Classroom Practice

Eliminating counterexamples: An intervention for improving adolescents’ contrapositive reasoning

Students’ difficulties with contrapositive reasoning are well documented. Lack of intuition about contrapositive reasoning and lack of a meta-argument for the logical equivalence between a conditional claim and its contrapositive may contribute to students’ struggles. This case study investigated the effectiveness of the eliminating counterexamples intervention in improving students’ ability to construct, critique, and validate contrapositive arguments in a U.S. eighth-grade mathematics classroom.

Author/Presenter

David Yopp

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2020
Short Description

Students’ difficulties with contrapositive reasoning are well documented. Lack of intuition about contrapositive reasoning and lack of a meta-argument for the logical equivalence between a conditional claim and its contrapositive may contribute to students’ struggles. This case study investigated the effectiveness of the eliminating counterexamples intervention in improving students’ ability to construct, critique, and validate contrapositive arguments in a U.S. eighth-grade mathematics classroom. The intervention involved constructing descriptions of all possible counterexamples to a conditional claim and its contrapositive, comparing the two descriptions, noting that the descriptions are the same barring the order of phrases, and finding a counterexample to show the claim is false or viably arguing that no counterexample exists.

Resource(s)

NCTM Presentation Line of "Good" Fit in Grade 8 Classrooms

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2018
Short Description

This presntation addreses 4 research cquestions

 

What extant criteria do Grade 8 students use to choose the better line
of fit between two lines “fit” to a set of data, when both lines express
the trend of the data?
 
Is a residual criterion accessible and useful to Grade 8 students when
learning about line of fit?
 
How does introducing a residual criterion impact student
understanding of line of fit and their understanding mathematical
modeling process?
 
What stages of learning do students express as they engage in our
lesson?

“Well That's How the Kids Feel!”—Epistemic Empathy as a Driver of Responsive Teaching

While research shows that responsive teaching fosters students' disciplinary learning and equitable opportunities for participation, there is yet much to know about how teachers come to be responsive to their students' experiences in the science classroom. In this work, we set out to examine whether and how engaging teachers as learners in doing science may support responsive instructional practices.

Author/Presenter

Lama Z. Jaber

Vesal Dini

David Hammer

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2021
Short Description

In this article, the authors present evidence from teachers' reflections that this stability was supported by the teachers' intellectual and emotional experiences as learners. Specifically, they argue that engaging in extended scientific inquiry provided a basis for the teachers having epistemic empathy for their students—their tuning into and appreciating their students' intellectual and emotional experiences in science, which in turn supported teachers' responsiveness in the classroom.

Young Mathematicians: Expanding an Innovative and Promising Model Across Learning Environments to Promote Preschoolers' Mathematics Knowledge

Principal Investigator:

Young Mathematicians (YM) is a design and development project that aims to broaden participation by addressing the need to provide young children with early mathematics experiences. In the coming year, we will test an intervention, developed in collaboration with teachers and families, that provides learning experiences and materials for teachers and families to support adult-child interaction and engagement in mathematics, promote school-home connections in mathematics, and address adult attitudes toward mathematics, while promoting childrens mathematical knowledge.

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Target Audience:

Translating a Video-based Model of Teacher Professional Development to an Online Environment

Principal Investigator:

In prior work, BSCS studied STeLLA, a video-based analysis-of-practice professional learning (PL) model and found that it enhanced elementary science teacher and student outcomes. But the face-to-face model is difficult to scale. We present the results of a two-year design-based research study to translate the face-to-face PL into a facilitated online experience. The purpose is to create an effective, flexible, and cost-efficient PL model that will reach a broader audience of teachers.

Co-PI(s): Gillian Roehrig, University of Minnesota

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Target Audience:

Strengthening Data Literacy across the Curriculum

Principal Investigator:

The SDLC project has developed and studied curriculum modules for non-AP high school statistics to promote interest and skills in statistical thinking and data analysis among diverse high school populations. Modules engage students with social-justice-themed data investigations using large-scale socioeconomic data from the U.S. Census Bureau and student-friendly online data visualization tools. Current study findings show growth in student interest and skills in statistical thinking and data analysis following module use.

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Target Audience:

Science Coordinators Advancing a Framework for Outstanding Leadership Development

Principal Investigator:

Science Coordinators Advancing a Framework For Outstanding Leadership Development (SCAFFOLD) develops and studies a PD program for District Science Coordinators (DSCs) in one Southeastern state. DSCs can have partial or full responsibility for supporting science teachers in their districts, but little is known about their training and impact on teachers. The goal is to determine the impact of DSCs on teachers and if they are in need of PD to enhance their work with teachers.

Co-PI(s): Brooke A. Whitworth, Clemson University

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Responding to an Emerging Epidemic through Science Education

Principal Investigator:

The project is pursuing two coordinated goals associated with science teaching and learning in the COVID-19 pandemic: 1) create COVID-related curriculum materials and 2) conduct research on teaching and learning in the pandemic. We partnered with 12 teachers to create and enact a model-oriented, issue based curricular unit about COVID-19. Research efforts focus on how teachers enact the materials and how and where students get information about the pandemic as they are living through it.

Co-PI(s): Pa Friedrichsen and Laura Zangori, University of Missouri

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Target Audience:

Place-based Learning for Elementary Science at Scale (PeBLES2)

Principal Investigator:

To support equitable access to place-based science learning, the PeBLES2 team is developing and testing a model to support elementary teachers in incorporating locally relevant phenomena into instructional materials intentional designed to be locally-adapted. We are developing two units that could be used in any region across the country with built-in opportunities and embedded supports for teachers to purposefully adapt curriculum to include local phenomena. Professional learning experiences will further help teachers incorporate place-based approaches.

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Target Audience:

Enhancing Teacher and Student Understanding of Engineering in K-5 Bilingual Programs

Principal Investigator:

This study explored Bilingual and Dual Language (BDL) program models in Massachusetts and Puerto Rico. We developed and validated a survey in Spanish and English (n=105) with three constructs: (a) recommended BLD practices; (b) personal qualities for S&E teaching; and (c) recommended S&E pedagogical practices. We found that BDL teachers were confident in their ability to facilitate their students’ biliteracy development but not related to S&E literacy in Spanish-speaking countries.

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Target Audience: