Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1989

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Education

Major Professor

Donald J. Dessart

Committee Members

William Coffield, David Anderson, Richard Austin

Abstract

The 1980's era is marked by demands for excellence in education. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics issued the Agenda for Action—recommendations for improving mathematics curricula from the elementary to the secondary schools. The National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk; The Imperative for Educational Reform.

The Agenda and A Nation at Risk both recommended additional units in mathematics for high school graduation. For many students this requirement is satisfied by taking another year in algebra or in geometry. However, for students who are non-college-bound, algebra or geometry is beyond their abilities.

The Knox County Applied Mathematics Project (KCAMP) in Tennessee has developed an alternative curricular program for students who are not enrolled in pre-college mathematics. A two year sequence of applied mathematics was introduced in 1985 to the Knox County school system as a pilot program. In 1986-87, KCAMP instituted an experimental program comprising 600 ninth- and 400 tenth-grade students to compare the new courses in Applied Mathematics I and Applied Mathematics II with the traditional courses in Consumer Mathematics and General Mathematics.

This study is an evaluation after the first year of KCAMP. It is based on the pretest-posttest results on two test instruments: Problem Solving and Mathematics Attitude Inventory. Comparisons of the mean scores among the different classes and between the new and old courses were done using the one-way analysis of covariance.

Significant differences in the mean scores among the different classes and between the new and the old courses were found in problem solving at p <= 0.05. There was no significant difference in the mean scores among the different classes and between the new and old courses in the mathematics attitude inventory at p <= 0.05. These results show that there was a high probability that students in the new courses had developed better skills in problem solving than students in the old courses; while there was no conclusive evidence to show that there was a difference in attitudes toward mathematics between the students in the old and the new courses.

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