by Dennis B. Roble and Maria Antonieta A. Bacabac
Original Research
Teacher training institutions in the Philippines offering Bachelor of Science in Education major in Mathematics like the MUST aimed to produce globally competitive graduates ready for the challenge in becoming the next breed of excellent secondary mathematics educators in the field. However, are the prospective secondary mathematics teachers indeed ready for the challenge? This study would answer this question aimed at identifying the level of competence of these soon-to-be mathematics teachers. It would attempt to examine the pre-service mathematics subject matter knowledge (SMK), expertise in lesson planning activities, classroom management skills, instructional strategies and motivation, communication and questioning skills and professionalism from the cooperating teachers (CT’s) perspective. Data collected were analyzed using frequency count, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Result revealed that the level of SMK of the prospective mathematics teachers was proficient and the rest of the competence indicators were on the approaching proficiency level which implies that although they were proficient with mathematics content, these prospective mathematics teachers are not fully equipped with all the necessary teaching skills. The trainings they received from the university during their academic years was adequate but not sufficient. The researcher then recommends that the university may consider designing an intensive professional development training program to be included in the curriculum for these prospective mathematics teachers before they will be deployed in the field.
American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(16), 1184-1190. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-16-10
Pub. Date: November 01, 2016
21948 Views5266 Downloads2 Likes
by Juan Carlos Ruiz Mendoza
Original Research
An experimental prototype to support the comprehension of concepts of Geometrical Optics was designed and assembled. The prototype might help teachers to explain Geometrical Optics concepts —for example, the behavior of light passing through converging and diverging lenses and optical instruments—, it is an inexpensive and accessible device that can be transported to classrooms. The expectation is that the equipment, properly used by teachers, would lead the students to understand abstract concepts of Geometrical Optics and thus motivate them to study this science.
American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(16), 1179-1183. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-16-9
Pub. Date: October 31, 2016
15952 Views3297 Downloads3 Likes
by Franca Sangiorgio, Nicola Fiore, Caterina Lorenzi and Alberto Basset
Original Research
Sciences and scientific methodologies cannot today be limited to the small percentage of students in the schools; all students could know and understand the natural processes and the role they will play in their futures. Nowadays, natural sciences and ecology give rise to much interest in many scientific and not scientific areas because studying ecology we can learn more about our ‘natural home’, the biosphere. In this paper, an example of an innovative tool to support and integrate teaching sciences in the school is reported. The initiative, named EcoLogicaCup, is addressed to students of secondary schools in Italy (from eleven to nineteen years) and aims at arousing interest in students and young people about ecological topics or problems concerning the health of our biosphere. EcoLogicaCup is promoted by the Observatory on Marine Mediterranean Ecology of the University of Salento (Italy) in collaboration with the Italian National Society of Ecology (S.It.E.), the Editorial Group ‘L’Espresso’ and other partners. EcoLogicaCup is the first national on-line competition on ecology in Italy, really a game in which students study, practice and finally play a final competition on ecological subjects. Here, we report some details of this initiative and the results about the previous editions. On national scale, EcoLogicaCup achieved excellent results in terms of participating schools and teams and met a remarkable success, on international scale, in terms of website users and visitors.
American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(16), 1174-1178. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-16-8
Pub. Date: October 31, 2016
10051 Views2780 Downloads
by Andreea Loredana Cretu, Lucia Garritano and Marco Schioppa
Original Research
The school is the place where we learn to combine thinking with doing. This paper describes the experimental activity conducted at the high school "Enrico Fermi" of Catanzaro Lido (Italy), within the Extreme Energy Events (EEE) Project. The Project is supported by the “Ministero dell’Istruzione, Università e Ricerca (MIUR)”, “Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche Enrico Fermi”, “Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)” and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The main scientific goals of this project are the investigation of the properties of the muon flux. The Project is also characterized by a strong educational and outreach aspect. The telescopes are located in Italian high schools and managed by teams of students and teachers who have also attended in their construction at CERN. The purpose of this article is to underline the educational value of the project. The activity, deriving from experiential learning, indicates that performing research in an advanced field of investigation can be a way to improve the learning of scientific topics. This paper describes how the teaching activity is conducted and describes the methodology to monitor the muon flux as a function of time: results show the negative correlation of muon flux with the variation of the local pressure. By combining our measurements with observations from two other solar imaging instruments we were able to look for unusual variation of the flux, such as solar flares. This approach has allowed students to learn not only a new physics topics but also a team-working methodology and benefit from experiential learning which will be useful in their future work.
American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(16), 1164-1173. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-16-7
Pub. Date: October 27, 2016
13192 Views3240 Downloads
by Luis Concepcion, Marilyn Nales-Torres and Ana Rodriguez-Zubiaurre
Original Research
This study examined the relationship between video games and academic performance. Previous research has been mixed with some studies indicating a negative relationship, while others have indicated a positive association. The influence of a moderating variable, deviant behavior, was investigated, as it is hypothesized that students who frequently use videogames and participate in deviant behavior will experience low academic achievement, whereas videogame use will not affect the achievement of students who do not participate in deviant behavior. Using correlation and hierarchical regression analysis of a national sample (the 2013 “Monitoring the Future” (MTF) survey [1]), no statistically significant moderating effect for deviance was discerned. Without a moderating effect, students engaging in a greater number of video games had higher academic achievement, as measured in GPA.
American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(16), 1157-1163. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-16-6
Pub. Date: October 20, 2016
12126 Views3825 Downloads
by Vahid Borji and Michael. Gr. Voskoglou
Original Research
A Genetic Decomposition (GD) is developed in this paper, in terms of the APOS instructional treatment of mathematics, for teaching and learning the polar coordinates. The design of the GD is based on the conclusions obtained by a written test and by oral interviews performed on a group of students of the Physics Department of the University of Neyshabur, Iran.
American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(16), 1149-1156. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-16-5
Pub. Date: October 20, 2016
11361 Views2853 Downloads1 Likes
by Tapas Karmakar, Abhijit Paul, Agamani Mondal and Birbal Saha
Original Research
At present situation many questions have been arisen that intelligence is affected by various kind of factors such as height, weight and BMI etc. This study tries to explore the relation of intelligence in terms of height, weight and BMI. Here Cattell (1920) Culture Fair Test of Intelligence is used to measure intelligence and to find out the correlation of intelligence with height, weight and BMI in the field of rural and urban area students. The sample consists of 97 female and 112 male students from five secondary schools in Purulia district, West Bengal, India selected randomly. The study revealed that there is significant relationship exist between IQ and height and low significant relationship exist between IQ and weight and also no significant relationship exist between IQ and BMI.
American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(16), 1145-1148. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-16-4
Pub. Date: October 17, 2016
8664 Views2485 Downloads1 Likes
by Aregamalage Sujeewa Vijayanthi Polgampala, Hong SHEN and Fang HUANG
Case Report
The rejuvenation of a nation depends upon education and the development of education depends upon teachers. Thus, quality teachers are the spine for representing overall teaching levels. This is more in science education, the training of these teachers to the standards is a great need. This article discusses a proportional look into the pre service science teacher preparation in Sri Lanka and China with comparison to the National Science Standards in U.S.A. The reforms, pre service science teacher training and science teacher professional education systems contribute to producing competent science teachers to the education system in both the countries at different levels. However, it cannot meet the standards for remarkable increasing requirements of highly qualified science teachers in the context of new science education reform. More effective measures should be taken to improve pre-service science teacher education and it must also be altered, which is not easy. In this paper an attempt is made to bridge the gap between the previous reports findings, highlights problems associated with the planning and organization of in-service training and proffered recommendations towards improving classroom instruction and organization of in-service training for prospective science teachers teachers.
American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(16), 1138-1144. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-16-3
Pub. Date: October 13, 2016
6178 Views1820 Downloads
by Ahmad Mousa B. Altasan
Original Research
The aim of the present study is to explore integrative and instrumental orientations and their influence on foreign/second language acquisition. Then, it investigates Saudi students' motivation to learn English and the correlations between their motivational outlooks and their English achievement scores. A modified 18-item survey, adopted and modified from the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) developed by R. C. Gardner (1985), was administered to two groups of non-English major EFL students at two technical colleges from two different cities, Dammam and ArRass, in Saudi Arabia. Data were collected simultaneously and were subjected to some basic statistical analyses, such as "mean" and "standard deviation". Overall, findings indicated that although Dammam group obtained higher English achievement scores, they were similar to ArRass group in respect of their motivational outlooks, which means that achievement scores were affected by other variables. In this study, the attitude toward English variable was examined and the results showed significant difference between the two groups.
American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(16), 1131-1137. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-16-2
Pub. Date: October 13, 2016
11097 Views3284 Downloads1 Likes
by Saadi Jasim Attiyah
Original Research
The current research aims to verify the following two hypotheses is no correlation statistically significant positive between parental treatment styles as perceived by children and school phobia second hypothesis foreshadows some parental treatment methods without other school phobia children. To investigate, has been building a measure of the methods of parental treatment (Mother image and the image of the Father) and scale phobia school for pupils, after verifying the characteristics of psychometric, applied research on a sample of 200 pupils from grade pupils first primary and the second from the General Directorate for Educational Rusafa second Baghdad chosen style random, The research found the following results: no correlation statistically significant between father treatment methods as perceived by children and of (extra protection, authoritarian, neglect) and phobia of school, and there is no statistically significant correlation between the treatment of Father (democratic style) as understood by children the school phobia, correlation statistically significant differences between the treatment of the mother methods exist as perceived by children and of (extra protection, authoritarian, negligence) The school phobia and there is no statistically significant correlation between the treatment of the mother (democratic style) as understood by children and school phobia. The researcher recommends parents and educators to follow the normal methods of parental treatment and care of their children and avoid methods style that develop the child's spirit of reliability and lack of independence and phobia school, it suggests a researcher studying the relationship between parental treatment methods and phobia of school, according to some of the variables (sex, sequence congenital, the work of the mother, and the interaction between them).
American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(16), 1120-1130. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-16-1
Pub. Date: October 13, 2016
7684 Views1906 Downloads