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1. Inside Interactive-Engaged Problem-Solving in Precalculus: Content and Classroom Moments

   Lozano, Guadalupe (October 2018, OnCore: The Online Journal of the Arizona Association of Mathematics Teachers)

   The classroom deployment of a co-curricular approach for supporting the learning of Precalculus through mentoring, engagement in interactive problem-solving with peers, and faculty professional development, provide the focus of this article. Our project, funded by the National Science Foundation (#1644899), was conducted at a Southwestern 2-year Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). In this article, aspects of the project curricula and student-centered classrooms practices that are of value for supporting the high-school to college transition in mathematics, are described. Specific attention is given to the types of problems that support productive peer-to-peer classroom collaborations, as well as the teaching moves and choices that support the development of students’ problem-solving abilities. 

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2. Mentoring for Making: Peer Mentors Working with Learners in a Making-Focused Engineering Course

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--47770  

   Nadelson, Louis; Dickrell, Pamela; DeJesus, Katherine (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   eer mentoring in college programs of study is not uncommon. However, most of the time, peer mentoring is focused on supporting students in traditional solving problems they are assigned as part of the coursework. Our work extends beyond examining conventional forms of peer mentoring by examining the work of peer mentors supporting students' work in a first-year engineering design course based in a makerspace classroom. The problems students solve in the makerspace classroom-based course typically have a wide array of possible solutions, which differs from many problems students solve in traditional courses with peer mentor support in which there is a single solution. Further, students in the makerspace classroom-based course are also expected to work in teams, which adds another layer of complexity to the role of the peer mentors working in the course. Our research goal was to empirically document the peer mentors' interactions with students and the students learning gains and development due to working with the peer mentors. To gather data from the students working with the peer mentors, we added a series of additional questions to their end-of-semester course evaluations. Note that the university's Institutional Review Board reviewed and approved this process. The questions we added included, "Please share how the peer mentors influenced your sense of belonging within the College of Engineering." "Please share how the peer mentors helped your group function as teams." and "Please share how the peer mentors helped you develop confidence in your abilities to do engineering." We also included companion Likert scale items such as "The peer mentors helped our team work together." and "The peer mentors helped us resolve conflicts in our group." We found that peer mentors tended to be perceived as a resource, supportive and reassuring to the students and meeting the students where they are. Thus, the mentors provided students with emotional, personal, and technical support to influence the students' sense of belonging to the college. The mentors helped the students function in teams by encouraging them to collaborate and include all. In their efforts to help students develop confidence in their abilities, the mentors worked to meet the students where they were at and reassured the students' capacity to succeed. They were also likely to encourage students to seek help, support their technical skill development, and encourage the students to apply their knowledge. The final focus of our research was on the mentors engaging in helping students feel part of the engineering community. We found the mentors encouraged the students to join an engineering club or attend engineering events. In our final report, we provide details of our data, both quantitative and qualitative, examples of the student's responses, the implications of our findings, and ideas for using our research to support mentor preparation programs to maximize the benefits of peer mentoring in maker spaces and other non-traditional engineering learning environments. 

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3. Eco-STEM Tools: Changing the Culture of Teaching and Learning in STEM

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962426  

   Bowen, Corin L.; Heubach, Silvia; Dong, Jianyu Jane (October 2022, 2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   The authors present a Work-In-Progress paper in the Innovative Practice category on the ongoing development of tools for faculty in STEM higher education to construct supportive educational environments within their classrooms. The tools consist of a peer observation form and the associated process, a resource repository, and a student survey. They are components of the Eco-STEM project that aims to initiate institutional change through the embrace of a metaphorical "ecosystem" model of education. Together, the Eco-STEM Tools support an integrated system of pedagogical reflection and growth for the development of healthy STEM classroom-based ecosystems. While the project team is developing these tools within the context of a majority-minority institution, we believe they would be impactful at any institution that strives to support its marginalized students – as well as support the thriving of every actor within the ecosystem. 

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4. Creating Collaborative Spaces for Community College Faculty and Staff to Discuss Pedagogy

   https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2024.2417400  

   Buck_Bracey, Zoë E; Gardner, April; Weindling, Monica; Yahdi, Mohammed (October 2024, Community College Journal of Research and Practice)

   Francis (Ed.)

   Research from undergraduate and K-12 environments suggests that providing meaningful support for Community College students requires faculty and staff to engage in ongoing self-reflection, peer support, and a commitment to research-based pedagogical shifts. Currently, California Community College (CCC) faculty and staff get very few of these opportunities. This study aims to address this issue through an intervention designed to provide opportunities for CCC faculty and staff to be part of a flexible, coherent professional learning community. The intervention is part of an NSF-funded research and development project at a community college in central California designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), with the goal of providing faculty and staff with tools and processes to support students toward higher retention and success in STEM by facilitating “micro-internships.” Micro-internships are designed to reduce inequalities inherent in the traditional internship paradigm by providing access to professional and research skills for students who do not have the opportunities and/or confidence to participate in a more traditional full-length internship. Conversations with participants showed how they embraced the design principles that were negotiated as a project team, and how one or more of the study interventions had played a powerful role in supporting their learning and development toward certain pedagogical shifts. Our results highlight the power of providing spaces such as summer workshops and ongoing “community of practice” meetings for collaboration, professional learning, and peer-to-peer mentorship. 

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5. Validating the use of student-level instruments to examine preservice teachers’ mathematical problem solving.

   Folger, T.; Stewart, M.; Bostic, J.; May, T. (December 2022, School science and mathematics)

   Problem solving is a central focus of mathematics teaching and learning. If teachers are expected to support students' problem-solving development, then it reasons that teachers should also be able to solve problems aligned to grade level content standards. The purpose of this validation study is twofold: (1) to present evidence supporting the use of the Problem Solving Measures Grades 3–5 with preservice teachers (PSTs), and (2) to examine PSTs' abilities to solve problems aligned to grades 3–5 academic content standards. This study used Rasch measurement techniques to support psychometric analysis of the Problem Solving Measures when used with PSTs. Results indicate the Problem Solving Measures are appropriate for use with PSTs, and PSTs' performance on the Problem Solving Measures differed between first-year PSTs and end-of-program PSTs. Implications include program evaluation and the potential benefits of using K-12 student-level assessments as measures of PSTs' content knowledge. 

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