Date of Award

Fall 2025

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Educational Studies

First Advisor

Jan Yow

Abstract

This mixed-methods action research study investigated the influence of instructional strategies shown to improve students’ procedural and conceptual understanding in a rational expressions and equations unit in Advanced Algebra II. The instructional strategies used in the study include comparing, self-explaining, and exploring before instruction. The students (N=27) completed a pre-test and a post-test, both of which were followed by questions asking students to justify their responses on two questions. All students also responded to six digital self-explanation journal prompts. Randomly selected students were placed into three homogenous groups to participate in performance task observations. Analysis of the data suggested that students with higher quality self-explanations had a greater performance between the pre- and post-tests. The change in students conceptual understanding, measured from a subscore of their pre- and post-tests, was not statistically significant, suggesting the intervention did not affect students’ conceptual understanding. The qualitative data also revealed that students continued to rely on test-taking strategies after the intervention, that students did not connect factors in the denominator with the importance of finding domain restrictions, and that there were common mistakes in determining the greatest common factor. The analysis also highlighted the importance of prior knowledge in student performance within the rational expressions and equations unit.

Rights

© 2025, Maura Frances Yinger

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