This article allows students to apply their knowledge and experience of area and volume to find the volume of Norris Lake, a large reservoir lake in Tennessee. Students have the opportunity to demonstrate their skills in using maps and scales as well as to incorporate the use of technology in developing the solution. This project satisfied the…

The Wide Range Achievement Test-Fourth Edition (WRAT4) is designed to provide "a quick, simple, psychometrically sound assessment of academic skills". The test was first published in 1946 by Joseph F. Jastak, with the purpose of augmenting the cognitive performance measures of the Wechsler-Bellevue Scales, developed by David Wechsler.…

In Ramsay-curve item response theory (RC-IRT), the latent variable distribution is estimated simultaneously with the item parameters of a unidimensional item response model using marginal maximum likelihood estimation. This study evaluates RC-IRT for the three-parameter logistic (3PL) model with comparisons to the normal model and to the empirical…

The aim of this study is to evaluate the benefit of chess in mathematics lessons for children with learning disabilities based on lower intelligence (IQ 70-85). School classes of four German schools for children with learning disabilities were randomly assigned to receive one hour of chess lesson instead of one hour of regular mathematics lessons…

This article addresses the issues of coaching and assessing. A preservice middle school teacher's unique solution to the Pizza problem was not what the professor expected. The student's solution strategy, based on sequences and a reinvention of Pascal's triangle, is explained in detail. (Contains 8 figures.)

The purpose of this study was to explore patterns of difficulty in 2 domains of mathematical cognition: computation and problem solving. Third graders (n = 924; 47.3% male) were representatively sampled from 89 classrooms; assessed on computation and problem solving; classified as having difficulty with computation, problem solving, both domains,…

For more than 20 years, the Ways of Coping Scale (WOCS) has been used extensively to measure coping. Yet beyond the original psychometric data, few studies have reexamined its properties utilizing the enormous body of research generated on the WOCS. Reliability has been assumed to be consistent as an attribute of the test. This study used…

Cigarette smoking is concentrated among low-income groups. Consequently, cigarette taxes are considered regressive. However, if poorer individuals are much more price sensitive than richer individuals, then tax increases would reduce smoking much more among the poor and their cigarette tax expenditures as a share of income would rise by much less…

Extreme-value statistics is often used to estimate so-called return values (actually related to quantiles) for environmental quantities like wind speed or wave height. A basic method for estimation is the method of block maxima which consists in partitioning observations in blocks, where maxima from each block could be considered independent.…

Studies report that students often fail to consider familiar aspects of reality in solving mathematical word problems. This study explored how different features of mathematical problems influence the way that undergraduate students employ realistic considerations in mathematical problem solving. Incorporating familiar contents in the word…

The Williams Review (Dept. for Children, Schools and Families, 2008) is significantly important to all early years and primary educationalists, including those who are involved in teaching mathematics to the next generation of primary school teachers. The report, compiled as a result of this review, sets out the ways that children in primary…

Chemists have used computational science methodologies for a number of decades and their utility continues to be unabated. For this reason we developed an advanced lab in computational chemistry in which students gain understanding of general strengths and weaknesses of computation-based chemistry by working through a specific research problem.…

In regression analysis, the notion of population validity is of theoretical interest for describing the usefulness of the underlying regression model, whereas the presumably more important concept of population cross-validity represents the predictive effectiveness for the regression equation in future research. It appears that the inference…

This literature review examines current practice in reporting school dropout rates and the impact that school dropout may have on adult education programs and policies. First, I investigate the five dropout estimates commonly reported by the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE), examining how these measures vary in their estimation of school…

The authors investigated the use of a particular discourse practice--continued questioning and discussion after a correct answer was provided, which they called extended discourse--and examined the frequency and content of this practice in 17 Chinese and 14 U.S. elementary mathematics classes. They found that the Chinese classrooms had more, and…