Taking an Item‐Level Approach to Measuring Change With the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation: An Application of Item Response Theory

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of curricular or instructional innovations, researchers often attempt to measure change in students' conceptual understanding of the target subject matter. The measurement of change is therefore a critical endeavor. Often, this is accomplished through pre–post testing using an assessment such as a concept inventory, and aggregate test scores are compared from pre to post‐test in order to characterize gains. These comparisons of raw or normalized scores are most often made under the assumptions of Classical Test Theory (CTT). This study argues that measuring change at the item level (rather than the person level) on the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE) can provide a more detailed insight into the observed change in students' Newtonian thinking. Further, such an approach is more warranted under the assumptions of Item Response Theory (IRT). In comparing item‐level measures of change under CTT and IRT measurement models, it was found that the inferences drawn from each analysis are similar, but those derived from IRT modeling stand on a stronger foundation statistically. Second, the IRT approach leads to analyzing common item groupings which provide further information about change at the item and topic level.     

Impact of the Science and Technology for Children Curriculum in the Oshkosh Area School District

This study examines the instructional impact of National Science Resources Center's Science and Technology for Children curriculum in the Oshkosh Area School District. Specifically, the instructional effectiveness of four physical‐science units for grades 1‐4 were investigated. Students were pre‐ and posttested using a multiple‐choice exam containing items adapted from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, National Association of Educational Progress, TerraNova, and other widely recognized sources. Results were compared with existing instructional materials. Extensive resources for data interpretation include audiotaped lessons, classroom observations, interviews with students and teachers, student‐attitude surveys, and observations of teacher training. Results suggest that the adoption of this curriculum among experienced teachers in the district will provide little or no immediate gains on student achievement and potentially a slight decrease in student attitudes toward science.     

An Extended Examination of Preservice Elementary Teachers' Science Teaching Self‐Efficacy

The purpose of this study was to examine programmatic factors that positively impact changes in elementary preservice teachers' teaching self‐efficacy beliefs. Specifically, it examined the impact of science methods courses, student teaching, and science content courses on elementary preservice teachers' science teaching self‐efficacy. The Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument Form B was administered, using a pre/post design, to undergraduate elementary education majors in specific education and science content courses. A total of 399 responses were collected, of which 172 had matching pre/post surveys suitable for analysis. Students in the science content courses and student teaching seminar showed no significant change in either the Personal Science Teaching Efficacy (PSTE) or the Science Teaching Outcome Expectancy scales during the time they were enrolled in the classes. Significant gains in PSTE were found for students enrolled in the science methods course. The specific design of the education program and methods course may be responsible for these changes.     

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.     

Gender and Racial Differences: Development of Sixth Grade Students' Geometric Spatial Visualization within an Earth/Space Unit

This study investigated sixth‐grade middle‐level students' geometric spatial development by gender and race within and between control and experimental groups at two middle schools as they participated in an Earth/Space unit. The control group utilized a regular Earth/Space curriculum and the experimental group used a National Aeronautics and Space Administration‐based curriculum. The quantitative data sources included the Lunar Phases Concept Inventory, Geometric Spatial Assessment, and the Purdue Spatial Visualization–Rotation Test. The results indicated the experimental males and females, and the students of color and white students in the experimental group showed significant gains in their understanding of geometric spatial visualization from pre‐ to post‐implementation. However, for the control group, the significant gains were limited to the males and the white students. The findings reveal that support is needed for males, females, and all racial groups to have the opportunity to develop their spatial reasoning, which in turn, increases students' scientific understanding.     

A Study of STEM Assessments in Engineering,Science, and Mathematics for Elementary and Middle School Students

The purpose of this study was to develop, scale, and validate assessments in engineering, science, and mathematics with grade appropriate items that were sensitive to the curriculum developed by teachers. The use of item response theory to assess item functioning was a focus of the study. The work is part of a larger project focused on increasing student learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)‐related areas in grades 4–8 through an engineering design‐based, integrated approach to STEM instruction and assessment. The fact that the assessments are available to school districts at no cost, and represent psychometrically sound instruments that are sensitive to STEM‐oriented curriculum, offers schools an important tool for gauging students' understanding of engineering, science, and mathematics concepts.     

Applying Mathematical Concepts with Hands‐On,Food‐Based Science Curriculum

This article addresses the current state of the mathematics education system in the United States and provides a possible solution to the contributing issues. As a result of lower performance in primary mathematics, American students are not acquiring the necessary quantitative literacy skills to become successful adults. This study analyzed the impact of the Food, Math, and Science Teaching Enhancement Resource (FoodMASTER) Intermediate curriculum on fourth‐grade students' mathematics knowledge. The curriculum is a part of the FoodMASTER Initiative, which is a compilation of programs utilizing food, a familiar and necessary part of everyday life, as a tool to teach mathematics and science. Students exposed to the curriculum completed a 20‐item researcher‐developed mathematics knowledge exam (intervention n = 288; control n = 194). Overall, the results showed a significant increase in mathematics knowledge from pretest to posttest. These findings suggest that the food‐based science activities provided the students with the context in which to apply mathematical concepts to an everyday experience. Therefore, the FoodMASTER approach was successful at improving students' mathematics knowledge while building a foundation for becoming quantitatively literate adults.     

Impact of Middle School Student Energy Monitoring Activities on Climate Change Beliefs and Intentions

The Going Green! Middle Schoolers Out to Save the World project aims to direct middle school students' enthusiasm for hands‐on activities toward interest in science and other STEM areas while guiding them to solve real‐world problems. Students in this project are taught by their teachers to use energy monitoring equipment to audit standby power consumed by electronic devices in their homes and communities. Major findings were: (a) Beliefs in climate change increased more for students in the treatment than comparison group, pre to post; and (b) For girls there was a larger positive impact on climate change beliefs than for boys. These and additional findings presented in this paper provide evidence that a hands‐on engaged‐learning curriculum can have a positive influence on climate change beliefs and intentions and strengthen the association between the two constructs.     

The role of fluency in a mathematics item with an embedded graphic: interpreting a pie chart

The purpose of this study was to identify the pedagogical knowledge relevant to the successful completion of a pie chart item. This purpose was achieved through the identification of the essential fluencies that 12–13-year-olds required for the successful solution of a pie chart item. Fluency relates to ease of solution and is particularly important in mathematics because it impacts on performance. Although the majority of students were successful on this multiple choice item, there was considerable divergence in the strategies they employed. Approximately two-thirds of the students employed efficient multiplicative strategies, which recognised and capitalised on the pie chart as a proportional representation. In contrast, the remaining one-third of students used a less efficient additive strategy that failed to capitalise on the representation of the pie chart. The results of our investigation of students’ performance on the pie chart item during individual interviews revealed that five distinct fluencies were involved in the solution process: conceptual (understanding the question), linguistic (keywords), retrieval (strategy selection), perceptual (orientation of a segment of the pie chart) and graphical (recognising the pie chart as a proportional representation). In addition, some students exhibited mild disfluencies corresponding to the five fluencies identified above. Three major outcomes emerged from the study. First, a model of knowledge of content and students for pie charts was developed. This model can be used to inform instruction about the pie chart and guide strategic support for students. Second, perceptual and graphical fluency were identified as two aspects of the curriculum, which should receive a greater emphasis in the primary years, due to their importance in interpreting pie charts. Finally, a working definition of fluency in mathematics was derived from students’ responses to the pie chart item.     

The Effects of a STEM Intervention on Elementary Students' Science Knowledge and Skills

The purpose of the study was to assess elementary students' science process skills, content knowledge, and concept knowledge after one year of participation in an elementary Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) program. This study documented the effects of the combination of intensive professional development and the use of inquiry‐based science instruction in the elementary classroom, including the benefits of using rigorous science curriculum with general education students. The results of the study revealed a statistically significant gain in science process skills, science concepts, and science‐content knowledge by general education students in the experimental group when compared with students in the comparison group. Moreover, teacher participation in the STEM program had a statistically significant impact on students' variability in posttest scores. These interim student performance data support the implementation of rigorous differentiated science curriculum focused on improving science concept, content knowledge, and process skills.     

Student Competence in Understanding the Matter Concept and Its Implications for Science Curriculum Standards

Using the US national sample from the 1995 Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), this study examined students' competence levels in understanding the matter concept at grades 3, 4, 7, 8 and high school graduation, and compared them to the expectations in the US national science education standards. It was found that third‐grade students were developing understanding on mixtures, and fourth‐grade students were developing understanding on separating mixtures; seventh‐ and eighth‐grade students were only at the beginning level of differentiating chemical properties from physical properties; they were not ready for the particulate model of chemical change. High school physical science specialization students were still at the developing level of understanding kinetic and atomic models of chemical and physical changes; they may not be able to master those theories. The findings suggest that the Benchmarks for Science Literacy and Atlas for Science Literacy may have overestimated the competences of elementary, middle school, and high school students.     

Middle Grades: Misconceptions in Statistical Thinking

A sample of 134 sixth‐grade students who were using the Connected Mathematics curriculum were administered an open‐ended item entitled, Vet Club (Balanced Assessment, 2000). This paper explores the role of misconceptions and naïve conceptions in the acquisition of statistical thinking for middle grades students. Students exhibited misconceptions and naïve conceptions regarding representing data graphically, interpreting the meaning of typicality, and plotting 0 above the x‐axis.     

Student Perceptions of a Summer Ventures in Science and Mathematics Camp Experience

“As the world becomes increasingly technological, the value of (the ideas and skills of its population) will be determined in no small measure by the effectiveness of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in the United States” and “STEM education will determine whether the United States will remain a leader among nations and whether we will be able to solve immense challenges in such areas as energy, health, environmental protection, and national security” (President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2010, p. vii). Research on the effectiveness of STEM‐focused school and other learning experiences (e.g., short‐term camps) on student attitudes and performance outcomes is sparse. In this study, we documented the influence of an intensive STEM summer program on high school students’ attitudes toward STEM concepts and interests in STEM careers. Attending the summer program was associated with gains on students’ attitudes toward some aspects of STEM as well as specific career interests. Notably, students reported statistically significant views of important aspects of STEM and their attitudes toward science and mathematics were more positive than their attitudes about engineering and technology.     

Intended Treatments of Arithmetic Average in U.S. and Asian School Mathematics Textbooks

This study examined how selected U.S. and Asian mathematics curricula are designed to facilitate students' understanding of the arithmetic average. There is a consistency regarding the learning goals among these curriculum series, but the focuses are different between the Asian series and the U.S. reform series. The Asian series and the U.S. commercial series focus the arithmetic average more on conceptual and procedural understanding of the concept as a computational algorithm than on understanding the concept as a representative of a data set; however, the two U.S. reform series focus the concept more on the latter. Because of the different focuses, the Asian and the U.S. curriculum series treat the concept differently. In the Asian series, the concept is first introduced in the context of “equal‐sharing” or “per‐unit‐quantity,” and the averaging formula is formally introduced at a very early stage. In the U.S. reform series, the concept is discussed as a measure of central tendency, and after students have some intuitive ideas of the statistical aspect of the concept, the averaging algorithm is briefly introduced.     

A Vision of Learning to Teach for the 21st Century

Glenda Lappan received her Ed. D. in mathematics and education from the University of Georgia in 1965 and has since worked at Michigan State University. From 1989–91 she took leave to serve as the program director for Teacher Preparation at the National Science Foundation. From 1997–2001 she is on leave to serve as president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Her research and development interests are in the connected areas of students' learning of mathematics and mathematics teacher professional growth and change at the middle and secondary levels. She has published over a hundred scholarly papers and numerous books for middle grades students and teachers. She is currently the codirector of the Connected Mathematics Project II, which is funded by the National Science Foundation to revise and continue development of a complete middle school curriculum for teachers and for students. She served as the chair of the middle school writing group for the NCTM Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989), and as Chair of the Commission that developed the NCTM Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (1991). She served on the NCTM Board of Directors from 1989 to 1992 and from 1997–2001. She has been a member of many national advisory boards, including the following: Glenn T. Seaborg Center for Teaching and Learning Science and Mathematics, the Ford Foundation/University of Pittsburgh QUASAR Project, the NSF/University of Maryland Teacher Preparation Collaborative, and the NSF/San Diego State University Mathematics for Elementary Teacher Preparation Materials Development Project.     

The Influence of Mind Mapping on Eighth Graders’ Science Achievement

This study assessed the influence of using mind maps as a learning tool on eighth graders’ science achievement, whether such influence was mediated by students’ prior scholastic achievement, and the relationship between students’ mind maps and their conceptual understandings. Sixty‐two students enrolled in four intact sections of a grade 8 science classroom were randomly assigned to experimental and comparison conditions. Participants in the experimental group received training in, and constructed, mind maps throughout a science unit. Engagement with mind mapping was counterbalanced with involving the comparison group participants with note summarization to control for time on task as a confounding variable. Otherwise, the intervention was similar for both groups in all respects. A multiple choice test was used to measure student gains across two categories and three levels of achievement. Data analyses indicated that the experimental group participants achieved statistically significant and substantially higher gains than students in the comparison group. The gains were not mediated by participants’ prior scholastic achievement. Analyses also indicated that iconography was not as central to participants’ mind maps as often theorized. Depicting accurate links between central themes and major and minor concepts, and using colors to represent concepts were the major aspects that differentiated the mind maps built by students who achieved higher levels of conceptual understanding.     

Student Outcomes in a Local Systemic Change Project

The Local Systemic Change initiative of the National Science Foundation supports projects focusing primarily on teacher enhancement through extensive professional development and the use of standards‐based curriculum materials. The underlying rationale is that the effective use of such materials will ultimately result in enhanced student learning. However, the research base regarding the impact of these efforts on student learning is rather lean. This paper describes the results of a curriculum‐aligned assessment comprising selected items from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. The assessment was administered to fifth graders involved in a Local Systemic Change project to address the following questions: How does the performance of students involved in the project compare nationally and internationally? and Does length of involvement in the project make a difference in student performance? Additional evidence to relate student outcomes to the project's systemic change efforts are provided.     

Towards curricular coherence in integers and fractions: a study of the efficacy of a lesson sequence that uses the number line as the principal representational context

This paper reports a study of the efficacy of Learning Mathematics through Representations (LMR), an innovative curriculum unit designed to support upper elementary students’ understandings of integers and fractions. The unit supports an integrated treatment of integers and fractions through (a) the use of the number line as a cross-domain representational context, and (b) the building of mathematical definitions in classroom communities that become resources to support student argumentation, generalization, and problem solving. In the efficacy study, fourth and fifth grade teachers employing the same district curriculum (Everyday Mathematics) were matched on background indicators and then assigned to either the LMR experimental classrooms (n = 11) or the comparison group (n = 8 with 10 classrooms). During the fall semester, LMR teachers implemented the LMR unit on 19 days and district curriculum on other days of mathematics instruction. HLM analyses documented greater achievement for LMR students than Comparison students on both the end-of-unit and the end-of year assessments of integers and fractions knowledge; the growth rates of LMR students were similar regardless of entering ability level, and gains for LMR students occurred on item types that included number line representations and those that did not. The findings point to the efficacy of the LMR sequence in supporting teaching and learning in the domains of integers and fractions.