Though posters have been used as a pedagogical tool in a variety of fields, the literature suggests that the use of posters as an educational assessment tool by the mathematics community has been limited. This is unfortunate given the numerous potential benefits of a poster, including the development of oral communication skills and the ability to…

Background and Context: Integrating computer science (CS) and math in classrooms is an increasingly recognized way for schools to address national CS mandates. There is a need to understand how professional development (PD) can support teachers to integrate. Objective: We examined math teachers' interest, and confidence, in math, CS, and student…

Peer review is especially difficult to facilitate in advanced mathematical writing. Typically, only someone with an appropriate level of disciplinary knowledge can understand the workings of a mathematical proof, for example, let alone provide useful feedback to a novice proof-writer. This presents a challenge to writing programs and writing…

The mathematics achievement of seventh grade general education students placed in an inclusive setting with students in need of special education services was compared to the mathematics achievement of seventh grade general education students placed in a classroom without students in need of special education services. Participants included…

Beginning with the class of 2023, graduating Pennsylvania high school students will need to demonstrate career or postsecondary preparedness in addition to meeting existing statewide graduation requirements. Act 158 of 2018 outlines five pathways to meeting this requirement, including two that rely exclusively on Keystone Exam performance and…

As noted in the literature, students struggle to learn developmental mathematics. A positive experience with developmental mathematics has been shown to increase students' confidence in learning mathematics (Duranczyk, 2008). Additionally, students who have a successful developmental experience are more likely to experience success in subsequent…

Learning progressions (LPs) describe the development of domain-specific knowledge, skills, and understanding. Each level of an LP characterizes a phase of student thinking en route to a target performance. The rationale behind LP development is to provide road maps that can be used to guide student thinking from one level to the next. The validity…

The implementation of the Pennsylvania Algebra 1 Keystone Exam brought many changes to the mathematics classroom for both teachers and students. The purpose of this case study will be to explore how teachers at a charter school respond to testing requirements through adjustments in how and what they teach and to understand and explain the…

Appreciation of problem structure is critical to successful learning. Two experiments investigated effective ways of communicating problem structure in a computer-based learning environment and tested whether verbal instruction is necessary to specify solution steps, when deep structure is already embellished by instructional examples.…

The purpose of this mixed-methods research study was to examine how stress levels of middle school mathematics teachers who taught Algebra I in school districts in the state of Pennsylvania relate to high-stakes testing and to explore the experiences of middle school mathematics Algebra I teachers. The researcher collected and compared it to…

This study explored the nature of feedback strategies that teachers of Pennsylvania's Keystone courses (Algebra I, biology, and literature) used to prepare their students to meet the minimum proficiency standard on the corresponding Keystone exam, taken at the end of the course. Teachers reported highest usage of the following feedback types:…

The data for this study were gathered from an assignment consisting of 10 number sense related mathematics problems completed in an algebra course at developmental level. The results of the study suggest that a majority of developmental mathematics students use routine algorithmic procedures rather than mathematical reasoning to solve problems.…

This study is a descriptive examination of uptake that occurred during classroom discourse in 33 Algebra I classrooms in nine U.S. states. Uptake refers to the act of taking up mathematical comments, questions, and constructions as objects of discourse. Uptake is important because it can be used for scaffolding authentic opportunities to learn and…

A low-cost and portable colorimeter kit has been designed and developed as an educational tool at Penn State University by Dr. Daniel Sykes for K-12 schools' integrated STEM learning. This scientific instrument allows students to learn how scientists utilize light as a means to study the chemical and physical properties of materials with an…

This quantitative study was designed to determine the impact of course gap--the time period between semesters in which students take a particular course--on student achievement in mathematics. The testing instrument used was the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), given annually to all students in Grades 3 through 11. The study…