Improving Students' Proportional Thinking Using Schema-Based Instruction

This study investigated the effectiveness of an instructional program (schema-based instruction, SBI) designed to teach 7th graders how to comprehend and solve proportion problems involving ratios/rates, scale drawings, and percents. The SBI program emphasized the underlying mathematical structure of problems via schematic diagrams, focused on a 4-step procedure to support and monitor problem solving, and addressed the flexible use of alternative solution strategies based on the problem situation. Blocking by teacher at three middle schools, the authors randomly assigned the 21 classrooms to one of two conditions: SBI and control. Classroom teachers provided the instruction. Results of multilevel modeling used to test for treatment effects after accounting for pretests and other characteristics (gender, ethnicity) revealed the direct effects of SBI on mathematical problem solving at posttest. However, the improved problem solving skills were not maintained a month later when SBI was no longer in effect nor did the skills transfer to solving problems in new domain-level content

The Effects of Metacognitive Training on Algebra Students’ Calibration Accuracy, Achievement, and Mathematical Literacy

This dissertation describes an empirical study that investigated how metacognitive training influenced lower achieving Algebra students’ calibration accuracy, achievement, and development of mathematics literacy. Multiple methods were used to collect and analyze the data. Close analysis of students’ work and classroom observations revealed that students that were exposed to the metacognitive training had significantly higher prediction accuracy and made gains in their understanding of the mathematics word problems than did students who did not receive the metacognitive training. Overall, however, both the intervention and comparison groups improved in their academic performance and became more mathematically literate and accurate in their metacognitive judgments. These findings suggested that explicit instruction of self-regulation strategies was beneficial for improving metacognitive judgments among lower achieving Algebra students in this study. Results further suggest that the problem-solving strategy enhanced mathematics learning for both groups. Further research is warranted to better understand students’ metacognitions as they engage in the problem-solving process

Student engagement as a function of environmental complexity in high school classrooms

The purpose of this study was to investigate the linkage between the quality of the learning environment and the quality of students' experience in seven high school classrooms in six different subject areas. The quality of the learning environment was conceptualized in terms of environmental complexity, or the simultaneous presence of environmental challenge and environmental support. The students (N = 108) in each class participated in the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) measuring their engagement and related experiential variables. Concurrently, environmental complexity and its subdimensions were observed and rated from video with a new observational instrument, The Optimal Learning Environments - Observational Log and Assessment (OLE-OLA). Using two-level HLM regression models, ratings from the OLE-OLA were utilized to predict student engagement and experiential variables as measured by the ESM. Results showed that environmental complexity predicted student engagement and sense of classroom self-esteem. Implications for research, theory and practice are discussed

Faculty Senate Newsletter, March 2014

Message from President: A temptation for the writer of a “welcome” column to a journal of academic controversy is to win faculty sympathy by selecting the error or abuse of the month and then targeting the perpetrators in some or other corner of the administration. Although it is true that Louisiana higher education suffers from frustrated and stymied as well as from less than altruistic management, it is also true that, up and down the state, faculty members avoid the exercise of assorted options that could make matters better. Given the slow flow of information in secrecy-obsessed Louisiana, it is no wonder that colleagues can see only a glimmer of their options, as if through a glass darkly. With no intention of casting aspersions on professionals who are already beleaguered, let us look at a few steps faculty can take to enter if not influence “the bigger picture.” Over the course of decades, faculty have come to believe that their best hope of defense against this, that, or the other impertinency is within departments. What can I do, a colleague asks, to make my zoology department bulletproof against rival claims and aspirations in religious studies? Far from serving faculty, departments promote isolation and interrupt the flow of information. They are more useful to the administration than they are to faculty, for they create factions and diminish the tendency toward group action. Whether by giving the best annual reviews to colleagues who influence the most campuses or whether by participating in statewide efforts such as the reform of retirement systems, faculty should consciously and occasionally defiantly challenge the departmental model of academic life. A correlate to emancipation from the self-imposed departmental silo is the recognition that, in those areas that matter most to faculty, whether compensation or research funding or working conditions, departments have no power whatsoever. In these and indeed all crucial areas, the action occurs at the system- or statewide level. During the worst days of the budget crisis, for example, defensive, self-interested administrations exploited faculty unawareness by encouraging campus-based faculty to resent fund-shifting schemes that, in fact, were among the very few strategies that kept whole systems, including flagship campuses, afloat. Faculty can favorably influence their future by bringing larger concepts into play during hiring, whether hiring of colleagues or administrators. Colleagues might begin asking questions about candidates’ understanding of higher educational systems (as a whole) or might seek evidence of aptitude in educational and budgeting policy. They might show a bit of ingenious, informed skepticism by wondering aloud whether promotion and tenure guidelines, with their concern for service to the community, might also authorize rewards for public and cross-campus engagement. Or they might take advantage of the dozens if not hundreds of opportunity for public comment, whether at management (Supervisor) meetings or whether at committee hearings at the state government. Many faculty labor under the belief that talking to legislators is forbidden by law, but nothing could be further from the truth (so long as one represents oneself as a private citizen). The de facto and somewhat timorous outsourcing to administrators by faculty of legislative commentgiving is surely one of the greatest calamities in the history of higher education. Faculty would do well to recognize that university legislative delegations represent institutional, not faculty, interests. One reason for the disengagement of faculty from the processes that shape their lives is commitment to a stereotype that emerged during the nineteenth century of the intellectual as a sensitive soul detached from the world and committed to refined research. This stereotype has as much of a grip on practitioners of the STEM disciplines as on liberal arts enthusiasts. Countervailing this model is the somewhat older idea of a cultivated statesman and also the somewhat newer model of the public intellectual. As explorers, faculty members should consider leaving behind the safe stereotype of the dreamy thinker and venturing into other, more engaged ways of public life

Cultural Imperialism, TV and Children Spectatorship in Contemporary Ghana.

A content and discourse analysis of television programs is performed to show that Ghanaians do enjoy their local programs but very little time is allocated for children’s content on both the public and private stations. Instead, foreign content has flooded the TV channels for both adult and children’s programs and this is concerning because culture is being lost amongst the new generation. Also, in an era where representation matters, African children should be represented in the media. This paper centers on cultural and media imperialism and representation of the African child in the media and we find that TV programs being aired on Ghanaian TV could be as a result of cultural and media imperialism

Choice-Stimulus Preference Assessment for Students At-Risk for Emotional Disturbance in Educational Settings: An Improvement for Practice?

The ability of educators to identify consequences that act as reinforcers may predict the success of behavior change strategies predicated on the use of reinforcement. Although well supported for children with severe disabilities research concerning the effectiveness of choice-stimulus assessment for children with emotional disturbance (ED) remains limited. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of choice-stimulus preference assessment, specifically, multiple- stimulus without replacement (MSWO) procedures, in identifying reinforcers for children with ED using evidence-based math remediation (i.e., cover, copy, and compare [CCC]). The study compared the effects of an MSWO and the vocal nomination of preferences using an alternating treatments single-subject design. The study also assessed the stability of the MSWO and vocal nomination assessments over multiple administrations. Results indicated that the MSWO assessment identified effective reinforcers for students at-risk for ED. The MSWO generated more consistent findings than vocal nomination. In one case, the reinforcers identified by the MSWO assessment evoked more frequent use of CCC than nominated reinforcers. Directions for future research and implications follow a discussion of findings