Identifying students at risk of failing a course has potential benefits, such as recommending the At-Risk students to various interventions that could improve pass rates. The challenges however, are firstly in measuring how effective these interventions are, i.e. measuring treatment effects, and secondly, to not only predict overall (average)…

Emphasis in teaching and learning statistics has shifted from memorizing formulas and procedures to investigating situations, creating models, and using data to understand problems. The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (NGA Center and CCSSO 2010) Grade 8 Statistics and Probability content standards drive this point home.…

Previous work has ostensibly shown that readers rapidly adapt to less predictable ambiguity resolutions after repeated exposure to unbalanced statistical input (e.g., a high number of reduced relative-clause garden-path sentences), and that these readers grow to disfavor the a priori more frequent (e.g. main verb) resolution after exposure (Fine,…

Most likely a large number of students have heard of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis), and know that they are a phenomenon in the sky. Although they may not have seen the Northern Lights, most have probably seen other phenomena in the sky, such as a rainbow, shooting star, or super moon. These experiences provide an opportunity for students…

This article describes several ways to connect probability to other topics within mathematics, over a range of year levels, and across the curriculum. It includes a description of common issues and misconceptions, and practical learning activities to address them.

We examined the relationship between family resilience and parenting stress among parents of children with autism spectrum disorder, with a specific focus on race/ethnicity as a moderator. Multivariate models indicated that family resilience was associated with parenting stress. Race/ethnicity significantly moderated the relationship between…

Normative discourse about probability requires shared meanings for disciplinary vocabulary. Previous research indicates that students' meanings for probability vocabulary often differ from those of mathematicians, creating a need to attend to developing students' use of language. Current standards documents conflict in their recommendations about…

Maintaining and cultivating student engagement is critical for learning. Understanding factors affecting student engagement can help in designing better courses and improving student retention. The large number of participants in massive open online courses (MOOCs) and data collected from their interactions on the MOOC open up avenues for studying…

Teacher turnover has adverse consequences for student achievement and imposes large financial costs for schools. Some have argued that high-stakes testing may lower teachers' satisfaction with their jobs and could be a major contributor to teacher attrition. In this paper, we exploit changes in the tested grades and subjects in Georgia to study…

At least sixteen US states have taken steps toward holding teacher preparation programs (TPPs) accountable for teacher value-added to student test scores. Yet it is unclear whether teacher quality differences between TPPs are large enough to make an accountability system worthwhile. Several statistical practices can make differences between TPPs…

In this dissertation, I examine various factors shaping students' trajectories and opportunities later in life. In Chapter 1, I explore the role of grade retention policies. Grade retention as a remedial policy is controversial because the benefits of extra instruction time may not outweigh its costs. Previous research has primarily examined…

This study investigates whether infants are sensitive to backward and forward transitional probabilities within temporal and spatial visual streams. Two groups of 8-month-old infants were familiarized with an artificial grammar of shapes, comprising backward and forward base pairs (i.e. two shapes linked by strong backward or forward transitional…

"p" values are commonly reported in quantitative research, but are often misunderstood and misinterpreted by research consumers. Our aim in this article is to provide special educators with guidance for appropriately interpreting "p" values, with the broader goal of improving research consumers' understanding and interpretation…

Although students' understanding of frequency information presented in two-way tables was first explored in the 1990s, there is a surprising lack of research in this area. Furthermore, researchers and practitioners continue to highlight students' difficulties in comprehending probability including concepts related to conditioning. Using an…

Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) is a training algorithm for Single-Layer Feed-forward Neural Network (SLFN). The difference in theory of ELM from other training algorithms is in the existence of explicitly-given solution due to the immutability of initialed weights. In practice, ELMs achieve performance similar to that of other state-of-the-art…