Explore fun nonfiction texts and resources for teaching bioluminescence and how animals use the light they produce to find prey, communicate, and defend themselves.

Kindergarten, first and second grade teachers play an important role in the development of a student's understanding of mathematics. Consequently, in order to improve student achievement in mathematics, it is important to investigate the relationships that may exist among primary teachers' math profile, math teaching efficacy, and math pedagogy and content knowledge. Participants completed an online survey that included the Math Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument (MTEBI) and Math Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) items. Participants provided math profile data through academic demographic questions.;Two-hundred seven respondents completed the survey. Analysis of the data included descriptive statistics, chi-square test of independence, and Spearman rho correlations. The descriptive statistics of this sample population indicated varied math professional learning experiences, reserved mathematic teaching efficacy and little expertise in the knowledge of third grade mathematics. Relationships between frequency of math professional learning and math teaching efficacy emerged as statistically significant and merit further investigation. Additional statistically significant relationships occurred between math content knowledge and math teaching efficacy. The strength of these relationships was moderate and warrant further investigation.

The purpose of this study was to determine what relationship existed between preservice science (biology) teacher education and the reforms in secondary school biology that occurred between 1950 and 1975. Research questions were generated which dealt with the collaboration of the various sectors of education as well as if the prospective teachers were being trained to teach the reform curricula through their college science and teacher education coursework.;Content analysis of textbooks was utilized to determine the content of textbooks on the secondary and higher education level. The secondary texts contrasted were Modern Biology and the BSCS Blue and Green series. A variety of textbooks were analyzed for higher education biology including those authored by Villee and Weisz. Teacher education methods textbooks which covered science education or biology teaching were also analyzed. Five topics were analyzed in each of the textbooks: the scientific method, classification, amphibians, heredity, and ecology. The evaluation instrument was adapted from the Curriculum Materials Analysis System for Science (Haussler & Pittman, 1973) and the Virginia Department of Education Science Textbook Evaluation Instrument.;It was hypothesized that the analyses would reveal that innovations and reforms in high school biology textbooks preceded reforms in higher education teacher education programs which would indicate that prospective teachers were not being taught the necessary skills, behaviors, or methods in their required coursework to adequately institute the reforms on the secondary level. It was also hypothesized that the analyses would reveal an inordinately long period of time before prospective teachers were being instructed in the methods necessary for them to function effectively in secondary classrooms with the reform curricula.;It was concluded that there was generally very little collaboration between the various sectors of education during 1950 and 1975. The first hypothesis was confirmed and the second hypothesis supported but not totally confirmed due to the lack of information on how textbooks were actually used in the teacher education classrooms. Further research is needed in this area.;Additional findings of the study indicate that textbooks from the recent past are difficult to locate and thus a significant portion of the history of education is disappearing.

Research has established that motivation is an important factor of student achievement. Many researchers in the field of gifted education consider motivation to be a crucial component of giftedness, yet the literature base for motivation and math talent development within gifted populations is scarce. This descriptive study used a within-group design to measure the math motivation, math achievement, and goal orientation of high-ability 5 th grade math students to elucidate the relationships among motivation, achievement, goal orientation, and gender. Findings indicated that math achievement, math motivation, and goal orientation were similar for both genders; students had high math achievement yet low math motivation; and a high number of students had a performance goal orientation. Ideas for future math motivation research for the gifted are shared.;Keywords: gifted math students, math achievement, math motivation, goal orientation.

The purpose of this study was to examine theories of organizational culture typically applied to the university level of organization and their applicability to the academic department. Chaffee and Tierney's (1988) theory of organizational culture, dimensions of culture, and leadership strategies became the basis for a qualitative case study of a Department of Biological Sciences in a metropolitan university.;Interviews of current faculty members, current and former deans, and other administrators were conducted. Observations were made of faculty meetings and retreats and of departmental governance committee meetings. Extensive review of documents and correspondence covering more that twenty years provided additional data.;Interview and observation transcripts and documents were analyzed in terms of Chaffee and Tierney's (1988) concepts of the structural, environmental, and values dimensions of the department. Linear, adaptive, and interpretive strategies of faculty members and the department chair were identified.;The department was found to have what Clark (1972) refers to as strong organizational saga, or a sense of unique accomplishment which serves to maintain and perpetuate the integrity of the culture. Central to the value system of the Department of Biological Sciences is the shared sense that the department is unique in the degree to which faculty members work together cooperatively for the good of the department. These strong values were rooted in an earlier era when the department was experiencing growth and development of its research programs under adverse circumstances.;The primary usefulness of the results of this study go far beyond the particular findings for this individual academic department. Most important is the demonstration of the value of using this method of organizational analysis to understand the role of culture in shaping and perpetuating the organization. Administrators, department chairs, and faculty members can enhance their understanding of the departmental organization by applying concepts of organizational culture.;Further study and analysis are needed to evaluate disciplinary and institutional similarities and differences in departmental culture and to expand the existing theory to accommodate the variety of academic departments in colleges and universities.

The use and application of geometric transformations is a fundamental standard for the Common Core State Standards. This study was developed to determine current high school teachers’ prior mathematical content knowledge and develop their content knowledge of transformations and their applications. The design of this study was guided by the questions: “Why is there a level of reluctance amongst secondary teachers when it comes to teaching geometric transformations?” and “How can their content knowledge become deepened to apply geometric transformations to prove that two figures are congruent?” The study provided teachers a chance to gain experience with transformations and use transformations to develop an understanding of congruence and similarity. The teachers’ work with transformations also enhanced their understanding of how transformations are the foundation for Euclidean geometry and begin to lay a foundation for the basics of rigid motion in the plane, with or without the use of coordinates. The results supported the claim that teachers’ transformation content knowledge needs to be deepened overall and in particular with respect to the application of transformations to prove that two figures are congruent. The results also showed that, with an increase of understanding of the mathematical properties of transformations, teachers are better prepared to teach them in their classrooms.

The beauty of mathematics can arguably be found in the way in which all concepts are interrelated and interwoven to create a massive web of knowledge and in the ways this can be applied to all aspects of life and technology. Given this inextricable interrelationship amongst several mathematical topics, many students encounter issues in learning mathematics due to gaps in their understanding of previously taught material. As a result, mathematics education in the K-12 setting has emphasized the need for interventions in order to help students grasp the progressively complex concepts that are required by our current society and education system as they advance throughout their academic career. This literature review researches effective and non-effective indicators of future mathematics proficiency as an initial step towards identifying the most beneficial cognitive and non-cognitive areas of focus, and consequently early interventions, in order to support student learning especially for underperforming students. Specifically, this research synthesizes research about three essential questions: (1) What skills, conceptual understandings, or student traits can serve as possible predictors of future mathematics proficiency? (2) Which of these identified skills, conceptual understandings, or student traits are stronger predictors of future mathematics proficiency? and (3) What is the degree of accuracy of these predictors? The research was conducted through the review of articles retrieved from diverse research studies. The literature revealed that the single most effective indicator of future mathematical proficiency is knowledge of fractions, specifically, conceptual understanding of and operations with fractions as well as fluidity with rational operations. Other less effective indicators included early knowledge of whole number division, functional numeracy, students’ attitudes and dispositions towards mathematics, gender, early mathematics achievement/ability, and literacy/linguistic ability. Other skills, conceptual understandings and student traits investigated in the relevant research included whole number arithmetic knowledge, number system knowledge, verbal & non-verbal IQ, working memory, and family education & income. These indicators did not exhibit a significant correlation to future mathematics performance and thus were classified as non-effective.

Inconsistent math assessment practices do not accurately represent and communicate student mathematics achievement. Because of inconsistencies in assessment practices, local middle school mathematics teachers in an urban school district in the northwestern United States piloted the use of multiple formative assessments. The purpose of this study was to compare mathematics achievement, growth, and course percentage grades for students who have multiple formative assessment attempts compared to students who are not provided multiple assessment attempts. Theoretical foundations originated from Black and Wiliam, supporting the use of formative assessment for a positive impact on student learning. A quantitative, ex post facto quasi-experimental design was used. The research question focused on the statistical differences in course percentage grade, state standardized testing score, and growth score on state standardized math tests between groups of students who were allowed multiple formative assessment options and those who were not. Data were analyzed using an independent samples t test and a one-way MANOVA, which showed a statistically significant difference for student course percentage grade. Findings were used to produce a 3-day professional development program supporting teachers' use of formative assessment in mathematics classes. The findings will inform educational stakeholders' decisions regarding the use of multiple assessment attempts and differences between this specific formative assessment strategy and student mathematics assessment performance to promote positive social change. Positive social changes may include increased awareness of how multiple assessments may affect student growth, course percentage grades, and state testing scores.

This study is an investigation into the science literacy of college genetics students who were given a modified curriculum to address specific teaching and learning problems from a previous class. This study arose out of an interest by the professor and researcher to determine how well students in the class Human Genetics in the 21st Century responded to a reorganized curriculum to address misconceptions that were prevalent after direct instruction in the previous year's class. One of the components to the revised curriculum was the addition of a multimodal representation requirement as part of their normal writing assignments. How well students performed in these writing assignments and the relationship they had to student learning the rest of the class formed the principle research interest of this study. Improving science literacy has been a consistent goal of science educators and policy makers for over 50 years (DeBoer, 2000). This study uses the conceptualization of Norris and Phillips (2003) in which science literacy can be organized into both the fundamental sense (reading and writing) and the derived sense (experience and knowledge) of science literacy. The fundamental sense of science literacy was investigated in the students' ability to understand and use multimodal representations as part of their homework writing assignments. The derived sense of science literacy was investigated in how well students were able to apply their previous learning to class assessments found in quizzes and exams. This study uses a mixed-methods correlational design to investigate the relationship that existed between students' writing assignment experiences connected to multimodal representations and their academic performance in classroom assessments. Multimodal representations are pervasive in science literature and communication. These are the figures, diagrams, tables, pictures, mathematical equations, and any other form of content in which scientists and science educators are communicating ideas and concepts to their audience with more than simple text. A focused holistic rubric was designed in this study to score how well students in this class were able to incorporate aspects of multimodality into their writing assignments. Using these scores and factors within the rubric (ex. Number of original modes created) they were correlated with classroom performance scores to determine the strength and direction of the relationship. Classroom observations of lectures and discussion sections along with personal interviews with students and teaching assistants aided the interpretation of the results. The results from the study were surprisingly complex to interpret given the background of literature which suggested a strong relationship between multimodal representations and science learning (Lemke, 2000). There were significant positive correlations between student multimodal representations and quiz scores but not exam scores. This study was also confounded by significant differences between sections at the beginning of the study which may have led to learning effects later. The dissimilarity between the tasks of writing during their homework and working on exams may be the reason for no significant correlations with exams. The power to interpret these results was limited by the number of the participants, the number of modal experiences by the students, and the operationalization of multimodal knowledge through the holistic rubric. These results do show that a relationship does exist between the similar tasks within science writing and quizzes. Students may also gain derived science literacy benefits from modal experiences on distal tasks in exams as well. This study shows that there is still much more research to be known about the interconnectedness of multimodal representational knowledge and use to the development of science literacy.

In this qualitative action research study, five lower-achieving freshman prealgebra students in a rural high school were interviewed about mathematics anxiety. The subjects ranged in age from 13 to 15 years and included three boys and two girls, of which one was Hispanic, one was African-American, and three were Caucasian. These students had tested below the fourth-grade level in mathematics during their eighth-grade year and were placed in special pre-algebra classes, which met for 30 additional minutes each day and progressed with more depth, but at a slower pace. The researcher employed personal interviews to answer the research question: How do students describe and cope with mathematics anxiety? The researcher utilized the constant comparative method to analyze data and developed the following seven categories: setting and background information; self-image; mathematics difficulties; success in mathematics; support for learning; teacher support; and coping techniques, which was the context of the students’ anxiety. While they have encountered some success in mathematics, the descriptions of support from family and student friends, along with teacher support, explain how these students’ cope with the anxiety. When the students talked positively about mathematics, they discussed activities that made mathematics fun or enjoyable. However, these participants also spoke of negative mathematics experiences as early as the first grade. A poor self-image, as it relates to a student’s mathematical knowledge, affects current learning. Past negative perceptions appeared to contribute to their defeat. The findings coincided with previous research that mathematics anxiety is negatively related to mathematics achievement. Students reported gains from hands-on activities, facilitative teaching, teacher encouragement, additional assessments, and goal settings, but interview data suggested they had mostly given up on getting much better in mathematics, because they thought they were not going to succeed. They stopped trying and giving up was their way of coping.