Dissertation Summary/Critique Aaron Trocki EMS 792

1. COURSEWORK ON BASE NUMERATION SYSTEMS AND ITS INFLUENCE ON PRE-SERVICE ELEMENTARY TEACHER’S UNDERSTANDING OF PLACE VALUE CONCEPTS BY DOROTHY J. RADIN Dissertation Summary/Critique Aaron Trocki EMS 792

2. Dissertation Summary • CHAPTERS • Introduction • Literature Review • Methodology • Findings • Conclusion

3. Motivation for Study • Personal Teaching Experience • Historical Context • Pre-Service Teachers’ Knowledge of Place Value • Teacher Knowledge relates to Student Achievement • Elementary Student Knowledge on Place Value

4. General Research Question • Does study of Base Numeration Systems Enhance Pre-Service Teachers’ Understanding of Place Value? • Define Base Numeration Systems

5. Four Specific Research Questions • 1) What is the level of explicit place value understanding that the elementary pre-service teachers participating in the study bring with them to their required mathematics content course? • 2) What is the level of explicit place value understanding that the elementary pre-service teachers participating in the study have at the end of their required mathematics content course?

6. Four Specific Research Questions • 3) Is there any significant change in the participants’ explicit place value understanding from the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester? • 4) Is there a significant difference in the gains made in explicit place value understanding between the class that has numeration system instruction (experimental group) and the class that does not have the numeration system instruction (control group)?

7. Methodology • Quasi-Experimental/Control Group Design • Independent and Dependent Variables • Sampling Technique • Participants • Critique

8. Data Collection • APVU: Assessment of Place Value Understanding • Levels: 1) algorithmic understanding; 2) tacit understanding; 3) explicit understanding; 4) self and peer pedagogical understanding; and 5) child pedagogical understanding • 3) Inter-rater reliability

9. Results • Question One: both the experimental and control groups achieved similar baseline results on the pretest • Question Two: no significant difference was found in the posttest mean scores for each group, but significant differences were found in subcategory questions of familiar and unfamiliar with the experimental group scoring significantly higher

10. Results • Question Three: no significant differences were found in pretest and posttest means, but a significant difference was found in the subcategory of unfamiliar problem type • Question Four: no significant difference in overall means, but did show a significant difference in the subcategory of unfamiliar systematic question type

11. Conclusion & Further Research • “This research found no evidence that place value understanding is substantially improved by teaching base numeration systems” (Radin, p. 87) • Although the results of the study were somewhat lackluster the need for investigating ways to improve pre-service teachers’ place value understanding remains important to the conceptual understanding of elementary students.

12. Literature Review Critique • Meta-issues to place value question (+) • Teachers’ conceptual understanding and the quality of instruction received (+) • Logical Order (+) • critique the research she uses to build her case (-) • balance in coverage (-) • Implications of research (-)

13. Other Critiques and Personal Reflection • Quasi-Experimental Design • No Qualitative • Reflection