Mathematics

There are many paths to becoming an active researcher in mathematics education. This article describes one ideal path. It begins with identifying a useful educational background prior to entering a doctoral program. Then it offers some suggestions for selecting an institution to pursue a doctoral program. The article outlines some academic knowledge and intern experiences that will help prepare the next generation of researchers in mathematics education once a doctoral program has been entered.

While Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields have increased in importance over the past decade, minorities have remained traditionally underrepresented in these fields. In this study we seek to better understand some of the factors that might contribute to or potentially mitigate early STEM pipeline leaks, specifically, high school graduation and college entrance leaks. Student interest formed in the early school years has an impact on future course selections and persistence in school.

Previous research has examined the impact of computing interventions to reduce digital inequity. However, few studies focus on factors such as inequalities to material access, Internet use patterns, and affective or emotional anxiety. This paper investigates the potential role of emotional costs and computer self-efficacy in the connection between computer use at home and students’ computer use patterns. Data for this research come from pretest and posttest surveys administered to fourth- and fifth-grade African-American students.

Over the past decade, there has been a strong national push to increase minority students’ positive attitudes towards STEM-related careers. However, despite this focus, minority students have remained underrepresented in these fields. Some researchers have directed their attention towards improving the STEM pipeline which carries students through our educational system and into STEM careers. Previous research has shown that expectancy-value theory (EVT) is useful for examining the short-term as well as long-term academic motivations and intentions of elementary age minority students.

Zambak, V. S., & Magiera, M. T. (2015). An Exploratory Analysis of Pre-service Middle School Teachers’ Mathematical Arguments. In T. Bartell, K., Bieda, R. Putnam, K. Bradfield, & H. Dominguez (Eds.). Proceedings of the 37th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. 428, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University.

In this study we investigated eighth grade students’ informal justification for the circle area formula to expand accounts of the measurement knowledge for middle-school age students. Data were collected during three paired interviews of a three-year teaching experiment. Here we describe schemes students exhibited as they operated on measurement tasks at a level we have described as “conceptual area measurer”; the tasks prompted the use of square units to quantify a figure that is not rectilinear.

We analyzed 37 PSTs’ written solutions to four figural pattern generalization tasks, video recordings of class discussions, and audio-recordings of problem-based interviews during which the PSTs were asked to solve one pattern generalization task, to answer the following research questions: (1) What relationships and structural aspects of a figural pattern do PSTs build upon to formulate pattern generalization? (2) How do they utilize uncovered relationships and structural aspects of a figural pattern to justify their general rules? 

Learning from video is a theoretically grounded and popular professional development activity. In online professional development communities, however, responses to video are often shallow and lack meaningful commentary about issues that surround teaching and learning mathematics. By altering the framing conditions that accompany video clips posted to the Everyday Mathematics Virtual Learning Community, this study examined whether more deeply analytical comments could be elicited from pre-service teachers.

This study investigated attributes of 278 instances of student mathematical thinking during whole-class interactions that were identified as having high potential, if made the object of discussion, to foster learners’ understanding of important mathematical ideas. Attributes included the form of the thinking (e.g., question vs. declarative statement), whether the thinking was based on earlier work or generated in the moment, the accuracy of the thinking, and the type of thinking (e.g., sense-making).

This study investigated attributes of 278 instances of student mathematical thinking during whole-class interactions that were identified as having high potential, if made the object of discussion, to foster learners’ understanding of important mathematical ideas. Attributes included the form of the thinking (e.g., question vs. declarative statement), whether the thinking was based on earlier work or generated in the moment, the accuracy of the thinking, and the type of thinking (e.g., sense-making).