Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Educational Studies

Sub-Department

Curriculum and Instruction

First Advisor

Susan Schramm-Pate

Abstract

The Impact of Interactive Student Notebooks on Student Achievement in Algebra One: An Action Research Study describes the implementation of the use of Interactive Student Notebooks (ISNs) as an alternative pedagogical strategy to enable 40 college preparatory, secondary students in an algebra one course to more effectively solve equations. The purpose of the action research study is to improve pedagogical practice to meet the needs of students who are urban, southern, working class, and who see little relevance to algebra one to their future lives. Before and after these students completed input activities and output activities in the ISN, they were given a pretest and a posttest to determine the impact ISNs had on their ability to solve equations. Unstructured observations and student survey data were used to polyangulate the pretest and posttest data. Seven ISN entries were completed by student-participants during a six week unit on solving equations in one variable. Completion of ISN entries required active participation from students to solve various equations. Findings indicate an increase in posttest scores by an average of 48 points from pretest scores. An action plan was developed with the algebra one team to improve the implementations of ISN’s in future algebra courses with struggling students at this school.

Rights

© 2018, Melissa R. Drew

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