Many students find that learning statistics is difficult, especially novice learners first taking statistical classes. Instructors also struggle to teach statistics due to many challenges, such as students' misconceptions, lack of math skills, negative attitudes, and deficient instructional methods. A new pedagogical approach called Decision-Based Learning (DBL) has been developed to help instructors and students overcome these challenges. A group of Peruvian university professors in 2018 and 2019 were trained to use DBL. However, limited studies have explored DBL instructors' and students' experiences using DBL in Peru. The aim of this qualitative research study is to deeply understand the experiences of one Peruvian statistics instructor and her students using DBL pedagogy and software. This study used a qualitative Gadamerian-Hermeneutic methodology approach. Data were collected from seven participants' interviews (six students and one statistics instructor), the researcher's field notes, and classroom artifacts. Findings identify several specific benefits and challenges participants faced when implementing DBL. Benefits include growth of students' confidence in solving statistical problems and instructor satisfaction, and challenges includes time-consuming instructor initial preparation and students' learning transfer issues. This study concluded that DBL is beneficial for students and instructors alike. Based on the results, some recommendations are offered to help instructors to overcome the challenges faced when implementing DBL.

The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to examine the effects of knowledge on cognition and regulation of cognition on declarative knowledge, conditional knowledge, and procedural knowledge in geometry and (2) to examine the interrelationships among declarative knowledge, conditional knowledge, and procedural knowledge in geometry. The reciprocal relationships between metacognitive and knowledge factors were modeled by using data from tenth grade secondary school students. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships of two metacognitive factors (knowledge of cognition, regulation of cognition) and three knowledge factors (declarative knowledge, conditional knowledge, procedural knowledge). The observed variables representing the latent variables were determined by carrying out exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis for the metacognitive awareness inventory and geometry knowledge test separately. Major findings revealed: (1) Declarative knowledge significantly and positively influences conditional and procedural knowledge / (2) Procedural knowledge has a signitificant and positive direct effect on conditional knowledge / (3) Declarative knowledge has a positive indirect effect on conditional knowledge / (4) Knowledge of cognition significantly and positively influences procedural knowledge / (5) Regulation of cognition has a significant but negative direct effect on procedural knowledge / (6) Knowledge of cognition has positive indirect effects on conditional and procedural knowledge / (7) Regulation of cognition has negative indirect effects on conditional and procedural knowledge / (8) Knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition have non-significant direct effect on declarative and conditional knowledge. The results showed that knowledge of cognition has the strongest direct effect on procedural knowledge and the direct effect of declarative knowledge on conditional knowledge is stronger than on procedural knowledge. In view of the findings considerable suggestions is provided for teachers, instructional designers, and mathematics education researchers.

This study compared the effect of the use of physical manipulative with self-metacognitive questioning versus manipulative without self-metacognitive questioning on the knowledge acquisition in polygons. Participants were 220 sixth grade students. A pretest, treatment and posttest two-group design was used. There were two treatment groups: manipulative with self-metacognitive questioning (MAN+META) and manipulative without self-metacognitive questioning (MAN) Three distinct knowledge tests were designed by the researcher: Declarative, conditional and procedural. Declarative knowledge test consisted of 18 multiple-choice questions. The conditional and procedural knowledge tests consisted of six and ten open-ended questions respectively. Mixed design analysis of variance results revealed that there is a significant effect for time but no group-by-time interaction effect suggesting that both groups responded equally well to treatment in the amount of change in their scores on the two outcome measures: pretests and posttests. A follow up analysis (paired t-test) was conducted to evaluate the impact of time on students&rsquo / pretest and posttest scores. The large effect size indicated that there was a statistically significant increase in scores of all three tests.

Recent trends show that learners’ enrolment and performance in science at secondary school level is dwindling. Some science topics including genetics in biology are said to be difficult for learners to learn and thus they perform poorly in examinations. Teacher knowledge base, particularly topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), has been identified by many researchers as an important factor that is linked with learner understanding and achievement in science. This qualitative study was an attempt to explore the PCK of four successful biology teachers and how they developed it in the context of teaching genetics. The purposive sampling technique was employed to select the participating teachers based on their schools’ performance in biology public examinations and recommendations by science specialists and school principals. Pedagogical content knowledge was used as a theoretical framework for the study, which guided the inquiry in data collection, analysis and discussion of the research findings. The study adopted the case study method and various sources of evidence including concept maps, lesson plans, pre-lesson interviews, lesson observations, post-teaching teacher questionnaire, post-lesson interviews and document analysis were used to collect data on teachers’ PCK as well as how PCK was assumed to have developed. The data were analysed in an attempt to determine the individual teachers’ school genetics’ content knowledge, related knowledge of instructional strategies and knowledge of learners’ preconceptions and learning difficulties. The analysis involved an iterative process of coding data into PCK categories of content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and knowledge of learners’ preconceptions and learning difficulties. The findings of the study indicate that the four successful biology teachers generally have the necessary content knowledge of school genetics, used certain topic-specific instructional strategies, but lacked knowledge of genetics-related learners’ preconceptions and learning difficulties despite having taught the topic for many years. There were some instructional deficits in their approaches and techniques in teaching genetics. The teachers failed to use physical models, teacher demonstration and/or learner experimentation in their lessons (or include them in their lesson plans) to assist learners in visualizing or internalizing the genetics concepts or processes located at the sub-microscopic level. The teachers’ PCK in genetics teaching was assumed to have developed mainly through formal university education programmes, classroom teaching experiences, peer support and participation in in-service workshops. The implications for biology teacher education are also discussed. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / lk2014 / Humanities Education / PhD / Unrestricted

The aim of this study was twofold: (a) to investigate whether seventh grade students&rsquo / conditional and procedural knowledge acquisition in, attitude towards, active learning strategies in, and learning value of geometry improve differentially for students having different cognitive styles in project-based learning and (b) to examine how project-based learning affects them. Participants were 97 seventh-grade students in a private school in Ankara. The students were classified into three groups: Field dependent (N=31), field middle (N=35), and field independent (N=31), based on the raw scores of the participants from the Group Embedded Figures Test. Only one treatment (i.e., project-based learning) was conducted for the study, lasting 30 lesson hours. Pre-test and post-test design for the students having three different cognitive styles was utilized. A mixed methods design integrating both quantitative and qualitative data was used for this study. The data were collected through Conditional and Procedural Knowledge Tests, Active Learning Strategies in and Learning Value of Geometry Questionnaire, Geometry Attitude Scale, interview responses, and classroom observation field notes. The quantitative analyses were carried out by using Mixed Design (one between factor and one within factor) Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). The results revealed that there is no significant interaction between time and group. There was a substantial main effect for time and follow up analyses for this effect showed that the students achieved large learning gains for all dependent variables. In addition, the main effect of group was not significant. According to interview responses and classroom observation field notes, those quantitative results were attributable to the influence of contextualizing, visualizing, and collaborating geometry concepts with their peers and teacher during benchmark lessons and developing and sharing artifacts for each of the cognitive style group.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the contribution of cognitive style and prior knowledge on 6th grade students&#039 / knowledge acquisition in polygons in drama based learning environment. The sample of the study was composed of 112 sixth grade students from a public school in Altindag district of Ankara. There were 9 drama based lesson plans lasting 16 lesson hours in the study. The data was collected through Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT), and three types of knowledge tests: Declarative Knowledge Test (DecKT), Conditional Knowledge Test (ConKT), and Procedural Knowledge Test (ProKT). GEFT developed by Witkin, Oltman, Raskin and Karp (1971) was used to determine cognitive styles of the students as field dependent (FD), field independent (FI), and field mix (FM). Three types of knowledge tests developed by Erdogan (2007) were used as pretests and posttests. The quantative analysis was carried out by using standard multiple regression analysis. The results revealed that students&rsquo / cognitive style was the most predictive variable in explaining students&rsquo / declarative, conditional and procedural knowledge Moreover, students&rsquo / prior declarative knowledge explained statistically significant amount of variance in students&rsquo / declarative and procedural knowledge acquisition, while students&rsquo / prior conditional knowledge explained statistically significant amount of variance in students&rsquo / declarative, conditional, and procedural knowledge acquisition. On the other hand, students&rsquo / prior procedural knowledge failed to explain declarative, conditional, and procedural knowledge acquisition of students.