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IES Grant

Title: Linguistic Input as a Malleable Factor in Higher Order Thinking about Mathematics
Center: NCER Year: 2019
Principal Investigator: Goldin-Meadow, Susan Awardee: University of Chicago
Program: Cognition and Student Learning      [Program Details]
Award Period: 3 years (07/01/2019 - 06/30/2022) Award Amount: $1,399,988
Type: Exploration Award Number: R305A190467
Description:

Co-Principal Investigator: Richland, Lindsey

Purpose: The purpose of this project is to explore the relationship between higher order thinking (HOT) talk in mathematics instruction and students' ability to draw connections, understand concepts, flexibly solve problems, and make inferences. These skills are central to success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. HOT talk is language to articulate comparisons, connections across contexts, inferences, hierarchical categorizations, or abstractions. This project explores whether HOT talk is a pedagogical approach that could be leveraged to improve those skills.

Project Activities: This project has two strands of research. Strand 1 extends an existing study to determine whether variations in children's HOT talk while problem solving in middle school relates to their later STEM achievement, engagement, and college enrollment. The children in the study have been a part of the study since they were 14 months old. They will be entering 11th grade during Year 1 of this project and will be followed for three years. For Strand 2, the research team will conduct one experiment during each year of the grant within middle school classrooms. The research team will experimentally manipulate HOT language use by both teachers and students during instruction to look at its effects on mathematics performance and engagement.

Products:Researchers will provide preliminary evidence of strategies for implementing HOT talk in mathematics instruction and a theoretical framework that articulates the relationship between HOT talk, mathematics performance, and engagement. They will also produce peer-reviewed publications.

Structured Abstract

Setting: Participating schools are in diverse urban and suburban districts in Illinois with high levels of free and reduced lunch eligible students. These schools have high proportions of minority students, ranging from 69-85% low-income students, .5%-97% African American, .5-90% Latino, and 1-23% White students.

Sample:For the Strand 1 longitudinal study, 50 students who are entering 11th grade during Year 1 of this project will be followed for three years. For Strand 2, three experiments will each involve approximately 80 fifth grade students.

Malleable Factors: The malleable factor of interest in this project is HOT talk by teachers and students in the context of mathematics instruction.

Research Design and Methods: This project has two strands of research. Strand 1 extends an existing study to determine whether variations in children's HOT talk while problem solving in middle school relates to their later STEM achievement, engagement, and college enrollment. The children in the study have been a part of the study since they were 14 months old. They will be entering 11th grade during Year 1 of this project and the research team will follow them for three years. The team will collect data from students and parents once a year through standardized online surveys. For Strand 2, the research team will conduct one experiment during each year of the grant. Experiments 1 and 2 will manipulate the presence or absence of HOT talk generated by both a teacher and students in a videotaped mathematics lesson on proportional reasoning, holding the visualstream and mathematical content of the lesson constant. In Experiment 3, researchers will test whether studentsthemselves must generate HOT talk during learning to lead to broader gains. For all experiments, researchers will randomly assign students to condition, complete pre-tests, view a video lesson, and complete immediate posttests as well as posttests a week after viewing the video lesson.

Control Condition: In Strand 1, there is no control condition. In Strand 2, the control condition for Experiments 1 and 2 is the videotaped mathematics lesson without any HOT talk generated by the teacher. In Experiment 3, the control condition is the videotaped mathematics lesson with HOT talk by the teacher but without teacher-student interactions designed to generate HOT talk.

Key Measures: For Strand 1, key measures include students' mathematics grades and courses taken in 11th and 12th grades, ACT or SAT scores, STEM course enrollments in high school, college applications and enrollment (2 or 4-year schools), STEM college course enrollments, and students' attitudes and interest toward mathematics and STEM learning, which the team will collect through standardized online surveys. For Strand 2, key measures include researcher-developed tests of conceptual and procedural knowledge of proportional reasoning, a researcher-developed test of students' spontaneous use of HOT on an unrelated set of problems, executive function tasks, and a survey that captures situational interest, self-efficacy, and desire to learn more about STEM topics.

Data Analytic Strategy: The research team will explore the relationship between HOT talk, math performance, and engagement using analysis of variance, conventional regression models, growth-curve analyses for the longitudinal data, and hierarchical linear modeling.


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