A central goal of introductory physics for the life sciences (IPLS) is to prepare students to use physics to model and analyze biological situations, a skill of increasing importance for their future studies and careers. Here we report our findings on life science students' ability to carry out a sophisticated biological modeling task at the end…

Gateway testing is an important pedagogic tool employed by many university mathematics departments in calculus and precalculus courses. With a goal of ensuring that students attain needed basic skills in courses with a conceptual "reform" orientation, these tests provide an efficient means of assessing a large volume of student work,…

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 combination of classroom voting system (clicker) questions and peer instruction has been shown to increase student learning. While implementations in large lectures have been around for a while, mathematics has been increasingly using clickers in classes of a smaller size. In Fall 2008, I conducted an experiment to measure the effect of…

The interdisciplinary approach that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) projects inspire in both teachers and students "brings to light a larger picture that promotes real-world scientific applications, which has in turn been shown to increase undergraduate persistence in STEM." The high school students have been…

Despite increasing accountability requirements and a national call for transparency in public policy, Mid-Atlantic Region state education agencies indicate that they have little information about what instructional materials districts adopt. This report describes first-year results of an ongoing project to generate and share information on core…

This study investigated several aspects of occupational skill assessment as implemented in one state: (1) What is the extent to which student achievement on the cognitive component was related to their achievement on the psychomotor component of the technical skill assessments? (2) How efficiently was their overall composite attainment calculated?…

A course in the Calculus sequence is arguably the most difficult course in which inquiry-based learning (IBL) can be achieved with any degree of success within the curriculum in part due to: (1) the plethora of majors taking Calculus to which the sequence relates to their majors in what is considered an "applied" manner; and (2) the…

Seventy secondary mathematics pre-service teachers from two universities were assessed on their content knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, and their perceived confidence in teaching the content addressed on the eleventh grade state assessment. The results indicate the pre-service teachers had significant content weakness in data analysis, algebra,…

This yearbook discusses instructional approaches that are consistent with the reformulation of the school mathematics curriculum by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Articles included cover: (1) Pennsylvania standards for mathematics programs (including goals, curriculum, instruction, evaluation, teachers, and…

This project developed a lesson authoring system, a component which provided communications between students and teachers using electronic mail, and calculus lessons which were formatively evaluated with 20 students at four high schools. The authoring system utilized word processors to write the lessons and a BASIC computer program to execute the…

One of the strengths of the Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of Mathematics (PCTM) is that it gives mathematicians and mathematics educators the opportunity to exchange and contribute to each other's professional growth. The topic for each yearbook is chosen to coincide with the annual PCTM meeting. This 1987 yearbook contains 14 articles which…

One of the strengths of the Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of Mathematics (PCTM) is that it gives mathematicians and mathematics educators the opportunity to exchange and contribute to each other's professional growth. The topic for each yearbook is chosen to coincide with the annual PCTM meeting. This 1988 yearbook contains 27 articles which…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…