Is Your Child Afraid of Math?

Challenge to Traditional Mathematics Curriculum

By Deborah Williams

Researchers have uncovered one reason why American high school students may not perform as well as their global peers around the world.  The researchers, professor in the College of Education at the University of Missouri-Columbia, James Tarr, and professor emeritus, Doug Grouws, found “high school students in the United States achieve higher scores on a standardized mathematics test if they study from a curriculum known as integrated mathematics.”  An article on the Science Daily website reports that this finding was the result of their study of more than 3,000 high school students across the country.
Integrated mathematics is a combination of mathematics topics—algebra, geometry, and statistics, for example—into one course.  American high school mathematics courses typically include one yearlong course for each topic (e.g., Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, pre-Calculus, etc.).  Like students in many of the high-achieving countries who study math from a more integrated curriculum, Tarr and Grouws found that American high school “students who studied from an integrated mathematics program scored significantly higher on standardized tests administered to all participating students, after controlling for many teacher and student attributes.”
Tarr acknowledges that these findings challenge the traditional high school mathematics curriculum.  He asserts that those views simply are not supported when student performance is measured as it was in this three-year study of educational outcomes for students studying from different types of mathematics curricula.

Benefits of Associate Degree Before Transferring to a Four Year College

By Deborah Williams

Recently, many college students are earning an associate degree before transferring to a four-year college.  Caralee Adams, writer for Edweek’s College Bound blog, writes that there are a number of reasons that actually earning the associate degree before transferring to a four-year college.  It can…

• …increase the likelihood of completing a bachelor’s degree
• …save students money
• …improve their earnings compared with that of earlier transfers

Researcher Clive Belfield reports these findings from a study of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College at Teachers College, Columbia University.  He notes that getting an associate degree before transferring to a four-year college can increase earnings by $50,000 over 20 years.  He also reports that many community college students have difficulty deciding the best time to transfer to a four-year college.  He suggests that state community college systems “create stronger incentives for making the completion of an associate degree before transfer a priority for students.
Of course, starting out with an associate degree can save you mone

Let the Little Ones Play by Deborah Williams

Dr. Jo Van Herwegen, a psychology researcher at London’s Kingston University, has released new

research findings that show that structured play should be the primary learning technique for pre-school children.  An article, “Structured Play Trumps Age for Future School Success,” on the Science Daily website reports that Dr. Van Herwegen opposes starting school early unless it involves “a formalized setting with trained people…but if it means sitting down and doing formal, proper learning at the age of four or five, then that’s wrong.”  She further asserts that pre-schoolers don’t have the learning foundation—including working memory and language–,so a formalized education setting is inappropriate.
Van Herwegen suggests a program that is similar to what is done in Belgian pre-schools.   Those programs include the following types of activities:

• Carpet time discussions
• School-related activities
  • Painting
  • Learning to hold a pen while sitting at tables and chairs
  • Standing in lines
  • Where to put things
  • How to listen

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I-pads for note taking

Handwritten notes are good for many students to take notes; however, a recent post by Beth Holland on the Edutopia blog makes the case for teaching students to use multiple media to take notes so that they can use what works best for them and integrate online learning tools.  Holland explains that some students may prefer to use some of the iPad’s features to help them connect better to the information.
Cameras and Microphones

• Students may want to take a picture of the whiteboard and insert it into their personal notes.
• Students may want to include audio recordings of their thoughts during the note-taking process.

Typing and Drawing

• Some students prefer typing and drawing their notes. Holland suggests the following apps:
  • Penultimate combined with Evernote
  • PaperPort Notes (which also includes speech-to-text)
  • Notability, the potential exists to type and draw simultaneously as well as include photos and audio
  
  
  
  

Special Needs

With the dramatic increase in the diagnosis rate for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ADS) over the last five years, researchers have found few strategies that are helpful in developing social skills for autistic teens.  A recent report on the Science Daily website describes a promising method that is effective and available at a low cost.
Joshua Plavnick, assistant professor of special education at Michigan State University, acknowledges that strategies for ASD adolescents must be “effective and practical,” and he and his colleagues have found that regular video-based group instruction provides significant gains in various social behaviors.  The video teaching techniques that he and his colleagues published their findings in the research journal Exceptional Children that “the students demonstrated a rapid increase in the level of complex social behaviors each time video-based group instruction was used.”  What’s more, those students retained those behaviors even when the videos were not used as often.  The newly-acquired skills transferred to the students’ homes as well.  Parents reported on anonymous surveys that they were highly satisfied; one even reported that the student started asking family members to play games together, and this was a new behavior.
This instructional strategy seems promising.  It addresses the needs for a rapidly increasing group, and it is cost effective for schools.

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