The ultimate goal of high school mathematics teachers is to create a meaningful learning environment that is conducive to teaching students the necessary concepts for academic achievement. Unfortunately, evidence suggests that many secondary educators still teach in a rote lecture style that focuses on the teacher providing information to passive,…

If healthy mathematical beliefs are to be fostered in students, the teachers' beliefs must also be considered. The purpose of this study was to determine: (1) the impact on interns' (n=137) mathematical beliefs of an exploratory, student-centered mathematics course, "Mathematics for Elementary Teachers Via Problem Solving," (T104) for preservice…

This document is the result of the California Mathematics Task Force assigned to address the need to improve the mathematics achievement of California's students. Five recommendations are made and discussed: (1) The State Superintendent of Public Instruction (SSPI) must establish clear and specific content and performance standards for mathematics…

This brochure is part of NAEPFACTS, a new series that briefly summarizes findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Course-taking is generally a powerful indicator of mathematics achievement. This occurs partially because students who are more proficient tend to take more mathematics classes and, at the eighth grade, the…

This document presents the executive summary of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1992 mathematics assessment. It included nearly 250,000 fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade students attending approximately 10,000 schools across the United States. The results from the assessment indicate that student performance is improving…

This report investigates the dimensionality of the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics test in the context of subgroup differences. The analysis approach of this study utilized key grouping variables of the NAEP reports (e.g., gender, ethnicity), but had the advantage that subgroup comparisons were not only done in…

Judged by its results, the current system for educating African American students in mathematics is a distinct failure. For years, educators either ignored this problem or simply blamed the failure of the system on its victims. In 1984 the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education drew national attention to the problem by devoting an entire…

This report describes a program for increasing student readiness for and achievement in mathematics. The targeted population consists of third grade students in an expanding suburban community and kindergarten students in a culturally diverse urban community, both located in Northern Illinois. The problems of achievement in and attitudes towards…

This quasi-experimental study used the two group pretest/posttest design to investigate the comparison of the acquisition of mathematics skills between General Mathematics students and Applied Mathematics 1 students. In the 1994-1995 and the 1995-1996 school years the Generalizable Mathematics Skills Assessment was administered to General…

A gap in mathematics achievement between Asian and American children is acknowledged on both sides of the Pacific. Previous comparative investigations have been undertaken in China, Taiwan, Japan and the United States to gain insight into possible relationships between classroom strategies and the acknowledged achievement differences. Asian…

In recent years researchers have examined the apparent discrepancy between the sexes in mathematical ability. To explore the relationship between mathematics achievement and sex, sex role identity, self-esteem, and locus of control, 260 college students (170 males, 90 females), from three mathematics course levels, completed Rosenberg's…

This study was intended to determine whether sex-linked mathematics achievement and contextual differences persist into the university years. A random sample of 150 first-year mathematics students enrolled at a midwestern university was identified. A common 30-item calculus readiness test and a 37-item questionnaire, dealing with students'…

This paper is an overview of some points made at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in April of 1987. Gender effects were computed on 82 nationally standardized tests designed to determine precocity among youth. The effect sizes ranged from a magnitude of 0.50 (favoring females) for spelling in grade 12 on the…

Many high school and college students seem to dislike mathematics, do poorly in the subject (as evidenced by declining test scores), and avoid scheduling courses in mathematics. Answers to why test scores are declining and why mathematics achievement is low among adults are speculative and as varied as the educators who offer them. However, one…

Experimental schemes of concentrated studies have been in progress for some years at a number of upper secondary schools in Sweden. Concentrated studies involve concentrating the number of periods devoted during an upper secondary school course to the teaching of one subject within a shorter period of time than is laid down by the regular time…