The Impact of Graphing Calculators on the Mathematics Achievement of Black Females

The Impact of Graphing Calculators on the Mathematics Achievement of Black Females
Author: Tonya Bates
Publisher:
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2021
Genre:
ISBN:

This study examines the effect of the usage of graphing calculators on Black Females' mathematics achievement on the 12th grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This non-experimental research study will analyze the 2015 NAEP publicly available data set, using the twelfth-grade sample, examining their overall math achievement compared to graphing calculator usage, race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Four regressions will be used to analyze factors created from the twelfth-grade NAEP student surveys, with test results as the dependent variable. The regressions will use race, gender, socioeconomic status., and graphing calculator usage in the classroom as independent variables, and the NAEP results as results of the regression analysis will be used to evaluate the predictive power of the model. Previous. studies on mathematics achievement have used only 4th and 8th-grade data. This investigation will contribute to the body of research by investigating the 12th-grade NAEP results.

The Role of Graphing Calculators in Students' Algebraic Thinking

The Role of Graphing Calculators in Students' Algebraic Thinking
Author: Sandy Margaret Spitzer
Publisher: ProQuest
Total Pages:
Release: 2008
Genre: Algebra
ISBN: 9780549811756

Chapter 1 provides a review of the literature on the effects of using graphing calculators on students' mathematics achievement. General findings suggest that calculators can have a positive effect on students' performance on assessments. In particular, students using graphing calculators seem to do better on some types of problems, such as those requiring translation between different representations of a function, and perform about the same as students without calculators on procedural symbolic-manipulation problems. In order to identify possible mechanisms for these changes, the chapter explores four possible reasons for students' improved performance: improved representational fluency, wider repertoire of solution strategies, increased reification of mathematical concepts, and changes in classroom processes. While the general trend of improved achievement appears robust, none of the four hypothesized reasons for improvement were substantiated by enough data to be confirmed. While it appears that the basic effects of graphing calculators are relatively well determined, mechanisms for those effects are poorly understood. Chapter 2 presents the result of a study whose goal was to investigate how the presence of graphing calculator technology influences the mathematical ideas that students encounter while solving algebra problems. Thirty-three Algebra II students, divided randomly into two conditions, participated in task-based interviews. In one condition, students were encouraged to solve algebra problems using their graphing calculator, and in the other condition, students solved the same problems with no access to technology. Results indicate that when students used graphing calculators, they were more likely to interpret letters as variables rather than fixed unknowns, used a wider range of strategies, were more likely to use more than one strategy to solve a problem, and expressed deeper levels of conceptual understanding. The differences in conceptual understanding and interpretation of letters were strongly related to the types of strategies that students used to solve problems, with graphing and tables encouraging more sophisticated interpretations and evidence of conceptual understanding.

Mathematics Success and Failure Among African-American Youth

Mathematics Success and Failure Among African-American Youth
Author: Danny Bernard Martin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135676216

No matter how mathematics achievement and persistence are measured, African Americans seem to lag behind their peers. This state of affairs is typically explained in terms of student ability, family background, differential treatment by teachers, and biased curricula. But what can explain disproportionately poor performance and persistence of African-American students who clearly possess the ability to do well, who come from varied family and socioeconomic backgrounds, who are taught by caring and concerned teachers, and who learn mathematics in the context of a reform-oriented mathematics curriculum? And, why do some African-American students succeed in mathematics when underachievement is the norm among their fellow students? Danny Martin addresses these questions in Mathematics Success and Failure Among African-American Youth, the results of a year-long ethnographic and observational study of African-American students and their parents and teachers. Mathematics Success and Failure Among African-American Youth goes beyond the conventional explanations of ability, socioeconomic status, differential treatment, and biased curricula to consider the effects of history, community, and peers--and the individual agency that allows some students to succeed despite these influences. Martin's analysis suggests that prior studies of mathematics achievement and persistence among African Americans have failed to link sociohistorical, community, school, and intrapersonal forces in sufficiently meaningful ways, and that they suffer from theoretical and methodological limitations that hinder the ability of mathematics educators to reverse the negative achievement and persistence trends that continue to afflict African-American students. The analyses and findings offered in Martin's book lead to exciting implications for future research and intervention efforts concerning African-American students--and other students for whom history and context play an important role. This book will be useful and informative to many groups: mathematics education researchers, education researchers interested in the social context of learning and teaching, policymakers, preservice and in-service teachers, students, parents, and community advocates. It will also be of interest to readers concerned with multicultural education, cross-cultural studies of mathematics learning, sociology of education, Black Studies, and issues of underrepresentation in science and mathematics.