scholarly journals A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Examining learners’ illustrations to understand Attitudes towards Mathematics

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-248
Author(s):  
Farhat Syyeda ◽  
Farhat Syyeda

This article presents my experience of using pictures/images drawn by children as a form of data in research and discusses the merits and implications of employing this method. It comes from research of a mixed method exploratory case study to investigate the attitudes of 11 and 15 year old secondary school students (in the East Midlands) towards Mathematics. The aim of this research was to gain an insight into the emotions, cognition, beliefs and behaviour of learners regarding Maths and the factors which influence their attitude. Besides using the tried and tested data collection tools such as focus groups and questionnaires, the children were asked to draw pictures illustrating their vision of Maths and its impact on their lives. The idea was to offer them an alternative medium of communication to exhibit their feelings and thoughts. Students used emoticons, numerals, figures, characters and mathematical symbols to show their favourable/unfavourable attitudes towards Maths and their understanding of the importance of Maths in future life. The results of visual data in this study conform to the findings of the other forms of data collected and show that boys and higher ability students have a more positive attitude towards Mathematics as compared to girls and low ability students.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul-Gayoum M. A. Al-Haj ◽  
Al-Rafeea Suliman Al-Fadil Dafaallah ◽  
Abdulrahman Mustafa Abdulrahman Aldirdiri

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 223
Author(s):  
Maria Lourdes Mila ◽  
Isabel Alvarez

The aim of this study is to show how the perceptions and attitudes of secondary school students towards mental health issues changed over the course of a Learning and Service project. The Learning and Service project was carried out by 58 students, together with the residents of a mental health institution during three months. Both students and residents shared several activities to bring them closer. Secondary school students did not have any previous experience with mental health residents before. The analysis took place during the course of the process, with the students responding to four questionnaires, each one after having done an activity together. The study demonstrates that through this Learning and Service project most of the students' perspectives changed for the better, some even viewed radical change while others were positive and finally few students only experienced neutral evolution of their ideas with respect to people with mental health disorders.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (01) ◽  
pp. A02
Author(s):  
Federica Cornali ◽  
Gianfranco Pomatto ◽  
Selena Agnella

This paper provides an analysis of the implementation and the outcomes of Scienza Attiva, an Italian national project for secondary school students, that makes use of deliberative democracy tools to address socio-scientific issues of great impact. The analysis has required a mixed method including surveys of students' pre- and post-project opinions, focus groups and interviews with students and teachers. The results from this evaluation study provide evidence that the project improves students' understanding of socio-scientific issues, strengthens their awareness of the importance of discussion and positively influences interactions in the classroom.


Author(s):  
Tamara Kavytska ◽  
Vyacheslav Shovkovyi ◽  
Viktoriia Osidak

This chapter examines the instructional intervention aimed at enhancing source-based compare-contrast writing in the secondary school students. Conceptually, it relies on the schema theory as a cognitive basis for integrated reading-writing instruction. The theory asserts that writing and reading both generate meaning using similar cognitive processes and types of knowledge: meta-knowledge of reading and writing strategies in relation to communicative goals, domain and textual knowledge, procedural knowledge that involves integrating writing and processing information while reading the text. Methodologically, the instruction is based on read-write cycle and was carried out in a secondary public school of Kyiv, with the 10th-grade students being the participant (n=22). The general hypothesis about a positive impact of read-write cycle instruction is partially confirmed in the research, which is an indication of the necessity to give further insight into the issue.


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