Improving learning by connecting chemistry curriculum to students' experiences

The purpose of the study was to design, implement, and assess the effects of a teaching unit about fuel sources and chemical energy on students’ learning. The unit was designed to incorporate students’ experiences in a way that was aligned with the Michigan High School Content Expectations. The study was completed with all of the students taking General Chemistry in a rural Michigan high school in the 2010-11 school year. There were 138 participants total. The participants were mostly Caucasian and the majority were in the 11th grade. Of these, 77 constituted the experimental group and were taught the unit. The additional 61 participants in the control group were given the posttest only. Data was derived from the results of pre/post tests, final assessment projects, and the researcher’s observations. A pretest that contained questions about the fuel sources was administered at the beginning of the unit. An identical posttest was administered at the completion of the unit. A final assessment project required students to choose the best fuel source for the area, and support their opinion with facts and data from their research or the learning activities and labs performed in class. The results of the study revealed that the teaching unit did produce significant learning gains in the experimental group. The results also indicated that the teaching unit added value to the current General Chemistry curriculum by expanding what students were learning. The instructional goals of the unit were aligned with the Michigan High School Content Expectations. The results also revealed that the students were able to learn to support their thinking and decisions with explanations based on the data and labs. These are essential science literacy skills. The study supported the view that connecting the required curriculum with students’ experiences and interests was effective, and that students can learn important science literacy skills, such as providing support for arguments and communicating scientific explanations, when given adequate teacher support.

SUPPORTING LEARNING FOR NAVAJO STUDENTS THROUGH ETHNOMATHEMATICS

The purpose of this research was to address how culturally informed ethnomathematical methods of teaching can be utilized to support the learning of Navajo students in mathematics. The study was conducted over the course of four years on the Navajo Reservations at Tohatchi Middle School in Tohatchi New Mexico. The students involved in the study were all in 8th grade and were enrolled either in Algebra 1 or a Response to Intervention, RTI, class. The data collected came in the form of a student survey, student observation and student assessment. The teacher written survey, a math textbook word problem, and two original math textbook problems along with their rewritten version were the sources of these three studies. The first year of the study consisted of a math attitude survey and how Navajo students perceived math as a subject of interest. The students answered four questions pertaining to their thoughts about mathematics. The students’ responses were positive according to their written answers. The second year of the study involved the observation of how students worked through a math word problem as a group. This method tested how the students culturally interacted in order to solve a math problem. Their questions and reasoning to solve the problem were shared with peers and the teacher. The teacher supported the students in understanding and solving the problem by asking questions that kept the students focused on the goal of solving the problem. The students worked collaboratively and openly in order to complete the activity. During the iv study, the teacher was more able to notice the students’ deficiencies individually or as a group, therefore was able to support them in a more specific manner. The last study was conducted over a period of two different years. This study was used to determine how textbook bias in the form of its sentence structure or word choice affects the performance of students who are not culturally familiar with one or both. It was found that the students performed better and took less time on the rewritten problem than on the original problem. The data suggests that focusing on the culture, language and education of Navajo students can affect how the students learn and understand math.

Building the New Society in the Shell of the Old: Finnish-Canadian Hall Socialism and the Canadian Industrial Unionist Support League

The literature on Finnish immigrant working-class movements in North America frequently makes reference to the phenomenon of "hall socialism," so-called because of the central position that the socialist or labor hall occupied in the political, associational, and cultural life of many Finnish communities throughout the twentieth-century. In the 1930s, over 80 such Finnish halls were spread across Canada, and many people associated with these halls vigorously supported the mission of organized labor. This paper will examine the history, ideas, and practices of the Industrial Workers of the World-influenced Canadan Teollisuusunionistien Kannatus Liitto (CTKL; Canadian Industrial Unionist Support League), and its connections to Finnish Canadian hall socialism. The paper will consider the role of the CTKL in supporting workers' struggles, the significance of the hall as a part of the infrastructural bedrock that sustained this support, and the broader interaction between social and radical organizing commitments.

Preparing writing centers and tutors for literacy mediation for working class campus-staff

Writing centers work with writers; traditionally services have been focused on undergraduates taking composition classes. More recently, centers have started to attract a wider client base including: students taking labs that require writing; graduate students; and ESL students learning the conventions of U.S. communication. There are very few centers, however, which identify themselves as open to working with all members of the campus-community. Michigan Technological University has one such center. In the Michigan Tech writing center, doors are open to “all students, faculty and staff.” While graduate students, post docs, and professors preparing articles for publication have used the center, for the first time in the collective memory of the center UAW staff members requested center appointments in the summer of 2008. These working class employees were in the process of filling out a work related document, the UAW Position Audit, an approximately seven-page form. This form was their one avenue for requesting a review of the job they were doing; the review was the first step in requesting a raise in job level and pay. This study grew out of the realization that implicit literacy expectations between working class United Auto Workers (UAW) staff and professional class staff were complicating the filling out and filing of the position audit form. Professional class supervisors had designed the form as a measure of fairness, in that each UAW employee on campus was responding to the same set of questions about their work. However, the implicit literacy expectations of supervisors were different from those of many of the employees who were to fill out the form. As a result, questions that were meant to be straightforward to answer were in the eyes of the employees filling out the form, complex. Before coming to the writing center UAW staff had spent months writing out responses to the form; they expressed concerns that their responses still would not meet audience expectations. These writers recognized that they did not yet know exactly what the audience was expecting. The results of this study include a framework for planning writing center sessions that facilitate the acquisition of literacy practices which are new to the user. One important realization from this dissertation is that the social nature of literacy must be kept in the forefront when both planning sessions and when educating tutors to lead these sessions. Literacy scholars such as James Paul Gee, Brian Street, and Shirley Brice Heath are used to show that a person can only know those literacy practices that they have previously acquired. In order to acquire new literacy practices, a person must have social opportunities for hands-on practice and mentoring from someone with experience. The writing center can adapt theory and practices from this dissertation that will facilitate sessions for a range of writers wishing to learn “new” literacy practices. This study also calls for specific changes to writing center tutor education.

Occasional white boarding : examining the effects of physics students' understanding of motion graphs

The Modeling method of teaching has demonstrated well--‐documented success in the improvement of student learning. The teacher/researcher in this study was introduced to Modeling through the use of a technique called White Boarding. Without formal training, the researcher began using the White Boarding technique for a limited number of laboratory experiences with his high school physics classes. The question that arose and was investigated in this study is “What specific aspects of the White Boarding process support student understanding?” For the purposes of this study, the White Boarding process was broken down into three aspects – the Analysis of data through the use of Logger Pro software, the Preparation of White Boards, and the Presentations each group gave about their specific lab data. The lab used in this study, an Acceleration of Gravity Lab, was chosen because of the documented difficulties students experience in the graphing of motion. In the lab, students filmed a given motion, utilized Logger Pro software to analyze the motion, prepared a White Board that described the motion with position--‐time and velocity--‐time graphs, and then presented their findings to the rest of the class. The Presentation included a class discussion with minimal contribution from the teacher. The three different aspects of the White Boarding experience – Analysis, Preparation, and Presentation – were compared through the use of student learning logs, video analysis of the Presentations, and follow--‐up interviews with participants. The information and observations gathered were used to determine the level of understanding of each participant during each phase of the lab. The researcher then looked for improvement in the level of student understanding, the number of “aha” moments students had, and the students’ perceptions about which phase was most important to their learning. The results suggest that while all three phases of the White Boarding experience play a part in the learning process for students, the Presentations provided the most significant changes. The implications for instruction are discussed.