What impact does incorporating habits of mind instruction in a high school mathematics class have on students’ improvement of mathematical thinking and problem solving self-efficacy?
Participants:
Students in the class I will teach my Unit Plan.
Measures:
Pre- and Post Self-Efficacy survey – I will create a survey to measure how confident they are in their problem solving. The survey will probably be a Likert Scale. I will include general questions and give specific examples of math problems. They will then be asked to select different level of confidence they have towards those problems.
Pre- and Posttest – This will depend on the content I am teaching. I will create a pre- test that test their problem solving skills based on the concepts already learned during the year. I will then create a posttest with similar problems along with additional problems from the unit I taught.
Student Journal Reflections – I will ask students to write reflections about what they learned about themselves in solving mathematics problems. This will be used to measure confidence as well as their problem solving improvement.
Focus Group – I will hold a focus group at the end of the unit to assess the attitudes students have towards problem solving. (I may hold one at the beginning as well)
Analysis:
This study will include qualitative and quantitative research. I will compare the pre- and post Self-efficacy surveys to see if their confidence in problem solving improved. I will also compare the pre- and posttest to see if their mathematical thinking abilities have improved. I will use the Student Journal Reflections to evaluate their confidence and ability improvements. The focus group will be used to assess their confidence and evaluate the students’ feelings towards problem solving.
I like your topic, Cayce. I am not familiar with habits of mind instruction, so I googled it and found out what habits of mind are but not what the instruction entails. So, I am curious about how you will teach these skills to your students. I think that this study will be great for students because it will allow them to put into words (maybe for the first time) how they feel about their math skills and abilities. I think that this dialogue is valuable in itself, but I hope that the students will improve and gain confidence in their problem solving skills. Asking the students to write about what they learned about themselves provides them with an opportunity to reflect and is something that many of them wouldn’t have done on their own. This may be something that you want to address in your research because they may be able to identify their shortcomings and perhaps even have an increased likelihood of overcoming them but simply being aware of them. Good work!
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