Other

Developing Visions of High-Quality Mathematics Instruction

This article introduces an interview-based instrument that was created for the purposes of characterizing the visions of high-quality mathematics instruction of teachers, principals, mathematics coaches, and district leaders and tracking changes in those visions over time. The instrument models trajectories of perceptions of high-quality instruction along what have been identified in the literature as critical dimensions of mathematics classroom practice.

Author/Presenter

Charles Munter

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2014

Investigating the development of mathematics leaders' capacity to support teachers' learning on a large scale

A key aspect of supporting teachers’ learning on a large scale concerns mathematics leaders’ practices in designing for and leading high-quality professional development. We report on a retrospective analysis of an initial design experiment aimed at supporting the learning of three math leaders who were charged with supporting the learning of middle-grades mathematics teachers across a large US school district.

Author/Presenter

Kara Jackson

Paul Cobb

Jonee Wilson

Megan Webster

Charlotte Dunlap

Mollie Appelgate

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2015

Towards ITS Authoring Tool s for Domain Experts

The scarcity of efficient and user-friendly authoring tools has long been acknowledged as a limiting factor in the widespread development and deployment of intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs). Creating an effective authoring tool for domain experts poses two significant challenges: it must facilitate the creation of curricular content by domain experts who are typically neither ITS experts nor software engineers, and it must support the creation or modification of ITS-specific pedagogical strategies without exposing the complexity of the ITS itself to the domain expert.

Author/Presenter

Robert Taylor

Andy Smith

Samuel Leeman-Munk

Bradford Mott

James Lester

Year
2014
Short Description

This paper presents a set of authoring tool design principles such as leveraging UI workflows, collaboration, and automation.

Assessing Elementary Students' Science Competency with Text Analytics

Real-time formative assessment of student learning has become the subject of increasing attention. Students’ textual responses to short answer questions offer a rich source of data for formative assessment. However, automatically analyzing textual constructed responses poses significant computational challenges, and the difficulty of generating accurate assessments is exacerbated by the disfluencies that occur prominently in elementary students’ writing. With robust text analytics, there is the potential to accurately analyze students’ text responses and predict students’ future success.

Author/Presenter

Samuel P. Leeman-Munk

Eric N. Wiebe

James C. Lester

Year
2014
Short Description

This paper presents WriteEval, a hybrid text analytics method for analyzing student-constructed responses.

SketchMiner: Mining Learner-Generated Science Drawings with Topological Abstraction

Mining learner generated sketches holds significant potential for acquiring deep insight into learners’ mental models. Drawing has been shown to benefit both learning outcomes and engagement, and learners’ sketches offer a rich source of diagnostic information. Unfortunately, interpreting learners’ sketches—even sketches comprised of semantically grounded symbols—poses significant computational challenges.

Author/Presenter

Andy Smith

Eric Wiebe

Bradford Mott

James Lester

Year
2014
Short Description

This paper introduces SketchMiner, which uses drawing topologies to automatically interpret learner-generated sketches.

Implementing a Robotics Curriculum in an Early Childhood Montessori Classroom

This paper explores how robotics can be used as a new educational tool in a Montessori early education classroom. It presents a case study of one early educator’s experience of designing and implementing a robotics curriculum integrated with a social science unit in her mixed-age classroom. This teacher had no prior experience using robotics in the classroom beyond a three-day professional development workshop. The case study was constructed by collecting data from surveys, interviews, and a personal blog written by the teacher documenting her experience.

Author/Presenter

Mollie Elkin

Amanda Sullivan

Marina Umaschi Bers

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2014
Short Description

This paper explores how robotics can be used as a new educational tool in a Montessori early education classroom.

A Pilot Meta-Analysis of Computer-Based Scaffolding in STEM Education

This paper employs meta-analysis to determine the influence of computer-based scaffolding characteristics and study and test scorequality on cognitive outcomes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education at the secondary, college, graduate, and adult levels.

Author/Presenter

Brian R. Belland

Andrew E. Walker

Megan Whitney Olsen

Heather Leary

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2015

A Blended Professional Development Program to Help a Teacher Learn to Provide One-to-One Scaffolding

Argumentation is central to instruction centered on socio-scientific issues (Sadler & Donnelly in International Journal of Science Education, 28(12), 1463–1488, 2006. doi:10.1080/09500690600708717). Teachers can play a big role in helping students engage in argumentation and solve authentic scientific problems. To do so, they need to learn one-to-one scaffolding—dynamic support to help students accomplish tasks that they could not complete unaided.

Author/Presenter

Brian R. Belland

Ryan Burdo

Jiangyue Gu

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2015

Thunder and Lightning: Understanding Equidistance

Mejia Colindres, C. A. (2015). Thunder and Lightning: Understanding Equidistance. Mathematics Teacher, 108(6), 454-460.

Author/Presenter

Carlos A. Mejía Colindres

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2015
Short Description

Lightning strikes, and two people hear thunder simultaneously. Where might the lightning have struck? Now consider a slightly different scenario: Lightning strikes, and three people hear thunder simultaneously. Where might the lightning have struck? These scenarios set the stage for an exploration of equidistance and lead students to develop properties of the perpendicular bisector.

Uncovering and Eliciting Mathematical Perceptions in Linguistically Diverse Classrooms

Sorto, M. A., Mejia Colindres, C. A., & Wilson, A. T. (2014). Uncovering and Eliciting Mathematical Perceptions in Linguistically Diverse Classrooms. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 20(2), 72–77.

Author/Presenter

M. Alejandra Sorto

Carlos A. Mejía Colindres

Aaron T. Wilson

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2014
Short Description

One of the many challenges that teachers face in mathematics classrooms is determining how much of the verbal and written explanations help students accomplish instructional goals. The challenge is greater in linguistically diverse classrooms because the explanations and multiple representations are not perceived uniformly by all students.