Investigating the impact of an urban community school effort on middle school STEM-related student outcomes over time through propensity score matched methods

This study investigates the impact of an urban community school reform initiative that focuses on an immigrant and refugee population in middle school. A 6th–8th grade cohort of students in the community school are followed over time and compared to a propensity score matched group on overall GPA, mathematics, and science academic outcomes and traditional college preparedness indicators. Further, a deeper dive into the intersection of gender and race/ethnicity was examined on all outcomes. Findings revealed that students in the urban community school demonstrated significantly more preparedness to enroll in college and move into a STEM field if they desired compared to the matched students. All gender/racial groups in the community school performed significantly higher than those in the matched group. Further, all gender/racial groups of students in the urban community school defied standard academic achievement drops common over time in middle school, and instead increase overall, math, and science grades from 6th to 8th grade.     

Components of Place Value Understanding: Targeting Mathematical Difficulties When Providing Interventions

Place value understanding requires the same activity that students use when developing fractional and algebraic reasoning, making this understanding foundational to mathematics learning. However, many students engage successfully in mathematics classrooms without having a conceptual understanding of place value, preventing them from accessing mathematics that is more sophisticated later. The purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate how upper elementary students' unit coordination related to difficulties they experience when engaging in place value tasks. Understanding place value requires that students coordinate units recursively to construct multi‐digit numbers from their single‐digit number understandings through forms of unit development and strategic counting. Findings suggest that students identified as low‐achieving were capable of only one or two levels of unit coordination. Furthermore, these students relied on inaccurate procedures to solve problems with millennial numbers. These findings indicate that upper elementary students identified as low‐achieving are not to yet able to (de)compose numbers effectively, regroup tens and hundreds when operating on numbers, and transition between millennial numbers. Implications of this study suggest that curricula designers and statewide standards should adopt nuances in unit coordination when developing tasks that promote or assess students' place value understanding.     

Active learning: a case study of student engagement in college Calculus

This paper presents a case study for strategic engagement of students in a Calculus course in order to produce increased learning in the classroom. Since it has been shown that active learning can promote greater comprehension for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, the researcher utilized many types of active learning techniques to enhance classroom instruction. The key components implemented are presented as a model of enhanced learning through developed classroom engagement. This course redesign model entitled, Strategic Engagement for Increased Learning (SEIL), has the potential to (1) contribute to the body of knowledge on ways to improve mathematics skills for college students, (2) identify successful teaching strategies and technologies that will promote the retention of STEM students, (3) increase the success rate of students taking Calculus, and (4) help produce more STEM graduates needed for the STEM workforce in the United States of America.     

Mining performance data through nonlinear PCA with optimal scaling

Performance data are usually collected in order to build well‐defined performance indicators. Since such data may conceal additional information, which can be revealed by secondary analysis, we believe that mining of performance data may be fruitful. We also note that performance databases usually contain both qualitative and quantitative variables for which it may be inappropriate to assume some specific (multivariate) underlying distribution. Thus, a suitable technique to deal with these issues should be adopted. In this work, we consider nonlinear principal component analysis (PCA) with optimal scaling, a method developed to incorporate all types of variables, and to discover and handle nonlinear relationships. The reader is offered a case study in which a student opinion database is mined. Though generally gathered to provide evidence of teaching ability, they are exploited here to provide a more general performance evaluation tool for those in charge of managing universities. We show how nonlinear PCA with optimal scaling applied to student opinion data enables users to point out some strengths and weaknesses of educational programs and services within a university. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

大学物理实验教学质量提高的探索与实践

从大学物理实验教学团队建设,大学物理实验教师素质提高;培养学生学习兴趣及与科学技术发展相适应的综合能力等方面,对如何提高大学物理实验教学质量进行了一些探索与实践。     

化学专业研究生职业伦理教育与化学实验室的管理

结合具体实例,分析了当前化学专业研究生进行职业伦理教育的必要性,探讨了研究生职业伦理教育对化学实验室管理的积极作用,阐述了化学实验室管理促进研究生职业伦理教育的主要途径,为化学专业的研究生教育和化学实验室的管理提供了有益参考。     

Using Culturally Responsive Stories in Mathematics: Responses From the Target Audience

This study examined how Black students responded to the utilization of culturally responsive stories in their mathematics class. All students in the two classes participated in mathematics lessons that began with an African American story (culturally responsive to this population), followed by mathematical discussion and concluded with solving problems that correlated to the story. The researcher observed and recorded responses by students during each part of these lessons with protocols. Students independently reflected weekly by answering five questions to share their perspective on the African American stories. The teacher reflected on each lesson as well, describing thoughts on how these students responded to the story in each lesson. This paper examines the analyzed data from the target audience: Black students. Results revealed that Black students responded to the use of African American stories with high self‐rated levels of engagement and enjoyment and that the stories helped them think about mathematics to varying degrees. Since students who are engaged and are thinking about mathematics are more likely to achieve mathematical understanding, the researcher concludes that this strategy should continue to be tested in diverse classrooms with an emphasis on student reflection to determine if the outcomes are transferable and generalizable.     

Effect of self-constructed concept map with peer feedback on chemistry learning outcome

Concept mapping remains widely used in education. However, little is known about how self-constructed concept maps and peer feedback can improve student learning outcomes in chemistry. We investigated the effects of peer feedback on concept mapping and how it improves students' learning performance in a large second-semester, introductory chemistry course. Three hundred and twenty students were randomly assigned to one of two concept mapping conditions: self-constructed concept map with peer feedback and self-constructed concept map without peer feedback. Each group constructed concept maps that depicted the relationship between concepts on the topic of intermolecular force. The results showed that students in the self-constructed concept map with peer feedback condition outperformed students in the no peer feedback condition in chemistry learning outcome. Overall, this study demonstrates that peer feedback enhances the effectiveness of learning with generative concept maps. The implications and future directions are discussed.     

基于BP网络模型的高校贫困生界定研究

客观合理地对贫困生进行界定一直是各高校学生工作管理部门面临的难题.选取能够充分反映学生家庭经济状况的变量,利用合理样本可建立用于贫困生界定的BP网络,检验结果表明,它能成功的对贫困生进行界定.     

以研究生为主体力量构建化学科普平台的探索与实践

有效利用高校的科研和人才资源优势，依托陕西省"工科化学"实践教学示范中心，创建主要面向中小学生的化学科普平台。通过在科研团队基础上建设以研究生为主体、教师为指导的科普团队，并打造集知识学习、实践探索及兵器特色于一体的"ABC"科普课程体系，开设各类趣味化学及相关学科的实践项目，促进公众正确理解和认识化学，培养他们的科学精神进而提高科学素养。同时，参与科普工作也有效提升了研究生的实践能力，激发了他们从事科研的兴趣，也为研究生的培养开拓了一条新途径。