SSM Table of Contents & Abstracts

Volume 104 (3), March 2004

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Abstract

Language Influence on Children's Cognitive Number Representation

Othman N. Alsawaie , United Arab Emirates University

 This study examined the effect of language on childrenâs cognitive representation of number. The sample for the study consisted of 90 Arabic speaking children with a mean age of 80 months. Children were interviewed individually and asked to represent written two-digit numbers using base-10 blocks. A new approach for testing the linguistic relativity hypothesis was used. The results of the study revealed that language played an important role in childrenâs cognitive number representation. On the other hand, the results support the argument that the instructions given with the task alter childrenâs performance on it. This study suggests that language may explain the cross-cultural differences in mathematics achievement. However, the disadvantage that the language might place on children can be overcome with well-planned instruction.

Studentsâ Perceptions of Environmental-Based Inquiry Experiences

Bryan Wee, Juli Fast, Dan Shepardson, & Jon Harbor , Purdue University         

William Boone, Indiana University

The purpose of this study was to investigate student perceptions of inquiry-based pedagogy within the context of learning about environmental concepts and issues. The study was descriptive in nature and employed a single group, pretest-posttest design, surveying 367 students. The chi-square analysis indicated that 17 of the 29 survey items were answered in a statistically different manner. This suggests that students perceived the environmental inquiry-based experiences to be nontraditional in the approach to teaching and assessment and to emphasize scientific investigation. Students, however, did not perceive science learning to be different from that of past science experiences. Implications to science instruction and teacher professional development are discussed .

Indexing Distributions of Data: Preservice Teachersâ Notions of Representativeness

Aisling M. Leavy, University of Maryland

The purpose of the study was to identify strategies used by preservice elementary teachers to index distributions of data. A secondary purpose of the study was to investigate whether representational form influenced the type of representative values constructed. Two hundred eighty-three preservice teachers were administered a selection of tasks requiring them to construct representative values for a variety of distributional shapes. Participants were asked to provide justifications for their chosen representative measures. Data were analyzed from two perspectives: nature and adequacy of representative measure. Results indicated that when presented with skewed data sets, over half of the participants constructed poorly representative values. Symmetric data sets were best indexed with 67% of participants constructing highly representative values. Representational form played a significant role in determining representative values. Data presented graphically were more likely to be represented using measures of variability than were those presented nongraphically. Conversely, measures of central tendency were more frequently used to represent nongraphical data. The information arising from this study indicates that many preservice teachers construct poorly representative values to index data sets and utilize identical measures of representativeness regardless of distributional shape. The findings of the study highlight the need for exploratory data activities at the preservice level, call for provision of experiences affording insights into construction of representative values, and thus, have implications for the design of preservice mathematics education curricula.

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