achievement and attitudes of Taiwanese students on two-step mathematics word problems. A total of 136 fourth-graders in a Taiwanese public school participated in the study. Subjects initially completed a Student Survey on which they chose their favorite foods, sports, stores, classmates, and other selections. The most popular items were then used to create personalized math word problems for the pretest, personalized instructional program, and posttest. Subjects were blocked by ability based on their pretest scores and were randomly assigned within ability levels to either a personalized or nonpersonalized version of the print-based instructional program. After finishing the program, subjects completed a student attitude survey and the posttest. A repeated-measures univariate analysis of variance revealed that subjects in the personalized treatment made significantly greater pretest-to-posttest gains than those in the nonpersonalized treatment. Subjects also performed significantly better on the personalized pretest and posttest problems than on the nonpersonalized problems. Personalized subjects and higher-ability students both had significantly more positive attitudes toward the instructional program than did their nonpersonalized and lower-ability counterparts. This research was conducted while he was a doctoral student at Arizona State University.     

Student note-taking related to university examination performance

Student note-taking is an almost universal activity among university students, yet few naturalistic studies have examined relationships between note-taking practices and subsequent examination performance. Complete sets of notes on an introductory psychology course, involving 75 lectures presented by ten instructors, were obtained from nineteen male and nineteen female students. Notes on ten selected lectures (one per instructor) were analysed, and information derived about class attendance and the quantity, organization, and presentation of the notes. Variables based on this information were then correlated with performance on two three-hour final examination papers (one multiple-choice, one essay). High correlations were found between the quantity of notes and examination performance. Surprisingly, these correlations increased in subsamples consisting of those students who attended class most diligently. The correlations involving the multiple-choice examination tended to be higher than those involving the essay examination, most probably because of wider sampling of lecture content and a more factual orientation in the multiple-choice examination. The results appear to conflict with the advice given in student study guides, many of which suggest that students should be very selective and concise in their note-taking.     

Student attitudes toward science-technology-society resulting from visitation to a science-technology museum

Are student attitudes toward science-technology-society (TSS) affected by visitation to science-technology museums? The purpose of this study was to determine whether such visitations affected student STS attitudes, and in what ways particular factors of the visitation impacted these attitudes. Factors examined included prior classroom experience with STS, instructional methodology employed by teachers, grade level, socioeconomic status, school type (public or private), and gender. The subjects involved in the study were 194 Kansas students in grades 6-8, and their 13 classroom teachers. Data were collected via a pretest-posttest control group design by using study-specific questionnaires and the Moore-Sutman Scientific Attitudes Inventory. Results indicated that significant differences in attitudes were present between visiting and nonvisiting students and between grade levels. No significant differences were found between other factors. One possible conclusion is that sound pedagogy should be used prior to and during museum visitations as well as in the classroom.     

Race and class silences in teacher education: resisting strategy-based approaches to literacy methods instruction

This article draws on qualitative and practitioner research methodologies to unpack one critical incident from an undergraduate literacy methods course in which possessing complex understandings of endemic poverty proved central to assessing student achievement. In particular, we use an example of a comprehension lesson based on the children’s book Leah’s Pony as a key example through which to consider the dangers inherent in teaching pre-service teachers to adopt strategies that seem universal and innocuous, like answering comprehension questions or filling in worksheets, outside of broader critiques of social class, racism, poverty and student positioning in schools.     

Putting struggling readers on the PHAST track: a program to integrate phonological and strategy-based remedial reading instruction and maximize outcomes

PHAST (for Phonological and Strategy Training) is a research-based remedial reading program that attempts to capitalize upon current research on reading disabilities and their remediation. The focus of the program is on the primary obstacles to word identification learning and independent decoding that most disabled readers face and the steps necessary to help these children achieve independent reading skills. A framework of phonologically based remediation was used as a foundation upon which a set of flexible and effective word identification strategies were scaffolded in an integrated developmental sequence. The program uses a combination of direct instruction and dialogue-based metacognitive training, with the pedagogical emphasis shifting from an initial direct instruction, remedial focus to increasingly metacognitive-strategy-based methods. A continuum of intervention over 70 hours provides both (a) remediation of the basic phonological awareness and letter-sound-learning deficits of disabled readers and (b) specific training of five word identification strategies that offer different approaches to the decoding of unfamiliar words and exposure to different levels of subsyllabic segmentation. Explicit instruction in the application and monitoring of multiple word identification strategies and their application to text-reading activities continues throughout the PHAST Program. PHAST training provides the disabled reader with the opportunity to become a flexible reader who approaches new words in or out of context with multiple strategies and has the ability to evaluate the success of their application. The PHAST Program was developed following the controlled evaluation of its components in laboratory classroom settings and recent positive results from their sequential combination. PHAST represents a new integrated approach to programming in this area using instructional components that have already demonstrated their efficacy with children with severe reading disabilities.     

Latent inhibition as a performance deficit resulting from CS—context associations

Treatments that attenuate latent inhibition (LI) were examined using conditioned suppression in rats. In Experiment 1, retarded conditioned responding was produced by nonreinforced exposure to the CS prior to the CS-US pairings used to assess retardation (i.e., conventional LI). In Experiment la, retarded conditioned responding was induced by preexposure to pairings of the CS and a weak US prior to retardation-test pairings of the CS with a strong US (i.e., Hall-Pearce [1979] LI). Both types of LI were attenuated by extensive exposure to the training context (i.e., context extinction) following the CS-US pairings of the retardation test. Experiment 2 examined the specificity of the attenuated LI effect observed in Experiment 1. After preexposure to two different CSs in two different contexts, each CS was paired with a US in its respective preexposure context. One of the two contexts was then extinguished. This attenuated LI to a greater degree for the CS that had been trained in the extinguished context. Experiment 3 differentiated the roles in LI of CS-context associations and context-US associations. Following preexposure to the CS in the training context, LI was reduced by further exposure to the CS outside the training context. This observation was interpreted as implicating the CS-context association as a factor in LI. Thus, the results of these experiments suggest that LI is a performance deficit mediated by unusually strong CS-context associations. Implications for Wagner’s (1981) SOP model and Miller and Matzel’s (1988) comparator hypothesis are discussed.     

The effects of metacognitive instruction on solving mathematical authentic tasks

The present study investigates the differential effects of cooperative-learning with or without metacognitive instruction on lower and higher achievers' solutions of mathematical authentic tasks. Participants were 91 seventh graders who studied in three classrooms. Data were analyzed by using qualitative and quantitative methods. Results indicated that students who were exposed to the metacognitive instruction within cooperative learning (COOP+META) significantly outperformed their counterparts who were exposed to cooperative learning with no metacognitive instruction (COOP). The positive effects of COOP+META were observed on both authentic and standard tasks. In addition, the findings show the positive effects of COOP+META method on lower and higher achievers. The practical implications of the study are discussed.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Assessment of a conceptually based instructor evaluation form

An instrument to be used by students in evaluating faculty was developed with the major focus being five conceptualized interpretations of scales (factors) culled from other research on faculty evaluation. The five conceptualized factors were: Evaluation, Presentation, Preparation, Personality, and Intellect. Thirty-five professors from the Division of Curriculum and Instruction teaching 65 classes (1,122 students) at graduate and undergraduate levels participated in May; and 75 professors teaching 2,804 students participated in a December study. Each of the five factors were found to be: independent; stable across student groups; of high internal consistency and reliability; of a high degree of concurrent validity (faculty evaluating themselves); discriminatory among faculty; and applicable under sundry instructional conditions. The instrument can provide information to instructors for the improvement of teaching, as well as providing information for students concerning individual instructors. As part of a larger evaluation system, the instrument can provide information for career decisions.     

Powerful tasks: A contribution to a high level of acting and reflecting in mathematics instruction

Mathematics instruction contains two conflicting demands: on the one hand, the demand for economical efficiency and for well-developed motorways and, on the other hand, the demand that pupils should investigate and discover for themselves and have the freedom to pave their own ways. It is argued that tasks with a certain richness and quality offer some steps towards a constructive handling of this dilemma. The author tries to develop some properties of powerful tasks and to sketch the structure and philosophy of one concrete system of powerful tasks for the concept of angle. The main part of this paper presents seven examples of powerful tasks: five from the system of tasks and two with regard to pupils' working with 2-D-graphic systems. The construction of powerful tasks is viewed as a valuable contribution to bringing the theory and practice of mathematics education closer together.     

Student ratings of instruction: Validity and normative interpretations

Using 3,355 class section means, the relationship between six predictor variables and student ratings of instruction (CEQ) was investigated by computing the intercorrelation matrix among all variables and by performing several regression analyses. Results of the study indicated that all linear interactions were negligible and that more than one-fourth of the criterion variance was shared with all the predictor variables. Two predictor variables, expected grade and required-elective, provided extremely large contributions to the prediction of the criterion measure, however. Implications of the validity results with respect to normative data and thus to the administrative use of the ratings were illustrated.     

Piagetian tasks as readiness measures in mathematics instruction: A critical review

The purpose of this review was to synthesize the research on the relationship between performance on Piagetian tasks of concrete operations and performance on mathematics learning tasks in order to determine whether the Piagetian tasks make useful readiness measures. The research consistently indicates that, while there is a positive correlation between performance on Piagetian tasks and mathematics achievement, many school mathematics tasks can be mastered by children who have not yet developed the reasoning abilities measured by Piagetian tasks. This does not diminish the validity of Piaget's theory, but rather suggests that the kinds of reasoning processes identified by Piaget are not essential in solving many school mathematics tasks.     

Native american related materials in elementary science instruction

The low achievement of Native American students, as measured by standardized tests, results from a number of factors, including the lack of cultural relevance of curriculum materials used in their instruction. Using a pretest–posttest control group design, Native American students in Bureau of Indian Affairs schools in Grades 4–8 who were taught science using culturally relevant materials achieved significantly higher and displayed a significantly more positive attitude toward Native Americans and science than comparable students who were taught science without the culturally relevant materials. It is suggested that when educators of Native Americans teach science, they should use materials that incorporate frequent reference to Native Americans and science.     

Student perceptions of teamwork within assessment tasks in undergraduate science degrees

Teamwork assessment creates a more comprehensive educational experience by broadening the diversity of skills that students develop. Developing teamwork skills is particularly important due to a recognised skills gap among science graduates. This study investigated student perceptions of developing teamwork skills during their undergraduate science degrees. A mixed methods approach was used, which included the analysis of both quantitative and qualitative online survey data. The key findings showed that, although students understood the importance of developing teamwork skills for their future, a substantial proportion did not feel sufficiently prepared with these skills by their science degree. To develop teamwork skills, more students valued working in teams during laboratory sessions, team sports and informal study groups than non-laboratory based formal teamwork assessment. In support of previous teamwork studies across disciplines, the most cited factors contributing to poor teamwork experiences were difficulties scheduling meetings and unequal contribution among team members. This study indicates pedagogical improvements that may enhance the teamwork experience of students during assessments.