Prof. Moses Revison

Literature Survey (Revised)

Belinda Rector

EDGR 698

Cindy Sutton

November 17, 2014

Technology and the Increase in Student Reception in Secondary Mathematics

Enrichment through the use of technology is intuitive. How and when this process is used has not yet been made commonplace either for teachers or for those who establish curriculum. For teachers of mathematics, it is a dream that the process of learning the mechanical aspects of mathematics might be reduced by allowing students to utilize the results of the mechanics provided by technology. In its simplest form (i.e. on phones), technology allows students to add, subtract, multiply, divide, find percents and several other tedious operations. The time and attention paid to learning how to do these operations by hand could and should be replaced with applications of the operations. And this could and should be replaced with problem solving which is of interest to the student. Thus the student could and should be able to reach for the mathematics they need to solve a problem, thus making mathematics the servant of the process rather than the queen.

It is of interest to determine whether the inclusion of technology in the teaching of secondary mathematics actually increases the student’s reception of the subject. Research will be done to investigate various approaches which have been made which include technology in the mathematics curriculum. Literature on this topic was found in the form of research studies.

Review of the Literature

Although there has been surprisingly little research on the topic of utilizing technology in a regular mathematics curriculum, several researchers have explored the incorporation of technology. The results have not demonstrated a positive result when technology is used in mathematics curriculum. Owing to this lack of positive results, research was done to determine if there were other causes which might have altered the expected results. A study done by Dougherty and Wicklein (1993), examined the attitudes of various members of the education community. The premise was that there are educators who do not wish to add technology to the teaching of mathematics. The idea of improvement resulting from technology has appeared to be so basically intuitive that most educators expect technology to make a large difference in comprehension, application and retention of mathematics. As mentioned, so far this has not been the case.

Several studies have approached this topic from different perspectives. It stands to reason that any teacher who expects to utilize technology in the teaching of secondary mathematics should be well trained in the utilization of the technology from the hardware needed to the software available. A study (Developing and Validating a Reliable TPACK Instrument for Secondary Mathematics Preservice Teachers, 2013) which was done in 2013 approached Preservice teachers and looked at the specialized knowledge that they would need to effectively integrate technology into teaching practices of mathematics (TPACK) (Zelkowski et al, 2013, p. 174). The researchers attempted to make the survey as valid and reliable as possible in order to gather data on the preparedness of our future teachers for using technology to teach mathematics.

Going directly to the heart of the matter, a research question arises from the viewpoint of technology rather than mathematics. It is of interest to note whether technology education students are more successful in technology when their technology education teacher correlates planning and instruction with their science and mathematics teachers. So rather than look just at the mathematics classroom, what if technology can be blended with science and mathematics to see if there was more “drive” created to understand technology when the student is able to see the usefulness of it with respect to science and mathematics. When the results of this research (Berry & Ritz, 2004, p. 20) did not deliver the expected results, it was posited that since today’s school curricula uses a segregated approach to instructional topics when an attempt is made to integrate subjects, and thus the students were not “adequately” trained in how to “reassemble the topics into a coherent body of knowledge” (Wicklein & Schell, 1995, p. 59). There also might be barriers arising in attitudes from stake holders as to whether an “effective formal assessment tool” (Merrill, 2001) exists which can indicate whether students actually experience an improved learning effect due to the integrated format. Good synthesizing here! You’ve blended information from several sources for this topic.

First, it needs to be proven that technology is a viable way to advance the teaching of the sciences; mathematics in particular. It can safely be said that large numbers of people assume that using technology in the sciences is a positive way to hasten the learning of mathematics allowing students to “dig deeper” in application. However, there has been very little done in the way of actually proving this to be true. It is intuitive, but not proven. One study (Daugherty, Reese & Merrill, 2010) took a look at the perceptions of the teachers of three subjects, mathematics, science and technology to try to determine if there was any difference in being taught by an educator who firmly believes in the technological approach to learning or by an educator who mistrusts the viability of using technology (at this time) to teach conceptual mathematics. Through a questionnaire sent to teachers of mathematics, science and technology the researchers probed for opinions as to the reasonableness of using technology to teach mathematics. What was determined is that those who believe in using technology in teaching and those who do not have widely different ideas as to how the process of improving education can be obtained through technology.

Eventually an investigation was done on standardized tests scores. This is one of the more important reasons for schools to be concerned with the integration of technology in the classroom. The emphasis on improving student achievement in the core academic areas has led technology educators to try to demonstrate the links between their courses and the core academic areas (Berry & Ritz, 2004).

Your Review still needs to be organized with headings. How can you organize the information you found? For example, if my paper is on using movement in the middle school to keep students engaged, my headings might be: Why movement is important, Ways to add movement, Possible problems with adding movement.

Do you see?

Analysis

In a search to determine why technology has not made an impact in educational advances in secondary education, various surveys, quasi-experiments and case studies have been undertaken to try to pinpoint the reasons for the lack of growth in student reception of the topics in secondary mathematics. Some studies studied the incoming new teachers, some studied the perceptions or expectations of the secondary teachers who are utilizing technology but not seeing important changes in student reception and others looked at administration to see if the problem was in the reluctance of those in control of the purse strings and curriculum. An additional project studied the results of using a multidisciplinary approach to integrating mathematics and science with technology education. Finally, however, in the last study considered a possible connection was found between improvements in scores on standardized mathematic testing but not necessarily on the student’s improved reception of the subject. Connecting physical tasks to the mental tasks may show increasing promise.

Overall, there is great enthusiasm and diversity for researchers as they attempt to discover how technology can be used to redesign how the teaching of mathematics in order to allow students to explore higher level problems and release them from the detailed mechanics which mathematics demands at this time.

Please discuss each study’s strengths and weaknesses.

In this Analysis, consider enhancing it by discussing strengths and weaknesses of each study.

For example:

There seems to be general agreement on x, (see White 2007, Brown 2000, Black 2008, Green 2005). However, Green (2005) sees x as a consequence of y, while Black (2008) puts x and y as

…. While Green's work has some limitations in that it …., its main value lies in …."

Examples taken from University of Queensland: Writing the literature

review www.uq.edu.au/student-services/phdwriting/phlink18.htm

Conclusions

So far, the answer to whether or not technology improves the reception of mathematics topics in secondary school has not been definitely shown. None of the questionnaires, surveys, case studies, quasi-experiments investigated here have obtained the expected results. And yet, the idea is so basic that it simply must be true. Integrating technology with the teaching of mathematics must be a lynch pin to improved learning. The stumbling block preventing the successful approach to integrating technology with mathematics has not yet been found.

8-10 pages of actual Literature Review required in final paper.

References

Berry, R. Q. & Ritz, J. M. (2004). Technology education - A resource for teaching mathematics. The Technology Teacher, 63(8), 20-24. https://www.questia.com/library/p5246/the-technology-teacher

Daugherty, Jenny L., Reese, George C. and Merrill, Chris (2010). Trajectories of Mathematics and Technology Education Pointing to Engineering Design, Journal of Technology Studies, (Spring 2010), (36)1, 46-52. Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JOTS/v36/v36n1/pdf/daugherty.pdf

Daugherty, Michael & Wicklein (1993). Mathematics, Science and Technology Teachers’ Perceptions of Technology Education, Journal of Technology Education, Vol. 4, No. 2, Spring 1993. Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v4n2/jte-v4n2/daugherty.jte-v4n2.html

Merrill, Chris (2001). Integrated Technology, Mathematics, and Science Education: A Quasi-Experiment, Journal of Industrial Teacher Education, (Spring 2001), 38(3). Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JITE/v38n3/merrill.html

Wicklein, Robert and Schell, John (1995). Case Studies of Multidisciplinary Approaches to Integrating Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, Journal of Technology Education, (Spring 1995), Vol. 6, Number 2. Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v6n2/pdf/wicklein.pdf

Zelkowski, J., Gleason, J., Cox, D. C., & Bismarck, S. (2013). Developing and Validating a Reliable TPACK Instrument for Secondary Mathematics Preservice Teachers. Journal of Research on Technology in Education (International Society for Technology in Education), 46(2), 173-206. ISSN: 1539-1523, Assession Number: 93264917. https://www.iste.org/

Remember that you need 12-15 in the final paper.