Mathematics Achievement in the Secondary High School Context of STEM and non-STEM Schools

The primary purpose of the research conducted during this dissertation study is to explore how students who attended ISHSs performed on the mathematics high-stakes state test compared to their corresponding peers who attended traditional public high schools in Texas. All three studies included in this dissertation used quantitative data (i.e., state standardized test scores) to investigate whether students’ mathematics performance differs by high school types: STEM and non-STEM. The research for the first article employed one year of state-based data and focused on the comparison of STEM and non-STEM high schools in terms of students’ mathematics achievement. The second article employed a longitudinal assessment of students’ mathematics achievement to observe how students’ initial mathematics scores and their growth rate differ by their high school type as STEM and non-STEM. Research conducted for the third article also used longitudinal state-based data to examine how Hispanic students’ mathematics achievement in ISHSs compares to their Hispanic counterparts in traditional public schools. Results from the first study revealed that Hispanic students who participate in TSTEM academies statistically significantly (p < .05) performed better in mathematics at the end of grade 11 than did Hispanic students who participated in traditional public high schools when controlling for gender and SES. The second study revealed female students’ mathematics growth rate in T-STEM academies was statistically significantly higher than female students’ mathematics growth rate in traditional public high schools controlling for ethnicity and SES. The third study’s findings indicated that female Hispanic students in T-STEM academies statistically significantly (p < .05) outperformed female Hispanic students in comparison schools on their mathematics growth rate. Overall, results from this dissertation study yielded that T-STEM academies are most helpful for Hispanic students, and especially for female Hispanic students, in Texas. The findings of this dissertation are important because increasing the number of underrepresented students who major in STEM, which is needed to maintain the United States’ scientific leadership and economic power in the global world, can be possible by establishing more inclusive STEM schools in high Hispanic populace locations

The Association between Board of Directors’ Characteristics and the Level of Voluntary Disclosure: Evidence from Listed Banks in Borsa Istanbul

The main aim of this study is to investigate the association between some board of directors' characteristics (board independence, board size, board meetings and role duality) and the level of voluntary disclosure in annual reports of listed banks in Borsa Istanbul. The deductive approach was adopted by developing hypotheses based on previous studies' relevant theories and findings. Also, the panel data strategy was applied to analyze the collected data from annual reports across five years (2013-2017). The univariate statistical analysis and the multivariate Feasible Generalized Least Squares regression model are used in this study. The results showed that board independence, board size and board meetings were positively and significantly associated with the level of voluntary disclosure, whilst role duality was negatively but not significantly associated with voluntary disclosure. The results also indicated that all bank characteristics were positively and significantly associated with the level of voluntary disclosure. Most prior studies on voluntary disclosure practices have been undertaken in developed countries, and a few of them have focused on voluntary disclosure practices in the banking sector for a number of years (longitudinally). There is a requirement for more empirical studies in this area to confirm or disprove the previous results. This study will add value to the knowledge in the disclosure literature by clarifying the relationship between the board of directors' characteristics and voluntary disclosure in the banking sector of developing countries

THE IMPACT OF FIRM CHARACTERISTICS ON THE LEVEL OF VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURE:: EVIDENCE FROM LISTED BANKS IN BORSA ISTANBUL

This study aims to examine the impact of some bank characteristics (age, size, profitability and leverage) on the extent of voluntary disclosure in annual reports of listed banks in Borsa Istanbul. All (13) listed banks represent the sample of the study. The study adopted the deductive approach by developing hypotheses based on the relevant theories and results of prior studies. The study also applied the panel data strategy to analyze the collected data from annual reports across five years (2013-2017). The results indicated that there is a positive relationship between each bank characteristic (age, size, profitability and leverage) and the level of voluntary disclosure. The results also show that profitability has a big impact on the level of voluntary disclosure followed by leverage, whereas, age and size have a small effect

Highly Efficient and Re-executable Private Function Evaluation with Linear Complexity

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Private function evaluation aims to securely compute a function f(x1, ... ; xn) without leaking any information other than what is revealed by the output, where f is a private input of one of the parties (say Party1) and xi is a private input of the i-th party Partyi. In this work, we propose a novel and secure two-party private function evaluation (2PFE) scheme based on the DDH assumption. Our scheme introduces a reusability feature that signi cantly improves the state-of-the-art. Accordingly, our scheme has two variants, one is utilized in the initial execution of the function f, and the other is utilized in its subsequent evaluations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first and most efficient 2PFE scheme that enjoys a reusablity feature. Our protocols achieve linear communication and computation complexities and a constant number of rounds which is at most three

Environmental costs and its role in improving the quality of financial reporting: A case study in Libya

This study aims to show the importance of environmental costs, and the role of these costs to improve the quality of financial reporting in Libyan oil companies and offering the suggestions to develop it. To achieve the objectives of the study, the researchers developed a questionnaire contains (35) questions, distributed to (100) of the officials of the financial departments, auditing, and costs and the parties concerned with the preparation of financial reports, collected and used in the analysis, a one-sample T-test was used. It seems to the researchers that there was the presence of environmental awareness and the company's strategy towards environmental issues, the study also showed there are obstacles that limit the application of measurement and disclosure of environmental costs. Moreover, it seems to the researchers that the measurement models for environmental costs increase the company's commitment to environmental responsibilities. The results of the study also showed the presence of a statistically significant relationship between environmental costs and the increase in the quality of the financial reports. Finally, there was a statistically significant relationship between environmental costs and decision making. The study suggested some recommendations to develop the application of accounting for environmental costs and disclosure to provide appropriate information to rationalize and take decisions in the oil companies in Libya, as well as the need for companies to protect the environment and provide funding and support to preserve the environment

Environmental costs and its role in improving the quality of financial reporting: A case study in Libya

This study aims to show the importance of environmental costs, and the role of these costs to improve the quality of financial reporting in Libyan oil companies and offering the suggestions to develop it. To achieve the objectives of the study, the researchers developed a questionnaire contains (35) questions, distributed to (100) of the officials of the financial departments, auditing, and costs and the parties concerned with the preparation of financial reports, collected and used in the analysis, a one-sample T-test was used. It seems to the researchers that there was the presence of environmental awareness and the company's strategy towards environmental issues, the study also showed there are obstacles that limit the application of measurement and disclosure of environmental costs. Moreover, it seems to the researchers that the measurement models for environmental costs increase the company's commitment to environmental responsibilities. The results of the study also showed the presence of a statistically significant relationship between environmental costs and the increase in the quality of the financial reports. Finally, there was a statistically significant relationship between environmental costs and decision making. The study suggested some recommendations to develop the application of accounting for environmental costs and disclosure to provide appropriate information to rationalize and take decisions in the oil companies in Libya, as well as the need for companies to protect the environment and provide funding and support to preserve the environment

Sample Efficient Interactive End-to-End Deep Learning for Self-Driving Cars with Selective Multi-Class Safe Dataset Aggregation

The objective of this paper is to develop a sample efficient end-to-end deep learning method for self-driving cars, where we attempt to increase the value of the information extracted from samples, through careful analysis obtained from each call to expert driver\'s policy. End-to-end imitation learning is a popular method for computing self-driving car policies. The standard approach relies on collecting pairs of inputs (camera images) and outputs (steering angle, etc.) from an expert policy and fitting a deep neural network to this data to learn the driving policy. Although this approach had some successful demonstrations in the past, learning a good policy might require a lot of samples from the expert driver, which might be resource-consuming. In this work, we develop a novel framework based on the Safe Dateset Aggregation (safe DAgger) approach, where the current learned policy is automatically segmented into different trajectory classes, and the algorithm identifies trajectory segments or classes with the weak performance at each step. Once the trajectory segments with weak performance identified, the sampling algorithm focuses on calling the expert policy only on these segments, which improves the convergence rate. The presented simulation results show that the proposed approach can yield significantly better performance compared to the standard Safe DAgger algorithm while using the same amount of samples from the expert.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, IROS2019 conferenc

Using Precision in STEM Language: A Qualitative Look

Teachers need to develop a variety of pedagogical strategies that can encourage precise and accurate communication - an extremely important 21st century skill. Precision with STEM oral language is essential. Emphasizing oral communication with precise language in combination with increased spatial skills with modeling can improve the chances of success in STEM courses and later in making STEM career choices. The participants were 14 middle and high school teachers who participated in a week of professional development (PD). The Aural/Spatial Interactions and Invariant Components of Vocabulary for STEM Content Area Specialists (AS-STEM) was administered to teacher groups to examine how STEM discourses influenced AS-STEM success. This study compared language differences among groups that were more versus less successful at representing unseen 3-D objects by drawing 2-D depictions from oral descriptions from peers. The groups that were more successful, able to produce more accurate depictions, used (a) language type merging that was more coherent and less frequent, (b) language precision that appeared to convey meaning effectively, and (c) validated shared meaning regularly and established these shared meanings efficiently. Thus, teachers who were able to merge language types using precision and jointly took ownership of the tasks were more successful. We trust that this work translates into practice through the awareness teachers had from participation in and discussion of the activities

Explicating the Characteristics of STEM Teaching and Learning: A Metasynthesis

This metasynthesis focused on STEM teaching and learning practices in middle and high school classrooms and in informal settings. Research artifacts between 2005 and 2012 were examined. Fifty-eight unique artifacts were classified into four categories: reform-based teaching and learning, informal education, teacher factors, and technology use. Promising pedagogical reform-based practices included inquiry-based learning, engineering design, project-based learning, problem-based learning, and hands-on practices. The most common intervention identified was increasing teacher content knowledge. Even though STEM informal activities attempt to recruit underrepresented or low achieving students, the reality is that access to informal STEM activities is often based on students’ expressed high interest, prior academic achievement, teacher recommendation, time and travel availability and flexibility, and overall levels of ambition or motivation. Positive outcomes, due to technology, appeared to covary with other factors such as teacher content knowledge, the presence of campus support, or active engagement within a learning community