<p>Biology education in both high school and college calls for integrating scientific knowledge and reasoning into authentic laboratory in recent years. Students are expected to learn science by participating in the process of inquiry, argumentation, and explanation.</p><p>The purpose of this study is to investigate how the 9^th and 12^th grade students interpret their learning experiences during laboratory activities and evaluate students’ use of biological knowledge and understanding about the nature of science.</p><p>The results suggest most students were able to understand the main purpose of the laboratory activities. Most students were able to use change across traits to support the conclusion of evolutionary change. However, only a small number of students realized the limitation of the evidence.</p><p>Overall, this study provides support that the conceptual analysis of disciplinary evidence scaffolded activity helps both 9^th graders and 12^th graders with their authentic laboratory experience during laboratory activities.</p><p> </p><p> </p>

Nursing faculty are responsible for graduating competent students and being competent themselves; however, the required competencies of clinical nursing faculty who instruct students in the clinical area are unidentified. The practice problem addressed in this project was the lack of a structured, organized process for identifying initial and ongoing competencies of a clinical nursing facility. The purpose of this project was to explore nursing faculty clinical competency and provide a multimethod, multispecialty approach for implementing clinical nursing faculty competency. The target population was clinical nursing faculty (n= 30) in an academic setting. This project explored the impact of a multimethod, multispecialty approach for assessment and evaluation of clinical nursing faculty competency. The project was guided by Benner's theory of novice to expert; Roger's theory of diffusion and innovation; and the plan, do, check, act model. The study analyzed the data obtained from clinical nursing faculty demographics, and competency validation of 3 clinical and 3 academic, remediation, and retesting outcomes. Descriptive statistics and t test were utilized in analyzing the data. The project findings revealed the clinical nursing faculty members are 100% clinically competent and 68.7% academically competent in the areas evaluated. The project findings have implications for social change through role modeling of leadership skills by clinical nursing faculty and improving student clinical instruction by cultivating competent clinical nursing faculty.

Research evidence suggests that appropriate use of formative assessment promotes effective learning. Improved learning occurs when assessment is viewed as integral to learning, and when it is supported by coherent assessment systems. Although assessment systems designed primarily around the formative purpose can provide both formative and summative information, a tension exists in practice between the summative and formative purposes of assessment. Using a theoretical framework developed by Sadler (1989), this research project investigated whether New Zealand’s new secondary school Standards-Based Assessment qualification—the National Certificate Educational Achievement (NCEA)—has the potential to satisfy both summative and formative purposes of assessment in mathematics. Theorising from a contemporary sociocultural perspective of learning, this project recognised the situated nature and interpersonal dimension of knowledge, and the impact of the social environment in promoting and directing learning. Theorising from this perspective offered opportunities to examine classroom assessment practices from a new perspective. To date, insufficient attention has been paid to the ‘students’ voice’ concerning educational matters that directly affect them. Given the situated nature of students’ engagement with formative practices a case study approach was used to investigate students’ perceptions of the formative potential of NCEA mathematics assessment tasks. Three Y12 mathematics classes from an urban secondary school formed the case study singularity for this study. Focus group interviews with nine students were conducted across the year, complemented by classroom observations, a focus group interview with the teachers, and a quantitative questionnaire with all students in each of the three Year 12 mathematics classes. An examination of the philosophical and structural design of NCEA revealed a strong potential for it to serve a duality of both formative and summative purpose of assessment. However the formative potential of NCEA was yet to be fully realised in the case study classrooms. Students’ underdeveloped knowledge of assessment criteria effectively reduced the potential for students’ independent use of self assessment strategies. This project also identified that teachers and students held differing views on preferred feedback practices. The teachers perceived that students did not read written feedback, and this perception significantly influenced the amount of written feedback that they offered to students. In contrast, students clearly displayed that they read, valued and used scaffolded written feedback to improve their learning. While the teachers preferred to offer oral feedback, students preferred to engage with their peers to use feedback to develop corrective strategies and deepen learning. The project has made a number of practical and theoretical suggestions to improve students’ understandings of the assessment criteria they are working towards, and to more effectively integrate the collaborative use of formative feedback into students’ learning experiences. In particular, it has suggested two additional perspectives on the development and use of formative assessment in a sociocultural learning environment. Firstly, that students’ knowledge of the role of formative assessment is socially and contextually situated, and develops through the social interactions that occur in the classroom. Secondly, the potential exists for formative assessment practices to stimulate collaborative learning opportunities within communities of practice.

Statistical covariation refers to the correspondence of variation of two statistical measures that vary along numerical scales. Reasoning about covariation commonly involves translation processes among three representations: (1) numerical data, (2) graphical representations, and (3) verbal statements such as "taller people tend to be heavier". Two well-known translations are graph production and graph interpretation. Less well known is the process of speculative data generation, involving translating a verbal statement into a possible graph or other data representation. This study explored school students' reasoning involving these three translation skills through various tasks in surveys and interviews. Evidence is presented concerning methods to assess these skills, and concerning how students as young as third-grade can engage covariation tasks involving familiar contexts. Interviews involved prompting for cognitive conflict using responses from other students, and provided evidence of limited engagement of ideas that were slightly more sophisticated than their own responses. Responses for each of the three translation skills were described within assessment frameworks involving four levels - Nonstatistical, Single Statistical Aspect, Inadequate Covariation, and Appropriate Covariation - distinguished by the structure of combining correspondence and variation. Distinguishing features of the levels suggested stages of development that may inform instruction. For development from prior beliefs to data-based judgements, tasks involving counterintuitive covariation were designed to prompt students to engage data. For development from single variables to bivariate data, time was observed as a natural covariate, implicit in statements such as "it's getting hotter", with a connotation of order that supported pattern recognition of passing time being associated with corresponding change in a measured variable. For development from single cases to global trends, many students represented correspondence in a single pair of values, at the expense of representing variation. Tasks involving discrete data with few cases, and the use of case labels in responses, were observed to support the view of two data values each linked to the same corresponding case label. This consolidated view of correspondence supported consideration of additional bivariate cases involving variation. Students tended to articulate covariation using the language of comparison and change. Findings were related to issues in the historical development of coordinate graphing, to findings from educational research in statistics, algebra, science and psychology, and to recommendations within curriculum documents. Student representations of statistical covariation were observed to provide a window into statistical reasoning, and are advocated as a valuable basis for classroom discussions to help develop statistical literacy.

The diploma thesis has got a theoretical and research character. The theoretical part deals with the school assessment and evaluation methods. Considerable attention is paid to formative assessment, portfolio and work with the assessment. The results of the research are presented in the research section, the research was focused on work with a portfolio in the concept of two different teachers. Part of the research is devoted to presentations of the final portfolio, which will be held at the end of the 5th class. Furthermore, there are interviews with pupils about portfolicontain. KEYWORDS School evaluation Formative assessment Verbal evaluation Self-assessment Portfolio

In educational research, the cognitive activity of problem posing is recognized as an important component of mathematics teaching and learning. Compared to the prevailing educational paradigm of problem solving, problem posing features less commonly in classroom instruction. During the past 20 years, numerous studies examining the use of problem posing in school mathematics instruction have documented positive outcomes in terms of students’ knowledge, problem-solving abilities, creativity, and attitudes and beliefs regarding the study of mathematics. However, despite these promising results, problem posing in mathematics instruction has rarely been studied in the population of students with learning disabilities (LDs). This study describes a problem-posing intervention that draws on existing Conceptual Model-based Problem Solving program (COMPS, Xin, 2012) and conceptual research into the problem posing task. The COMPS-based problem posing intervention is designed to teach word problem posing skills to students with LDs under structured problem posing situations. The study applies a single-subject multiple-baseline design across three participants to investigate the effects on participants’ word problem solving and problem posing skills. The results showed that all three students demonstrated increased math performance on both problem solving and problem posing tests when the COMPS-based Problem Posing intervention was used. In addition, both immediate and maintenance effects on student learning were noted.

This study examines current educational practices by looking at factors leading up to increased attention on student achievement and the role of teacher effectiveness evaluation models in delivering a quality education. The RISE teacher effectiveness evaluation model used in Indiana and two teacher evaluation models commonly used, by Charlotte Danielson and Robert Marzano, are examined based on their capacity to evaluate and support the professional performances and growth of art teachers.

<p>  </p> <p>The Home Numeracy Environment (HNE) is an essential factor that helps explain children’s numeracy skills. Research in this field has been developed mostly focused on monolingual English-speaking families. More recent studies have analyzed this construct for Latine families using existing HNE measures. However, the existing HNE scales have not taken into consideration cultural differences that contextualize the home environment (Kung et al., 2020), and using those measures in more diverse samples might provide biased results from a deficit perspective. </p> <p>Given the growth of the Latine population in the U.S. and the importance of the HNE for explaining monolingual children’s early numeracy skills, it is important to understand how Latine families foster those skills by identifying and recognizing those families’ funds of knowledge. In this thesis, I use a sequential mixed methods design with the overarching purpose of first understanding the HNE of Latine families living in the U.S. through semi-structured interviews and then developing a culturally contextualized HNE scale for Latine families. Findings from the interviews highlight that numeracy for Latine Families is everywhere and part of everyday informal interactions. The developed HNE scale for Latine families consist of 30 items and reflects three factors: Parents-Child Interactions, Parents’ Math Anxiety, and Math Beliefs. This work enriches the body of knowledge regarding the HNE, not only because of the focus on Latine families but also because of the use of inductive and deductive approaches, the inclusion of a group of experts to validate the scale, and procedures such as IRT to assess items’ performance on the scale. This study updates and increases the cultural relevance of an important measure, as it is the HNE </p>

<p>Undergraduate engineering students usually face difficulties understanding electric circuit concepts. Some of those difficulties regard with misconceptions students bring into the classroom and develop during the learning process. Additionally, the increasing complexity of the topics along the fundamental electric circuits course constitutes another factor to those difficulties students experience. Another component we can add to this equation consists of the need of modernize and actualize the curriculum to meet the society’s demands of the next taskforce. Therefore, it is important to investigate the conceptual difficulties students experience when they analyze complex electric circuits. In this dissertation, I identify what those conceptual difficulties are when undergraduate sophomore engineering students attempt to analyze solid-state device circuits. The context of this research comprises a modernized version of the traditional fundamental electric circuits course. This modernized version includes DC analysis, 1^st order transient analysis, AC, and solid-state device analysis. </p> <p>This dissertation took the form of three individual but complementary studies. Each study contributes to partially answer the overall research question. However, each study answered its own research problem. The first study attempted for identifying what concepts beginning students find challenging regarding semiconductors physics, diodes, and transistors. The second study identified student’s misconceptions when they analyze two solid-state device circuits, one with a diode, and the other with a transistor. The final study looked for determining what misconceptions students use at both earlier and more advances stages along the course. This study also searched for understanding how students move through conceptual changes along the semester. </p> <p>The general findings comprise three main points. First, students bring misconceptions into the classroom probably built from their previous experiences. Second, they also can develop those misconceptions through the learning process. This is particularly key regarding the relatively new and complex topics from student’s perspectives. Finally, language plays an important role on the kind of misconceptions students develop. How students perceive the professional community use language contributes to either consolidate or modify old misconceptions or develop new ones.</p>

The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate whether an administrators’ professional teaching background and years of administrative experience influence their perceptions of the opportunities and challenges they face guiding the improvement of teaching and learning. Specifically this research analyzed administrators’ perceptions of level of stress, respect among colleagues and school community, professional development, student achievement, and assessment and evaluation. Participants in this study consisted of Tennessee and North Carolina principals, assistant principals, and associate principals within a 60 mile radius of the East Tennessee State University campus. Data were collected through an online survey system, Survey Monkey. The survey was distributed to 274 administrators that resulted in a 44.5% response rate with 122 administrators completing the survey. Sixteen questions from the survey were measured on a 5-point Likert scale. The results concluded that administrators’ teaching backgrounds and years of administrative experience had no significant effect on their perceptions of level of stress, respect among colleagues and school community, professional development, student achievement, and assessment and evaluation.