Categories
Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Researcher news Subfeature

$2.5 million NSF grant gives teachers a math assessment tool to help students

New assessment tool for teachers to measure math reasoning skills can drive effort to intervene early in ongoing struggles of U.S. elementary and high school students

A $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to researchers at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, targets the ongoing struggle of U.S. elementary and high school students with math.

When it comes to the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math, research shows that U.S. students continue at a disadvantage all the way through high school and entering college.

The four-year NSF grant to the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development is led by SMU K-12 math education experts Leanne Ketterlin Geller and Lindsey Perry. They will conduct research and develop an assessment system comprised of two universal screening tools to measure mathematical reasoning skills for grades K–2.

“This is an opportunity to develop an assessment system that can help teachers support students at the earliest, and arguably one of the most critical, phases of a child’s mathematical development,” said Ketterlin Geller, a professor in the Simmons School and principal investigator for the grant developing the “Measures of Mathematical Reasoning Skills” system.

Teachers and schools will use the assessment system to screen students and determine who is at risk for difficulty in early mathematics, including students with disabilities. The measures also will help provide important information about the intensity of support needed for a given student.

Few assessments are currently available to measure the critical math concepts taught during those early school years, Ketterlin Geller said.

“Providing teachers with data to understand how a child processes these concepts can have a long-term impact on students’ success not only in advanced math like algebra, but also success in STEM fields, such as chemistry, biology, geology and engineering,” she said.

Early math a better predictor of future learning
A 2015 Mathematics National Assessment of Education Progress report found that only 40 percent of U.S. fourth-grade students were classified as proficient or advanced, and those numbers have not improved between 2009 and 2015. In fact, the geometry scale of the fourth-grade mathematics report was significantly lower in 2015 than in 2009.

Early mathematics is a better and more powerful predictor of future learning, including reading and mathematics achievement, compared to early reading ability or other factors such as attention skills, according to one 2007 study on school readiness.

Research also has found that students’ early mathematics knowledge is a more powerful predictor of their future socioeconomic status at age 42 than their family’s socioeconomic status as children.

Early mathematics comprises numerous skills. However, number sense — the ability to work with numbers flexibly — in addition to spatial sense — the ability to understand the complexity of one’s environment — are consistently identified as two of the main components that should be emphasized in early mathematics standards and instruction, say the SMU researchers.

The Measures of Mathematical Reasoning Skills system will contain tests for both numeric relational reasoning and spatial reasoning.

Universal screening tools focused on these topics do not yet exist
“I’m passionate about this research because students who can reason spatially and relationally with numbers are better equipped for future mathematics courses, STEM degrees and STEM careers,” said Perry, whose doctoral dissertation for her Ph.D. from SMU in 2016 specifically focused on those two mathematical constructs.

“While these are very foundational and predictive constructs, these reasoning skills have typically not been emphasized at these grade levels, and universal screening tools focused on these topics do not yet exist,” said Perry, who is co-principal investigator.

“Since intervention in the early elementary grades can significantly improve mathematics achievement, it is critical that K-2 teachers have access to high-quality screening tools to help them with their intervention efforts,” she said. “We feel that the Measures of Mathematical Reasoning Skills system can really make a difference for K-2 teachers as they prepare the next generation of STEM leaders.”

The four-year project, Measuring Early Mathematical Reasoning Skills: Developing Tests of Numeric Relational Reasoning and Spatial Reasoning, started Sept. 15, 2017. It employs an iterative research design for developing formative assessments, a process that Ketterlin Geller has devoted much of her 20-year career to.

Ketterlin Geller is Texas Instruments Endowed Chair in Education and director of Research in Mathematics Education in SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development. She is also a Fellow with the Caruth Institute for Engineering Education in the Lyle School of Engineering.

Categories
Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Researcher news SMU In The News

Texas Tribune: The Q&A — Paige Ware, SMU Simmons School

In this week’s Q&A, The Texas Tribune interviews Paige Ware, who chairs the Department of Teaching and Learning at the Simmons School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University.

Texas Tribune reporter Cassandra Pollock interviewed SMU education expert Paige Ware in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development for a Q&A about preparing the teachers who teach English language learners by instructing them on-site at their schools and helping them work with families in community centers.

Ware’s research focuses both on the use of multimedia technologies for fostering language and literacy growth among adolescents, as well as on the use of Internet-based communication for promoting intercultural awareness through international and domestic online language and culture partnerships.

Her research has been funded by a National Academy of Education/Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellowship, by the International Research Foundation for English Language Education, and by the Ford Scholars program at SMU.

Ware was the principal investigator of a Department of Education Office of English Language Acquisition professional development grant supporting secondary school educators in obtaining their ESL supplemental certification.

She is co-author of a technology standards book for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and has written or co-written dozens of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. She is a frequent speaker on technology as an acquisition tool for language and culture and on writing development in adolescent learners.

The Texas Tribune article, “The Q&A: Paige Ware,” published Aug. 31, 2017.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Cassandra Pollock
Texas Tribune

Paige Ware chairs the Department of Teaching and Learning at Southern Methodist University’s Simmons School of Education and Human Development. She recently received a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to prepare ELL (English language learners) teachers by instructing them on-site at their schools and helping them work with families in community centers.

Tasbo+Edu: Can you expand on the U.S. Department of Education grant you recently received?

Paige Ware: Yes — I co-wrote it with two of my colleagues. The Department of Education can offer these grants every five years; traditionally, they’re called professional development grants, and it’s basically money that flows into tuition to provide teacher training. However, this particular grant required an embedded strong research design into the teacher training components. That’s never been the case with these grants — it’s been exclusively just teacher training.

There were over 300 applications, and only 55 were funded. For our particular grant, we think we got funded for two reasons. First, we partnered really well with Dallas Independent School District. There’s a real desire right now for higher education and teacher training programs to do more partnering and work with districts to be more purposeful about the kind of professional development teachers need. We also partnered with the community; there’s a place in Dallas called the School Zone, which is a consortium of nonprofit groups that are there to help impact West Dallas.

The second reason we think we got the grant is our teachers will be deeply embedded in these community settings. They’ll be learning not just how to teach English better to those learners, but also learning the context. There are also multiple opportunities to work with parents.

Tasbo+Edu: The question your team is trying to tackle is whether it makes a difference for teachers to be practicing in community settings. How are you planning to move forward on it?

Ware: The question came about because most of the time in higher ed for master-level courses, we deliver instruction on university campuses; it’s divorced from actual practice in the field. Or we deliver our instruction on university campuses and then assign teachers to work on their own with English learners. There’s not engagement in the community at the graduate level. What do teachers learn differently when they’re not isolated, but when they’re actually out there in the field? We’re interested in knowing what advantages are there, and what you gain by placing teachers in the community.

There are six reasons why we think it will be advantageous for teaching in the community. First, professional development typically focuses on instruction. Second, our teachers will have more opportunities to engage with families, which isn’t always possible in a school setting. A third reason is our teachers will be able to learn from one another. Fourth, they’ll get to know the children really well because they’re only working with two children for an entire academic year. Fifth, there are a lot of opportunities for feedback, since our instructors will be with teachers in the field, giving them feedback on a weekly basis. Finally, we think this approach will help cultivate a mindset such that when teachers think about English learners, they’re seeing the education of new immigrants as a larger web of bringing people into the community.

Read the full story.

Categories
Culture, Society & Family Earth & Climate Learning & Education Researcher news SMU In The News

Texas Tribune: The Q&A — Dr. Diego Román, Simmons School

In this week’s Q&A, The Texas Tribune interviews Diego Román, assistant professor of teaching and learning at Southern Methodist University.

Texas Tribune reporter Cassandra Pollock interviewed SMU education expert Diego Román in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development for a Q&A about how middle school science textbooks frame climate change as an opinion rather than scientific fact.

Román is co-author of a 2015 study of California 6th grade science textbooks and how they present global warming.

Studies estimate that only 3 percent of scientists who are experts in climate analysis disagree about the role of humans in the causes of climate change. And the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the evidence of 600 climate researchers in 32 countries reporting changes to Earth’s atmosphere, ice and seas — in 2013 stated “human influence on the climate system is clear.”

Yet only 54 percent of American teens believe climate change is happening, 43 percent don’t believe it’s caused by humans, and 57 percent aren’t concerned about it.

The new study measured how four sixth-grade science textbooks adopted for use in California frame the subject of global warming. Sixth grade is the first time California state standards indicate students will encounter climate change in their formal science curriculum.

“We found that climate change is presented as a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions,” said Román, an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning. “Climate skeptics and climate deniers are given equal time and treated with equal weight as scientists and scientific facts — even though scientists who refute global warming total a miniscule number.”

The findings were reported in October 2015 at the 11th Conference of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA), held in Helsinki, Finland.

The findings were also published in the Environmental Education Research journal in the article, “Textbooks of doubt: Using systemic functional analysis to explore the framing of climate change in middle-school science textbooks.”

The Texas Tribune article, “The Q&A: Diego Román,” published Aug. 17, 2017.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Cassandra Pollock
Texas Tribune

With each issue, Tasbo+Edu brings you an interview with experts on issues related to health care. Here is this week’s subject:

Diego Román is an assistant professor in teaching and learning at Southern Methodist University. He has recently researched how climate change is framed for middle school students in science textbooks.

Tasbo+Edu: Can you briefly explain your research findings?

Dr. Diego Román: The big picture of my research is that I look at the linguistic and social factors that impact language use in the science-education context and language development for English learners who are attending school in the U.S.

I am an applied linguist, and one of my research topics was the framing of climate change in middle school textbooks. In terms of the science textbooks and what we found in that specific study, the ones we investigated don’t reflect the way scientists discuss climate change in reports. While science reports resort to the certainty that climate change is happening, the textbooks that we looked at were very uncertain about defining that issue. We looked into seeing why that would be the case, particularly at how science is seen as very specific, objective and certain, but when we discuss climate change, we use a lot of qualifiers — “would,” “could” and “might.”

We’re arguing that this places the weight on the reader to decipher what that means. “Not all” could mean 90 percent, 55 percent or 10 percent, depending on who you’re talking to. So while textbooks are required to address certain topics — such as climate change — they’re not using specific language to help students and teachers have a better understanding and discussion around the issue.

I also look at how we use language — and I do that by using a framework called systemic functional linguistics. It argues that language is caused by the context of use, so the way we talk about science and the way we frame science topics when discussing them may be different than social studies. To explain a different type of knowledge, we connect ideas differently. For example, we emphasize the idea versus the people in science, but in social studies, we look at the people. To do that, we use language. So I look at how language is used in those purposes to convey knowledge and be effective. I try to understand the perspectives of the authors or the people. That’s a big picture description of my research.

Tasbo+Edu: What are the biggest challenges you see moving forward to try to modify the textbook system?

Román: It seems to be how research can impact, in this case, textbook development, and how to find things that applied linguists are doing when it relates to how language is used and if there’s a way to convey scientific knowledge — from a contextual perspective, but also from a linguistics perspective.

Read the full story.

Categories
Health & Medicine Learning & Education Researcher news SMU In The News Student researchers

Quartz: The science explaining how Usain Bolt became the fastest human in the world

The health and science reporter for Quartz magazine, Katherine Ellen Foley, covered the research of SMU biomechanics expert Peter Weyand and his colleagues Andrew Udofa and Laurence Ryan for a story about how world championship sprinter Usain Bolt runs so fast.

The article, “The science explaining how Usain Bolt became the fastest human in the world,” published Aug. 2, 2017.

The researchers in the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory reported in June that world champion sprinter Usain Bolt may have an asymmetrical running gait. While not noticeable to the naked eye, Bolt’s potential asymmetry emerged after the researchers dissected race video to assess his pattern of ground-force application — literally how hard and fast each foot hits the ground. To do so they measured the “impulse” for each foot.

Biomechanics researcher Udofa presented the findings at the 35th International Conference on Biomechanics in Sport in Cologne, Germany. His presentation, “Ground Reaction Forces During Competitive Track Events: A Motion Based Assessment Method,” was delivered June 18.

The analysis thus far suggests that Bolt’s mechanics may vary between his left leg to his right. The existence of an unexpected and potentially significant asymmetry in the fastest human runner ever would help scientists better understand the basis of maximal running speeds. Running experts generally assume asymmetry impairs performance and slows runners down.

Udofa has said the observations raise the immediate scientific question of whether a lack of symmetry represents a personal mechanical optimization that makes Bolt the fastest sprinter ever or exists for reasons yet to be identified.

Weyand, an expert on human locomotion and the mechanics of running, is Glenn Simmons Professor of Applied Physiology and professor of biomechanics in the Department of Applied Physiology & Wellness in SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development, is director of the Locomotor Lab.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Katherine Ellen Foley
Quartz

Eight years ago, Usain Bolt made history in less than 10 seconds at the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championship in Berlin, Germany.

The Jamaican sprinter set the world record for the 100-meter dash, clocking in at 9.58 seconds. Since then, no one (not even Bolt himself) has been able to best that time. On Saturday, August 5, Bolt will once more run the 100-meter dash at the IAAF World Championship (assuming he makes it through the qualifying race on August 4). This will be his last race; Bolt is set to retire after this running season (there’s some speculation he may still race in the 2020 Olympics, although as of now Bolt has said he doesn’t want to).

There’s no such thing as a perfect human running machine. But Bolt comes close—thanks to a combination of having all the advantages of a natural-born sprinter and putting in the effort needed to minimize any of his disadvantages.

Broadly speaking, Bolt has the unique muscular build shared by most of the very best sprinters. All human muscles are made of a mix of slow- and fast-twitch fibers—as well as some that are undifferentiated, and will become slow- or fast-twitch depending on how we use them most often. Slow-twitch fibers are built for efficiency and use oxygen to generate energy from sugar. They’re most effective for activities sustained over a long period of time, like distance running. Fast-twitch muscle fibers are used to generate huge amounts of force, but they don’t use oxygen and as a result can’t carry us far. Training can help shape undifferentiated fibers into either slow- or fast-twitch, but for the most part the best runners were born with an imbalance of one or the other. Elite marathoners have way more slow-twitch fibers, and sprinters like Bolt have an abundance of fast-twitch ones.

The best sprinters also run with a different form than the rest of us. It’s not that they move their legs significantly faster; it’s that they hit the ground harder (paywall). Most of the force sprinters generate is directed straight into the ground for vertical movement; only about 5% is used to propel them forward, Peter Weyand, a physiologist studying human speed at Southern Methodist University in Texas, told Popular Science in 2013. The more force a sprinter can pack into the ground with a quick foot strike, the faster he or she goes.

In a 2010 study, Weyand’s lab conducted an experiment where subjects jogged, ran, and hopped on one foot on a treadmill. They found that the most force came from hopping, thanks to the leg’s longer airtime. The researchers then calculated that if a runner were to generate the maximum hopping force possible with each step, he or she’d be able to reach a speed of 19.3 meters per second (63.3 feet per second)—which would make for a 5.18 second 100-meter dash.

This is just a fun theoretical experiment; it’s impossible to actually sprint and jump straight up and down at the same time. But it appears Bolt generates a powerful punch to the track—maybe the most powerful ever.

Read the full story.

Categories
Culture, Society & Family Health & Medicine Researcher news SMU In The News Student researchers

How Stuff Works: Scientists Discover Something Mind-blowing About How Usain Bolt Runs

Journalist Patrick J. Kiger with the news site How Stuff Works covered the research of SMU biomechanics expert Peter Weyand and his colleagues Andrew Udofa and Laurence Ryan for a story about Usain Bolt’s asymmetrical running gait.

The article, “Scientists Discover Something Mind-blowing About How Usain Bolt Runs,” published Aug. 2, 2017.

The researchers in the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory reported in June that world champion sprinter Usain Bolt may have an asymmetrical running gait. While not noticeable to the naked eye, Bolt’s potential asymmetry emerged after the researchers dissected race video to assess his pattern of ground-force application — literally how hard and fast each foot hits the ground. To do so they measured the “impulse” for each foot.

Biomechanics researcher Udofa presented the findings at the 35th International Conference on Biomechanics in Sport in Cologne, Germany. His presentation, “Ground Reaction Forces During Competitive Track Events: A Motion Based Assessment Method,” was delivered June 18.

The analysis thus far suggests that Bolt’s mechanics may vary between his left leg to his right. The existence of an unexpected and potentially significant asymmetry in the fastest human runner ever would help scientists better understand the basis of maximal running speeds. Running experts generally assume asymmetry impairs performance and slows runners down.

Udofa has said the observations raise the immediate scientific question of whether a lack of symmetry represents a personal mechanical optimization that makes Bolt the fastest sprinter ever or exists for reasons yet to be identified.

Weyand, who leads the lab and its researchers, he is an expert on human locomotion and the mechanics of running. He is Glenn Simmons Professor of Applied Physiology and professor of biomechanics in the Department of Applied Physiology & Wellness in SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development, is director of the Locomotor Lab.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Patrick J. Kiger
How Stuff Works

Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt is the world record-holder in both the 100- and 200-meter, and winner of those events in the last three Summer Olympics. Bolt can hit a top speed of around 27 mph (43.5 kph), and has clearly established himself as the greatest sprinter of all time. But there’s something curious about his legs, and the way he uses them.

As the athlete prepares to run in his final world championship meet in London’s 2017 World Athletics Championships, taking place Aug. 4-13 and less than three weeks before Bolt’s 31st birthday, scientists are still trying to figure out just how the fastest human on the planet manages to achieve such incredible speed. Researchers at the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Locomotor Performance Laboratory don’t quite have the answer yet — but they’ve made a surprising discovery.

The researchers analyzed video footage of Bolt and other sprinters from the 2011 Diamond League race at the World Athletics Championships in Monaco. They also used a “two mass model” analysis tool they developed, which allows them to study the physical forces that a runner creates — without actually bringing Bolt into a lab and putting him on a treadmill. They found that Bolt had an uneven, assymetrical stride, which is something that scientists might have expected to slow him down.

When he runs, Bolt’s right leg strikes the ground with 13 percent more peak force than does his left leg, and with each stride, his left leg stays in contact with the track about 14 percent longer than the right. The researchers findings have been published in a new study in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Bolt’s asymmetrical stride is probably due to his anatomy. As he recounted in his autobiography “The Fastest Man Alive: The True Story of Usain Bolt,” Bolt discovered as an adult that he has scoliosis, a condition in which his spine curves slightly to the left, which has forced his hips out of alignment so that his right leg is a half-inch (1.2 centimeters) shorter than the left. Bolt has written that he feels awkward standing still, and leans to the right because it feels uncomfortable to stand and place pressure on his left leg. Sitting in the same position for too long gives him backaches.

Read the full story.