Gender Differences in Attitudes toward Environmental Science

Sarah J. Carrier

This study examined the role of gender in the areas of environmental education that included environmental knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and comfort levels in the outdoors. The current study was part of a larger study designed to explore the effects of a treatment that consisted of 14 weeks of outdoor lessons conducted in the schoolyard as compared with a control group of students who had 14 weeks of traditional classroom environmental education lessons. This follow-up study focused on gender and its effect on each of the areas studied. Researchers found significance in boys' and girls' attitudes toward the environment. Quantitative and qualitative data were used to offer an in-depth view of students' environmental attitudes. The results from this study can have implications for science educators in an effort to capitalize on boys' and girls' interests in science to help them learn about environmental issues and to recruit both boys and girls into science careers.

Investigating the Strategies Used by Pre-Service Teachers in Taiwan When Responding to Number Sense Questions

Pete Johnson

Over one-third of all college mathematics enrollments are in courses considered to be developmental. While such courses have been the subject of a large body of research, one question that seems not to have been studied empirically is the alignment of the content of developmental and college level mathematics courses. This paper gives the results of such a study, conducted at a medium sized public liberal arts university. While the content of the developmental mathematics courses was used subsequently in the Precalculus course, most of the content of the Intermediate Algebra course was not used in other college level mathematics courses. It is hoped that the results of this paper will serve as a catalyst for other institutions to examine carefully and define the mission of both their developmental and college level mathematics courses.

Investigating the Strategies Used by Pre-Service Teachers in Taiwan When Responding to Number Sense Questions

Der-Ching Yang

This study examined the strategies used by pre-service teachers when responding to number sense related questions. 15 pre-service teachers from one University in Southern Taiwan were interviewed. Results indicated that about one-third of these pre-service teachers were able to use number sense strategies (such as recognizing the number size, using benchmarks, etc.) and the other two-thirds relied heavily on written algorithms to solve problems. This is consistent with the findings of the earlier studies (Reys & Yang, 1998; Yang & Reys, 2002; Yang, 2003), which state that fifth, sixth and eighth graders in Taiwan rely heavily on the written method when responding to number sense related questions. This implies that the performance of pre-service elementary teachers on number sense is low. If we want to improve elementary students' knowledge and use of number sense, then we should try to improve the ability of their future teachers' number sense. This supports the statement of Ma (1999) which stated that “to empower students with mathematical thinking, teachers should first be empowered (p. 105).”