AMATYC

Mathematics: Assessment & Integration of Success Skills

Roxane Barrows & Bernita Crawford

Roxane Barrows has 15 years of experience in the field of education. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in information systems from The Ohio State University and a Master’s Degree in mathematics from Ohio University. She is currently working on a PhD in higher education at Ohio University. She has been employed at Hocking College for 12 years, first as a professor of mathematics and then as the mathematics coordinator. She currently is an Associate Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and an adjunct mathematics professor.
E-mail: barrows_r@hocking.edu

Bernita Crawford has 33 years of experience in the field of education. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in education from The Ohio State University and a Master’s Degree in higher education from Ohio University. She taught high school sciences for twenty-four years including physics, chemistry, biology, and general science. She has been employed at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, since 1991, first as an adjunct and then as an assistant professor in the School of Health and Nursing. Three years ago, she became the Coordinator for the Assessment of Student Academic Achievement. Among her other responsibilities are membership in the Success Skills Learning Community and Curriculum Council. She is also an active member in the Ohio Two-Year College Assessment Network.
E-mail: crawford_b@hocking.edu

Hocking College, like many institutions of higher learning, has struggled to define, document, and assess those general skills deemed necessary for success in the workplace and life. The mathematics faculty have spent many years developing appropriate tools for assessment of student academic achievement. Although the process has taken several years, it has evolved into an ongoing method utilized by faculty to improve instruction and learning.

Not only are math faculty assessing student academic achievement, but they are also integrating “Success Skills” into their mathematics classes. Two Success Skills, “Communicates Effectively” and “Maintains Professional Skills and Attitudes,” have been integrated into the mathematics curriculum and strategies for assessment of them have been started. The mathematics faculty also developed a test to address the Success Skill “Demonstrates Mathematics.” The information from this test is shared with technology/program coordinators. Future steps involve integrating all eight Success Skills into the mathematics classes. (Back to Top)

Insights into the Area Model When Connecting Multiplication
with Whole Numbers to Decimal Numbers

Connie Yarema & Carol Williams

Connie Yarema is associate professor of mathematics at Abilene Christian University. She works with pre-service mathematics teachers as well as classroom teachers involved in Texas Teacher Quality grants. Her research interests include lesson studies designed in cooperation with classroom teachers.
E-mail: connie.yarema@math.acu.edu

Carol Williams is professor of mathematics at Abilene Christian University and Dean of the Graduate School. Her interests include encouraging high school girls and college women to persist in mathematics. She has been the recipient of three grants from the Mathematical Association of America in this area. E-mail: carol.williams@math.acu.edu

This article describes a valuable lesson that university mathematics faculty members learned from fifth grade and middle school teachers in a professional development workshop. The goal of the workshop was to show how models for whole number operations could be linked to models for rational numbers and to connect the traditional algorithms to the models. While working problems, most of the teachers modeled multiplication of whole numbers, fractions, and decimals using the newly taught area model.

Several presented an area model for decimals in an unanticipated way that led to an incorrect answer. The lesson learned was that to attain correct products from models, consistency in setting up the factors in an area model for multiplication is needed as the factors change from whole numbers to fractions and decimals. In the case of using base-10 blocks to represent the factors, the name of the block must be the same as the upper surface area of the block so that correct answers can be interpreted when modeling multiplication of whole numbers and decimals.(Back to Top)

A Mathematics Teacher’s Transition toward Inquiry-Based Discourse
in a Course for Prospective Elementary Teachers

Lisa Clement

Lisa Clement is an assistant professor of mathematics education at San Diego State University. She co-directs a Master of Arts program in Education with a concentration in K–8 Mathematics Education, and trains mathematics tutors of seventh grade students in the Sweetwater Union High School District.
E-mail: Lclement@mail.sdsu.edu

Using Kazemi’s and Stipek’s (2001) framework of classroom practice, the discourse between students enrolled in a mathematics-for-teachers course and their instructor is examined. The teacher’s practice is in transition from a focus on having students share multiple strategies toward a practice that additionally includes the mathematical justifications for those strategies, and pressing students to explore their errors. Field observations, classroom transcripts, teacher interviews, and student interviews were analyzed and triangulated for this study.(Back to Top)

Book Reviews

Edited by Sandra DeLozier Coleman

THE GOLDEN RATIO: THE STORY OF PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number, Mario Livio, Broadway Books, New York, 2002, ISBN 0-7679- 0816-3.(Back to Top)

Mathematics For Learning With Inflammatory Notes For The Education Of Educologists
Chapter 1: Counting With Number-Phrases

Alain Schremmer

In the Spring 2004 issue of The AMATYC Review, Schremmer introduced his idea for an open-source serialized text: Mathematics For Learning. The Preface to the text appeared in the Spring issue. This issue contains the beginning of Part 1, “Arithmetic: Numbers specified directly,” and contains Chapter 1: Counting With Number-Phrases. There are two sections to this chapter: “Accounting for Money” and “Addition Leads to Large Collections.”(Back to Top)

The Problems Section The Problems Section

Edited by Stephen Plett & Robert Stong

New Problems: The AS Problem Set consists of four new problems.

Set AQ Solutions: Solutions are given to the four problems from the AQ Problem Set that were in the Fall 2003 issue of The AMATYC Review.(Back to Top)