<p>Math anxiety, defined as feelings of apprehension and fear of courses involving mathematics, often interferes with student learning in a variety of college-level courses. A related phenomenon, statistics anxiety, affects the performance of many students in statistics courses. Researchers have found evidence that including collaborative problem solving as an instructional methodology is effective at reducing the negative effects of statistics anxiety. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore adult perceptions of collaborative problem solving as an instructional methodology focused on improving the learning environment in a business statistics course. Behaviorist, constructivist, and adult learning theories provided the foundation for this study that gathered narrative interview data from 14 adult students. The narratives were analyzed by first coding responses to questions into 7 frames of reference. Further refining of the data was accomplished by grouping responses in each frame of reference into common realms of response. Findings indicated that the adult participants perceived collaboration to be effective at reducing stress levels and improving course performance. Additionally, the participants identified weekly learning tasks, collaborative partner selection methods, and student resource materials that could benefit from redesigning. The project that stemmed from this research involved restructuring the instructional methodologies, learning tasks, and student resources to better align with adult learning preferences identified by the participants. The benefits to positive social change resulting from this project study included improving the course learning environment for adults and identifying adult preferences for implementing collaboration as a learning methodology.

<p> Unlike their private school counterparts, charter schools receive public funding but are relieved of some of the bureaucratic and regulatory constraints of public schools in exchange for being held accountable for student performance. Studies provide mixed results with regard to charter school performance. Charter schools are, by definition, schools of choice, and this means that observational data methods are required for comparing such schools with others. In observational data contexts, simple comparisons of two groups such as traditional public and charter schools typically ignore the inherent and systematic differences between the two groups. However, given well-designed observational studies and appropriate analysis methods, the effects of the selection bias can be reduced, if not eliminated. The result is that the usual simple comparisons of two independent groups are replaced by comparisons that make adjustments for covariate differences. This study includes development of new methods, largely graphic in form, designed for observational data to compare two groups. These methods are then used to investigate the question of whether students who attend charter schools perform differently than their traditional public school counterparts on two key academic domains: reading and mathematics. The new methods represent extensions of propensity score analysis (Rosenbaum &amp; Rubin, 1983) by aiding descriptions and aim in reducing selection bias in the context of clustered data. </p><p> Using data from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for mathematics and reading at grades four and eight, estimates of the differences between charter and traditional public schools were calculated at the state and national levels. This study finds that there is wide variability in math and reading performance for charter schools. But in aggregate, charter schools do not perform any differently than their traditional public school counterparts. </p><p> The new methods were used to examine potential relationships between the "quality" of state charter laws as determined by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS; 2010a) and aggregate differences in charter and traditional public school student NAEP scores produced by the new methods are explored. Analyses suggested that these relationships were either absent or modest across the two grades and subjects.</p>

Issued also as Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University.

Issued also as thesis (Ph. D.) Columbia university.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1964. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

<p> The increased availability of technology in Western culture has resulted in an increased use of technology among adolescents in both academic and personal settings. In the U.S., adolescents use technology to communicate, access information, create and distribute products on a daily basis. More importantly, this increase in technology has resulted in many more reasons and opportunities to read. It is unclear, however if increased reading in these new digital modes are related to increased scores on traditional academic assessments. This study used an archival data set to investigate relationships that existed among self-reported reading frequencies in different modes and contexts and scores on a high-stakes assessment for students in an urban, high-needs district in the Northeast (N = 232). The relationship of frequencies of reading in four settings; Academic Print, Academic Digital, Recreation Print and Recreation Digital, to student scores on high-stakes, eighth grade ELA assessment was investigated using hierarchical regression analyses. In addition, alternate methods of quantifying survey responses were studied. The study found that student frequency of reading in Recreation Print and Recreation Digital modes were predictive of high-stakes ELA scores; however, frequency of reading in the modes and settings of Academic Print and Academic Digital were not predictive. Gender differences were found; two different predictive models were required when looking at the predictive value of reading frequencies on ELA outcomes males and females. Suggestions are given for developing or adapting alternative survey values in order to analyze archival data. In addition, further research into the nature of engagement in different modes of reading and consideration for individual differences in reading, specifically by gender is discussed. Suggestions also address the need for research on digital modes of reading and academic outcomes as the availability of digital material increases.</p>

No description available.

abstract: The concept of distribution is one of the core ideas of probability theory and inferential statistics, if not the core idea. Many introductory statistics textbooks pay lip service to stochastic/random processes but how do students think about these processes? This study sought to explore what understandings of stochastic process students develop as they work through materials intended to support them in constructing the long-run behavior meaning for distribution. I collected data in three phases. First, I conducted a set of task-based clinical interviews that allowed me to build initial models for the students’ meanings for randomness and probability. Second, I worked with Bonnie in an exploratory teaching setting through three sets of activities to see what meanings she would develop for randomness and stochastic process. The final phase consisted of me working with Danielle as she worked through the same activities as Bonnie but this time in teaching experiment setting where I used a series of interventions to test out how Danielle was thinking about stochastic processes. My analysis shows that students can be aware that the word “random” lives in two worlds, thereby having conflicting meanings. Bonnie’s meaning for randomness evolved over the course of the study from an unproductive meaning centered on the emotions of the characters in the context to a meaning that randomness is the lack of a pattern. Bonnie’s lack of pattern meaning for randomness subsequently underpinned her image of stochastic/processes, leading her to engage in pattern-hunting behavior every time she needed to classify a process as stochastic or not. Danielle’s image of a stochastic process was grounded in whether she saw the repetition as being reproducible (process can be repeated, and outcomes are identical to prior time through the process) or replicable (process can be repeated but the outcomes aren’t in the same order as before). Danielle employed a strategy of carrying out several trials of the process, resetting the applet, and then carrying out the process again, making replicability central to her thinking. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Mathematics Education 2019

This thesis investigates the teaching of statistical literacy in the first two years of secondary school mathematics. The teachers involved in the research aim to make changes to classroom practice in the teaching and learning of statistics and statistical literacy in response to changes in the New Zealand curriculum. An action research methodology is adopted by the research. A group of three teachers and the author undertake an action research cycle of planning, observing, acting and reflecting in three different Year 9 and 10 mathematics classrooms. The research documents the designing and implementing of strategies by a group of teachers in a mathematics department for integrating statistical literacy into teaching programmes. The research adopts framework for improving practice that utilise models for statistical literacy and thinking and principles for teaching with a language learning or literacy focus. Data is collected through discussions with teachers, observations of lessons and interviews with teachers and students. Themes emerge from the data. They include the significance of teacher and student concepts of statistics and statistical literacy, the importance of language and literacy in the statistics classroom, the adoption of teaching principles to facilitate statistical literacy and the challenge of adopting a critical literacy stance in the statistics classroom. The study highlights the importance of literacy and language skills in statistical literacy. The research concludes that the important changes needed for developing statistical literacy are about classroom methodology rather than content knowledge and shows that adoption of language learning principles into the teaching programme may achieve this.

Although more students are taking courses in statistics before leaving high school, the research base on teaching and learning statistics at the high school level has not accumulated as rapidly (Garfield & Chance, 2000). Very little is known about how secondary school students learn statistics, how the misconceptions they bring to the subject impede their learning, and what should be taught or assessed (Watson & Callingham, 2003). Studies that have investigated these issues tend to focus on the K-5, undergraduate, and graduate levels of education (Groth, 2003). Therefore, more research is needed at the secondary level (Garfield & Chance, 2000). The purpose of this qualitative investigation is to examine how secondary school students' approaches to learning relate to how they assign meaning to statistics. Phenomenography (Marton & Booth, 1997) is the theoretical orientation that frames the study, and it examines the role human experience plays in learning, by reporting variations in the ways participants experience a phenomenon (Dall'Alba & Hasselgreen, 1996). The research questions for the study were: 1) What are the different ways high school students define statistics? 2) What are the different ways high school students learn statistics? 3) What are the different ways students experience learning statistics? The nine participants in the study were high school graduates who completed a course in Statistics or Advanced Placement Statistics while enrolled in high school in a suburban area in the southeast. Data sources were semi-structured interviews and journaling. Using phenomenographic methodology, students' descriptions of the experience of learning were analyzed and coded. An outcome space of the collective experiences was constructed. A hierarchical relationship between students' approach to learning and their learning strategies was found. Also, a hierarchical relationship between students' approaches to learning and the meaning they assigned to statistics was found.