Elementary

This study explores the effects of geographic information systems (GIS) curriculum on fifth-grade students' spatial ability and map-analysis skills. A total of 174 students from an urban public school district and their teachers participated in a quasi-experimental design study. Four teachers implemented a GIS curriculum in experimental classes over six weeks while three teachers continued with regular teaching in control classes. Both groups completed pre- and post-tests measuring spatial ability and map-analysis skills.

Smith, P. S., Plumley, C. L., Hayes, M. L., & Esch, R. K. (2018). Personal and Canonical PCK: A Synergistic Relationship? In S. Graves, M. Harford, R. Thompson, E. Shay, & S. Uzzo (Eds.), Pedagogical Content Knowledge in STEM (pp. 49-66). The Netherlands: Springer.

Making sense of fractions can be challenging for students with learning disabilities. Dr. Jessica Hunt of North Carolina State University studies how these children think and learn and is developing novel teaching methods that facilitate mathematics learning for this underserved population.

Validity-related issues are a growing topic within the mathematics education community. Until recently, validation has been treated as something to gather when convenient or is rarely reported in ways that conform to current standards for assessment development. This theoretically-focused proceeding adds to a burgeoning theoretical argument that validation should be considered a methodology within mathematics education scholarship. We connect to design-science research, which is a well-established framework within mathematics education.

Bostic, J., Matney, G., Sondergeld, T., & Stone, G. (2018, November). Content validity evidence for new problem-solving measures (PSM3, PSM4, and PSM5). In T. Hodges, G. Roy, & A. Tyminski (Eds.), Proceedings for the 40h Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (pp. 1641). Greenville, SC.

In this study we investigate the teaching of the associative property in a natural classroom setting through observation of classroom video of several elementary math classes in a large urban school district. Findings indicate that the associative property was often conflated with the commutative property during teaching. The role of the associative property in many computational tasks remained fully implicit, even after the property had been formally introduced.

This study explores how preservice teachers (PSTs) transfer the intended specialized content knowledge (SCK) to elementary classrooms. Focusing on the case of the associative property of multiplication, we compared three PSTs’SCK during enacted lessons in fourth grade classrooms with their own learning in professional development (PD) settings. Findings revealed the PSTs’ successes and challenges in unpacking an example task, especially in areas of making connections between concrete and abstract representations and asking deep questions that target quantitative interactions.