While many instructors are aware of the "Literary Digest" 1936 poll as an example of biased sampling methods, this article details potential further explorations for the "Digest's" 1924-1936 quadrennial U.S. presidential election polls. Potential activities range from lessons in data acquisition, cleaning, and validation, to…

Developed as an integral component of many higher education programs, internships provide a multitude of benefits for participating students. However, there is a lack of tools designed to measure internship-related learning outcomes. Therefore, this article will present the process of constructing and validating a scale that can be used to…

Assessment makes visible what we value and reciprocally what is assessed tends to become what is taken to be of value. Building on this, it can be argued that assessment does more than measure what is present rather it 'makes up' people. This piece offers a reflective commentary some of the insights to be gained from the Research Analysis and…

Explore the impact technology has on mathematical identity and agency when students use mathematical action technology to engage in cycles of proof and support case-based reasoning. This article showcases a mathematics task used in a fourth-grade class that allowed students to develop their conceptual understanding of division. The authors…

When a Year 7 student physically reacted to a prompt of another student by anxiously drumming the desk with his ruler, exclaiming "uuuuhh", the initial thought of the observing researcher, Laura, was: "this is an interesting account". This started a reflective journey of first applying robust research methodologies to the…

We propose a new instructional theory, the Domain of Validity (DoV) Framework, which offers a new way forward for designing teaching for conceptual change, while also resolving conflicts between existing theories related to common, difficult-to-change conceptions students have about particular scientific topics. We propose that knowledge consists…

In this note, we report on an implementation of discovery-oriented problems in courses on Real Analysis and Differential Equations. We explain a type of task design that gives students the opportunity to conjecture, refute and prove. What is new is that the complexity in our problems is limited and thus the tasks can also be used in homework…

Specifications grading is a version of mastery grading distinguished by giving students clear specifications that their work must meet, and grading most things pass/fail based on those specifications. Mastery grading systems can get quite elaborate, with hierarchies of objectives and various systems for rewriting and retesting. In this article I…

Over the past several years, content experts, psychometricians, and researchers have been hard at work developing, refining, and studying the digital SAT. The work is grounded in foundational best practices and advances in measurement and assessment design, with fairness for students informing all of the work done. This paper shares learnings from…

Reasoning and problem solving are both critical acts in mathematics learning. The author has met many teachers who tell her they would love to highlight them more but feel they cannot because of the pressures of content coverage, pacing guides, and district tests. In this article, she describes a teaching intervention that highlighted problem…

This article describes a system of specifications-based grading used in an introduction to proofs course. The system was introduced to address two issues that arose in the course: how to spend less time grading and how to encourage use of feedback. We describe the implementation of the system and the results on grading and on students.

In this note, I argue for and discuss my experiences with explicitly incorporating principles of critical and creative thinking in a transitions course which serves mathematics, mathematics education, and statistics majors. I describe several specific assignments and classroom tasks designed to enhance critical and creative thinking. I also…

A summary of an experimental course on algebraic curves is given that was held for young learners at age 11. The course was a part of Epsilon camp. a program designed for very gifted students who have already demonstrated high interest in studying mathematics. Prerequisites for the course were mastery of Algebra I and at least one preliminary year…

In a study about pre-service secondary mathematics teachers' (PSMTs) understanding about the nature of theorems in geometry, the researcher noticed that it was challenging for the PSMTs to visualize and draw counterexamples to disprove the given mathematical statements. Meanwhile, the use of the dragging feature of dynamic geometry environments…

Students tend to believe that RateMyProfessors.com (RMP) is an unfailingly valid measure of teaching effectiveness, and in fact viewing that site prior to taking a course can have a direct influence on their future evaluations of faculty. The authors describe an activity whose objective is to have students analyze different types of validity using…