Children’s Object Structure Perspective-Taking: Training and Assessment Abstract Spatial abilities—required in both academic and everyday information processing—are recommended as an important target for explicit instruction in the K-12 curriculum. However, most school curricula do not address this spatial issue, probably because spatial ability is a general rather than domain-specific skill and also due to debate regarding individuals’ ability to transfer general skills to novel tasks. In particular, little is known about elementary school children’s object structure perspective-taking (OSPT) ability. We developed an age-appropriate OSPT assessment tool and examined differences in OSPT ability between 1st and 4th graders who did or did not receive OSPT training; children’s OSPT ability in relation to 3 object types: detailed everyday objects, contour only, and abstract geometrical target objects; the ability to identify a view seen by an observer and the ability to determine the vantage point from which a given view is seen; and problem-solving involving far transfer and difficult items. Problem-solving strategies and relations between these young children’s OSPT performance and their mathematic achievements were examined to further investigate the possible contribution of spatial ability to STEM learning. Our findings are promising in that a relatively short training effected significantly children’s OSPT ability—a general intellectual skill—calling for the development and introduction of OSPT-relevant K-12 curriculum, possibly using our training program as a model. Such curriculum is relevant in particular for girls, of whom OSPT showed significant correlation with mathematic scores for contoured and geometric objects. Fourth graders performed better than 1st graders, but the latter improved more.

Mathematics Teacher Professional Journals: What Topics Appear and How Has This Changed over Time? Abstract Mathematics teacher continuing professional development (CPD) is widely recognised to encompass more than attending courses and engaging in formal activities with colleagues in school. Teachers’ professional reading is an under-researched aspect of CPD, which takes place out of view, but which has the potential to shape teachers’ beliefs and practices. Mathematics teacher professional journals are relatively widely read by teachers and are a source of articles on a range of issues concerning the teaching and learning of mathematics. Such articles will to some extent reflect the interests of mathematics teachers and play a role in informing their teaching, thus indirectly affecting students’ experiences in the classroom. But what topics do the articles in these journals focus on, and how has this changed over time? In this study, we examined the entire archive of the two leading UK mathematics teacher professional journals (Mathematics Teaching and Mathematics in School, published since 1957 and 1971, respectively; in total, almost 15 million words). We found an increasing prevalence over time of articles about classroom activities and people-centred discussions and a decreasing prevalence of articles focusing on textbooks. We discuss these and other trends, offer tentative accounts for them and consider ways in which the beliefs and practices of mathematics teachers may be reflected in, and have been informed by, these publications over time.

Strategies Applied by Pre-service Elementary School Mathematics Teachers for Coping with Tasks that Require a Mental Rotation Abstract Despite the plethora of research in the field of mental rotation, researchers are still divided over a range of related issues, particularly the processes involved in coping with mental rotation tasks. This field of research, for the most part, is descriptive rather than interpretative, leading to the absence of a theoretical framework to enable the development of a coherent dedicated training program. Against this background, the present study is underpinned by the assumption that identifying relations between strategies that potentially lead to a successful coping with mental rotation tasks and those that do not lead to success might help us in designing a dedicated training program for pre-service teachers. The study involved 122 pre-service elementary school mathematics teachers. They responded to a questionnaire that included, among others, two tasks that required performing mental rotation. In line with other studies, the results of the present study indicate that there is an advantage to implementing a holistic strategy over an analytic one. However, the mere implementation of a certain strategy does not guarantee that one would draw a correct conclusion, as the same strategy might lead to either correct or incorrect conclusion. Based on these results, we inferred that there is a mechanism that mediates between the strategy employed and the conclusion reached. Apparently, in the context of mental rotation, the study of strategies does not allow understanding the essence of this mechanism, and in order to construct an interpretative theory, an alternative course of inquiry is needed.

Sixth Grade Students’ Performance, Misconceptions, and Confidence When Judging the Reasonableness of Computational Results Abstract Judging the reasonableness of computational results is pivotal for students to understand mathematical concepts. This domain is the most sensitive to the presence of misconceptions in mathematics. Confidence ratings can serve as a measure of the strength of students’ conceptual understanding. This study investigated the performance, misconceptions, and confidence ratings of 942 Hong Kong sixth grade students when they were asked to judge the reasonableness of computational results. The results showed that the students performed unsatisfactorily at judging the reasonableness, with an average score of 3.45 (out of 8). Slightly more than half of the students (53.72%) selected the correct computational results, but more than 60% of those students could not judge the reasonableness of the computational results (49.71% had misconceptions and 11.24% simply guessed the answers). In addition, only 20.82% and 18.23% of the students could apply number-sense- and rule-based methods to judge the reasonableness, respectively. Moreover, only 5.73% of the students showed high performance with a high confidence rating, 3.18% exhibited low performance with a low confidence rating, and 35.46% of them showed low performance with a high confidence rating. Furthermore, this study discusses students’ misconceptions, the implications of the study, and suggestions for future research.

Female Secondary Students’ and Their Teachers’ Perceptions of Science Learning Environments Within the Context of Science Education Reform in Saudi Arabia Abstract This mixed methods study explored how Saudi Arabia’s science education reform is functioning in 2 public girls’ secondary schools located in Dammam, 1 of the main cities in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia recently launched a new initiative to promote science education innovation by providing science curriculum change, professional development for science teachers, and progress towards a new educational system. This study examined Saudi secondary girls’ perceptions regarding science learning environments and the metacognitive science learning orientation within the context of science education reform in Saudi Arabia (N  =  202). Further, 3 science teacher participants were interviewed in order to ascertain their perceptions of their current science teaching environments and their science teaching. Particular emphasis was placed on examining differences between the Course System, which is a new system designed to facilitate science experiments and constructivist teaching and learning, and the regular system in terms of students’ perceptions about science learning environments and their metacognitive science learning orientation. Results and findings indicate that teachers supported the constructivist pedagogy, and science education reform efforts may gradually change Saudi science education environments and improve Saudi girls’ science metacognitive learning orientation.

A Comparative Analysis of Junior High School Science Curriculum Standards in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao: Based on Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy Abstract Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, in the Greater China Region, have similar yet different educational systems and curriculum standards, and each has performed well in international tests for science achievement. Using revised Bloom’s taxonomy, this study analyzed and explored the similarities and differences among these four Chinese regions. Some common features of their junior high science curricula were identified: conceptual knowledge represents the largest proportion of the curricula, while meta-cognitive knowledge remains extremely marginalized, and the lower levels of cognitive process represented a significantly larger proportion of the curricula than the higher levels. This study also identified some differences: mainland China, Taiwan, and Macao emphasize the memory of factual and conceptual knowledge, while Hong Kong emphasizes understanding. In addition to conceptual knowledge, Taiwan attaches importance to procedural knowledge, while Hong Kong places more emphasis on factual knowledge. Finally, some recommendations are offered for the reform of the junior high school science curriculum in these four Chinese regions and beyond, and suggestions are made for future comparative studies of science curricula around the world.

Conceptual Understanding of Newtonian Mechanics Through Cluster Analysis of FCI Student Answers Abstract The Force Concept Inventory is a multiple-choice test and is one of the most popular and most analyzed concept inventories. It is used to investigate student understanding of Newtonian mechanics. A structured approach to data analysis can transform it in a “diagnostic” instrument that can validate inferences about student thinking. In this paper, we show how cluster analysis methods can be used to investigate patterns of student conceptual understanding and supply useful details about the relationships among student concepts and misconceptions. The answers given to the FCI questionnaire by a sample of freshman engineering have been analyzed. The analysis takes into account the decomposition of the force concept into the conceptual dimensions suggested by the FCI authors and successive studies. Our approach identifies latent structures within the student response patterns and groups students characterized by similar correct answers, as well as by non-correct answers. These response patterns give us new insights into the relationships between the student force concepts and their ability to analyze motions. Our results show that cluster analysis proved to be a useful tool to identify latent structures within the student conceptual understanding. Such structures can supply diagnostic insights for classroom pedagogy and teaching approaches.

Korean Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Abilities to Identify Equiprobability Bias and Teaching Strategies Abstract Equiprobability bias (EB) is one of the frequently observed misconceptions in probability education in K-12 and can be affected by a problem context. As future teachers, preservice teachers need to have a stable understanding of probability and to have the knowledge to identify EB in their students regardless of the problem context. However, there are few studies to explore how preservice teachers identify students’ EB and how they respond to students’ EB. This study investigated Korean preservice elementary school teachers’ abilities to identify students’ EB in two problem contexts, marble and baseball problems, as well as their teaching strategies for correcting students’ EB within each problem. Ninety-six preservice elementary school teachers participated in this study. They were presented with two problems with students having EB and were asked to write lesson plays. From the analysis of their lesson plays, it was found that 87% of the preservice teachers identified students’ EB in both problems, and in the baseball problem, 13% of them did not. Three teaching strategies for correcting students’ EB in each problem were found. Based on the results, implications for preservice elementary teacher education were discussed.

The Impact of Inclusive STEM High Schools on Student Outcomes: a Statewide Longitudinal Evaluation of Texas STEM Academies Abstract In recent years, the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) specialized schools has been rapidly increasing internationally. In the United States, a new movement of establishing inclusive STEM high schools (ISHSs) aimed at expanding access to specialized STEM education for underrepresented and diverse student groups has begun to emerge. Due to its recent emergence, rigorous evidence on the impact of ISHSs on student outcomes is scarce and inconclusive. This study adds to this limited but growing body of empirical literature by examining whether ISHSs have an effect on student achievement, course-taking, and high school completion, and if effects vary by sociodemographic subgroups. Focusing on the Texas STEM academies—the largest cluster of ISHSs in the US, and analyzing a decade-long data from the Texas Statewide Longitudinal Data System, pooled regression analysis results showed that while ISHSs had no impact on student test scores in mathematics and science, the effects are positive on completing advanced level math courses in high school. Subgroup analyses indicated that ISHSs generally have no differential effects on student outcomes by sociodemographic subgroups, with the exception that they improve the rates of high school graduation for racial minority and low-income students.

Multiple Solutions for Real-World Problems, Experience of Competence and Students’ Procedural and Conceptual Knowledge Abstract An effective way to improve students’ mathematical knowledge is to have them construct multiple solutions for real-world problems. Prior knowledge is a relevant prerequisite for learning outcomes, and the experience of competence is a basic need that has to be fulfilled to improve achievement. In the current experimental study (N = 307), we investigated how the construction of multiple solutions for real-world problems by applying multiple (two) mathematical procedures affected students’ procedural and conceptual knowledge and their experience of competence. Path analyses showed that constructing multiple solutions for real-world problems increased students’ feelings of competence and affected their procedural and conceptual knowledge indirectly through the experience of competence. Moreover, students’ prior knowledge affected their knowledge at posttest directly as well as indirectly via their experience of competence.