Evaluating Mathematics Achievement of Middle School Students in a Looping Environment

Looping, a school structure where students remain with one group of teachers for two or more school years, is used by middle schools to meet the diverse needs of young adolescents. However, little research exists on how looping effects the academic performance of students. This study was designed to determine if looping influenced middle school students' mathematical academic achievement. Student scores on the Mississippi Curriculum Test (MCT) were compared between sixth and eighth grade years for 69 students who looped during the seventh and eighth grades with a group of 137 students who did not loop. Looping students achieved statistically significantly greater growth on the MCT than their nonlooping counterparts between sixth and eighth grades. Further, the data were disaggregated by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Findings indicate that looping may academically reengage students during the middle school years. Advantages and disadvantages of looping at the middle grades are discussed.     

Gender Differences Regarding Mathematics Achievement: The Case of Turkish Middle School Students

The purpose of this study was to explore gender differences in mathematics achievement as demonstrated by performance on the mathematics subsection of a nationwide high school entrance examination in Turkey. In this study, the cities in Turkey were separated into five groups according to their level of economic development. The analysis was based on 2647 students that were randomly selected from these five different groups of cities. Although results indicated a statistically significant difference in mathematics achievement in favor of cities with the highest economic status, the effect size was quite small, which indicates the difference was not practically significant. Results also showed the effect sizes for gender differences in mathematics achievement were very small in all groups of cities. It was concluded that socio‐economic development of the regions was not a critical factor for gender differences in mathematics achievement.     

Relationship Between Professional Development,Teachers' Instructional Practices,and the Achievement of Students in Science and Mathematics

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between different types of professional development, teachers' instructional practices, and the achievement of students in science and mathematics. The types of professional development studied included immersion, examining practice, curriculum implementation, curriculum development, and collaborative work. Data regarding teachers' instructional practices and the amount of professional development were collected using teacher surveys. Ninety‐four middle school science teachers and 104 middle school mathematics teachers participated in the study. Student achievement was measured using eighth grade state science and mathematics achievement test data. Regression analyses suggested that for both science and mathematics teachers, examining practice and curriculum development were significantly related to the use of standards‐based instructional practices. Only curriculum development for mathematics teachers was significantly related to student achievement. Implications of results for the professional development of science and mathematics teachers are discussed.     

高等数学教学中如何培养学生创新能力的实践

课堂教学是对学生进行教育的主要方式,教师在教学活动中应该始终注意根据教学内容创设能激起学生新异感的问题情景,引导学生从一个问题出发,联想、分析、思辨,沿着各种不同的途径去思考,去发现多种关联问题及寻求解决方法.本文作为文[7]的姊妹篇,从众所熟知的积分中值定理教学谈起,阐述教师如何在课堂教学中引导学生由某个问题出发去联想一系列相关问题,使学生的数学思维不断攀升,培养学生科学思维方法和创新能力.     

The Effects of a Mathematics Infusion Curriculum on Middle School Student Mathematics Achievement

Increasing mathematical competencies of American students has been a focus for educators, researchers, and policy makers alike. One purported approach to increase student learning is through connecting mathematics and science curricula. Yet there is a lack of research examining the impact of making these connections. The Mathematics Infusion into Science Project, funded by the National Science Foundation, developed a middle school mathematics‐infused science curriculum. Twenty teachers utilized this curriculum with over 1,200 students. The current research evaluated the effects of this curriculum on students' mathematics learning and compared effects to students who did not receive the curriculum. Students who were taught the infusion curriculum showed a significant increase in mathematical content scores when compared with the control students.     

How Do Students Know What They Learn in Middle School Mathematics Is True?

This article presents ways in which students ascertain that what they have learned in mathematics is true. Students in the middle school (and a few from other grades) were interviewed by prospective and in‐service teachers. Students were asked what they had learned recently in mathematics and how they knew it was true. The answers were grouped by the author according to the justification schemes used by the students in their explanations. Students interviewed used three kinds of justification schemes: externally based, empirical, and analytic. For each kind, examples are provided of students' justifications. Additional insights are included from the reflections of the interviewers. Some suggestions are offered regarding how teachers can help increase their students' ability to give convincing arguments in mathematics.     

How Informal Out-of-School Mathematics Can Help Students Make Sense of Formal In-School Mathematics: The Case of Multiplying by Decimal Numbers

This article presents a teaching experiment on the relationship between informal out-of-school and formal in-school mathematics, and the ways each can inform the other in the development of abstract mathematical knowledge. This study concerns the understanding of some aspects of the multiplicative structure of decimal numbers. It involved a series of classroom activities in upper elementary school, using suitable cultural artifacts and interactive teaching methods. To create a substantially modified teaching/learning environment, new sociomathematical norms (Yackel & Cobb, 1996) were also introduced. The focus was on fostering a mindful approach toward realistic mathematical modeling, which is both real-world based and quantitatively constrained sense-making (Reusser & Stebler, 1997). In addition, procedures not commonly used in ordinary teaching activities, such as estimation and approximation processes, were also introduced.     

The Effects of Self-Regulation,Motivation, Anxiety,and Attributions on Mathematics Achievement for Fifth and Sixth Grade Students

For this quantitative study, a total of n = 761 students (58.1% female) from selected fifth- and sixth-grade mathematics classrooms in Alabama were surveyed in order to investigate the relationships between self-regulated learning, motivation, anxiety, attributions and achievement in mathematics. Data analyses revealed that significant contributions are made by motivation and anxiety on both test score and mathematics grade for fifth grade students. Specific factors (e.g., self-efficacy, worry, other, and failure) were related to academic performance while failure attribution was significantly related to mathematics grade. As for sixth grade students, data analyses showed relationships exist between motivation, anxiety and academic performance with specific factors (i.e., self-efficacy, intrinsic value, and worry) significantly predicting both test score and mathematics grade for sixth graders. The findings underlie the importance of motivation and anxiety for students and how these constructs interact to facilitate self-regulation over the course of developing expertise in a domain, such as mathematics.     

基于层次分析法的大学生高等数学成绩影响因素分析

针对高等数学成绩的影响因素进行问卷调查,将高等数学成绩的影响因素分为个人、班级、学校、家庭和社会五类,每一类又包含多个具体影响因素,根据各层次间的关系,建立层次分析法模型,探讨各因素对大学生高等数学成绩的影响路径和路径系数,结合实际,提出了改进高等数学教学成效的建议和措施.     

Mathematics and poetry: How wide the gap?

Despite the differences between mathematics and poetry, there are common threads enough to show that essential elements of mathematics are humanistic. In fact, the only way to avoid seeing anything poetic in mathematics is to read its language in a purely formalistic fashion, paying attention to denotation and the laws of logic, and to nothing else.