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- Genre: Masters Thesis
Description
This thesis focuses on sequencing questions in a way that provides students with manageable steps to understand some of the fundamental concepts in discrete mathematics. The questions are aimed at younger students (middle and high school aged) with the goal of helping young students, who have likely never seen discrete mathematics, to learn through guided discovery. Chapter 2 is the bulk of this thesis as it provides questions, hints, solutions, as well as a brief discussion of each question. In the discussions following the questions, I have attempted to illustrate some relationships between the current question and previous questions, explain the learning goals of that question, as well as point out possible flaws in students' thinking or point out ways to explore this topic further. Chapter 3 provides additional questions with hints and solutions, but no discussion. Many of the questions in Chapter 3 contain ideas similar to questions in Chapter 2, but also illustrate how versatile discrete mathematics topics are. Chapter 4 focuses on possible future directions. The overall framework for the questions is that a student is hosting a birthday party, and all of the questions are ones that might actually come up in party planning. The purpose of putting it in this setting is to make the questions seem more coherent and less arbitrary or forced.
ContributorsBell, Stephanie (Author) / Fishel, Susana (Thesis advisor) / Hurlbert, Glenn (Committee member) / Quigg, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Benefits and Challenges of Collaboration and Autonomy in a High School Beginning Art Class In the twenty-first century students are used to communicating. Using social media they often collaborate with peers. Despite this students may prefer to work independently rather than collaborating with fellow students in art class. Also, collaboration has become more common with twenty-first century artists. This study addresses the possible disconnect between the popular culture of today's art students' preference for the traditional independent autonomous practices in the art classroom, and the collaborative practice of many contemporary artists. The purpose of this study is to investigate how working collaboratively or working autonomously affects the artworks and oral and written responses about their artwork of high school beginning art students. I used a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gather data. Data for this study are the artworks made by the participants, idea starter sheets, participant written reflections, their oral answers to interview questions, and my observations of the classes. The participants in this study are students from four intact classrooms of high school beginning art. This study produced multiple findings, such as: The artworks revealed differences between collaborative classes and autonomous classes. Additionally, no differences were revealed from the written and oral responses made by the participants in the two classes. I conclude that, when given the opportunity to collaborate or work autonomously, high school beginning art students in this study made different artworks but made no different oral and written responses.
ContributorsBomberg-Roth, Patricia (Author) / Erickson, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Stokrocki, Mary (Committee member) / Young, Bernard (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This ethnographic study contributes to the literature on Latin@ youth in the US by focusing on the experiences of Latin@ youth in Arizona and their identity management practices. The data from 9 months of field observations and 11 unstructured interviews provides a vivid picture of the youth's daily encounters. Using a thematic analysis this study reveals the youth's experiences in occupying predominantly white spaces, managing privilege, and managing negative stereotypes. The youth's involvement at El Centro, an Arizona nonprofit organization, provided them a safe space in which they created a familial environment for themselves and their peers.
ContributorsTerminel Iberri, Ana (Author) / Mean, Lindsey (Thesis advisor) / Téllez, Michelle (Thesis advisor) / Gruber, Diane (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
ABSTRACT Research has shown that students from elementary school to college have major misconceptions about the nature of science. While an appropriate understanding of the nature of science has been an objective of science education for a century, researchers using a variety of instruments, continue to document students' inadequate conceptions of what science is and how it operates as an enterprise. Current research involves methods to improve student understanding of the nature of science. Students often misunderstand the creative, subjective, empirical, and tentative nature of science. They do not realize the relationship between laws and theories, nor do they understand that science does not follow a prescribed method. Many do not appreciate the influence culture, society, and politics; nor do they have an accurate understanding of the types of questions addressed by science. This study looks at student understanding of key nature of science (NOS) concepts in order to examine the impact of implementing activities intended to help students better understand the process of science and to see if discussion of key NOS concepts following those activities will result in greater gains in NOS understanding. One class received an "activities only" treatment, while the other participated in the same activities followed by explicit discussion of key NOS themes relating to the activity. The interventions were implemented for one school year in two high school anatomy and physiology courses composed of juniors and seniors. Student views of the nature of science were measured using the Views of the Nature of Science - Form C (VNOS-C). Students in both classes demonstrated significant gains in NOS understanding. However, contrary to current research, the addition of explicit discussion did not result in significantly greater gains in NOS understanding. This suggests that perhaps students in higher-level science classes can draw the correlations between NOS related activities and important aspects of "real" science. Or perhaps that a curriculum with a varied approach my expose students to more aspects of science thus improving their NOS understanding.
ContributorsTalbot, Amanda L (Author) / Luft, Julie (Thesis advisor) / Baker, Dale (Committee member) / Brem, Sarah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
This graduate thesis explains and discusses the background, methods, limitations, and future work of developing a low-budget, variable-length, Arduino-based robotics professional development program (PDP) for middle school or high school classrooms. This graduate thesis builds on prior undergraduate thesis work and conclusions. The main conclusions from the undergraduate thesis work focused on reaching a larger teacher population along with providing a more robust robot design and construction. The end goal of this graduate thesis is to develop a PDP that reaches multiple teachers, involves a more robust robot design, and lasts beyond this developmental year. There have been many similar research studies and PDPs that have been tested and analyzed but do not fit the requirements of this graduate thesis. These programs provide some guidance in the creation of a new PDP. The overall method of the graduate thesis comes in four main phases: 1) setup, 2) pre-PDP phase, 3) PDP phase, and 4) post PDP phase. The setup focused primarily on funding, IRB approval, research, timeline development, and research question creation. The pre-PDP phase focused primarily on the development of new tailored-to-teacher content, a more robust robot design, and recruitment of participants. The PDP phase primarily focused on how the teachers perform and participate in the PDP. Lastly, the post PDP phase involved data analysis along with a resource development plan. The last post-PDP step is to consolidate all of the findings in a clear, concise, and coherent format for future work.
Contributorslerner, jonah (Author) / Carberry, Adam (Thesis advisor) / Walters, Molina (Committee member) / Jordan, Shawn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020