The Roles of Technology in Mathematics Education

Abstract

We review literature relevant to using technology in the teaching/learning of mathematics to highlight four roles of effective technology use: (a) promoting cycles of proof; (b) presenting and connecting multiple representations; (c) supporting case-based reasoning; and (d) serving as a tutee. We then discuss how they intersect with good instruction. Finally, we provide specific examples to illustrate how these roles of technology can be used to maintain the focus of a technology course on mathematics.     

Working with students in the medication era: Do we all have to know how to diagnose and treat mental conditions?

A marked increase in the number of college students on medications for depression, attention deficit disorder, and other conditions may have intimidated us into believing that we all need to be medical experts. The author argues that what educators need to do is accept our limitations and recognize that our traditional strengths may be just what the doctor ordered.     

Innovative approaches to information literacy instruction for engineering undergraduates at Drexel University

As information professionals, engineering librarians have the primary responsibilities of providing access to engineering information resources and giving instruction in how to use these resources. In the case of undergraduate engineering students, this extends to building their information literacy skills, an important component in helping them become lifelong learners; to be curious and independent, and to take greater responsibility for their own learning. The challenge in building information literacy in engineering students is to acquaint the students with the array of library resources available to them and to help them intelligently navigate the systems that contain the information. Too often, information literacy instruction is presented as a set of procedures for locating a hypothetical resource in the library. However, students are not interested in finding some resource randomly chosen as an example; they want to find resources that they perceive as being important and useful. During the 2005–2006 academic year, the engineering librarians at Drexel University took this into consideration and employed a new methodology for information literacy instruction: combining an online tutorial covering basic library skills with face-to-face consultations between student design teams and the engineering librarians. By utilizing varied instruction techniques aimed at different learning styles, with a strong active learning component delivered at the student's point of need—when they have a concrete, perceived information need—information literacy instruction can be improved so that engineering students retain more and develop lifelong learning skills.     

Building the mentoring relationship: humanism and the importance of storytelling between mentor and mentee

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we describe a mentoring program designed to help prepare high school seniors at Arizona State University Preparatory Academy for postsecondary education. Specifically, we address the usefulness of ‘humanistic mentoring,’ a form of mentoring that stresses the importance of reciprocity, mutuality, and empathy in the mentor/mentee relationship. We further describe how sharing stories was useful in developing such humanistic relationships. Based on etic-thematic coding of interviews from 13 of the mentees, a humanistic lens for mentoring and sharing personal stories is productive for both developing relationships and passing on knowledge.     

The Poor Get Richer: Heterogeneity in the Efficacy of a School-Level Intervention for Academic Language

We investigate the impact of a relatively brief cross-curricular intervention, Word Generation, on middle school students' development of taught academic vocabulary. Students (n = 8382) in forty-four middle schools in three urban districts were randomly assigned to treatment or control conditions. Treatment teachers implemented the program with minimal support and varying levels of commitment. Students in treatment schools scored almost a point higher on the curriculum-based vocabulary posttests than those in control schools (Hedges's g = 0.094, p < 0.05). Though there was no main treatment effect on the standardized measures of students' general vocabulary knowledge or reading comprehension, baseline-by-treatment interactions at the school and student level acted to attenuate the Matthew Effect in reading and vocabulary growth.     

Applying an Activity Theory Lens to Designing Instruction for Learning About the Structure,Behavior, and Function of a Honeybee System

This article reports on a study in which activity theory was used to design, implement, and analyze a 10-week curriculum unit about how honeybees collect nectar with a particular focus on complex systems concepts. Students (n = 42) in a multi-year kindergarten and 1st-grade classroom participated in this study as part of their 10 regular classroom activity. The curricular unit was composed of 4 specific activity types, each of which was intended to focus students on a particular dimension of the content: (a) Inquiry with BeeSign software was intended to help students explore the benefit of individual nectar-collecting behaviors for the hive as a whole; (b) traditional drawing activities were intended to help students learn the structures of 15 the bees; (c) participatory representation activities, in which students enacted the behavior of the bees as they collect nectar, were intended to help students link bee structures to individual behaviors; and (d) an embodied nectar-gathering game was intended to help the students recognize the challenges of finding nectar for individual bees. Pre- and posttest interviews reveal a shift in individual student understanding 20 as students progressed from discussing the superficial structures of the system to discussing both behaviors and functions.     

Research productivity in communication: An analysis, 1996‐2001

The study provides an analysis of those scholars who produced a substantial number of articles in 24 communication journals during the period, 1996‐2001. The purpose of the study was to update the information provided in previous studies. Using data similar to that previously found in the Index to Journals in Communication Studies, the authors found that during the period a number of new names has appeared. As a result, the authors develop a list of the top one percent (50) of those researchers, as well as providing data on the institutions which these scholars represent. The minimum number of articles necessary during the period to be included was nine.     

Stick it in Your Ear: The Psychodynamics of iPod Enjoyment

Through a sustained critique of the iPod and discourse about it, this essay advances a psychoanalytic rhetoric of music that characterizes listening experiences in terms of two psychical economies: the psycho-somatic or experiential and the symbolic. We argue that these economies work together to produce the fantasy of a “sonorous envelope,” a re/presentation of losing one's self in music. Because the dis/pleasurable experience of the sonorous envelope is a retroactively imposed understanding of an otherwise ineffable musical encounter, we argue for analyzing representations of the sonorous envelope in popular culture.     

Affiliative and Aggressive Humor,Attachment Dimensions,and Interaction Goals

This study examined humor production in relation to attachment dimensions and interaction goals. Participants (N = 172) completed measures of attachment dimensions (anxiety, avoidance), humor production (affiliative humor, aggressive humor), and primary and secondary goals. Anxiety was negatively related to affiliative humor, whereas avoidance was positively related to aggressive humor. Affiliative humor was related to effectiveness and being playful in the interaction, as well as the secondary goals of arousal management and clarity. Aggressive humor was not related to any of the goals.