Jan 10 New Resource

 

Richards, J.G., Vining, A.R. and Weimer, D.L. (2010), Aboriginal Performance on Standardized Tests: Evidence and Analysis from Provincial Schools in British Columbia. Policy Studies Journal, 38: 47-67. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0072.2009.00344.x

   

 

This paper uses available data to measure performance of Indigenous students with respect to many variables. The study attempts to come up with explanation as to how factors like socioeconomic status and number of Indigenous students play a role with test scores. Some interesting assumptions about higher count of Indiigenous students leading to lower expectations from teachers and subsequently decreasing performance are hypothesized. Overall,  the authors suggest that standardized exams are a useful tool to guide policy making and help scale up successes in individual schools.

Dec 21 Final Reflection

 Hello everyone,

It's been a good and interesting year back on campus, and I hope that we will get to be back next year with the rapidly changing health policies. 

Compared to EDCP 342, this course focuses more on researching a topic in education that we are passionate about in addition to having cool fancy ways of teaching through play and inquiry and multiple forms of engagement. We got to spend some nice time outdoor in the garden (in retrospect I should've brought some sunscreen) and did non traditional things in class.

This course has really shown me that the end of the program doesn't mean we stop learning and investigating topics and methods of teaching, as we will continue on and advocate for our students. It is also exciting to hear that many teachers and other people from different careers join the journey of research on education as well as teachers who go back and teach after they take classes (MEd seems common)  I'm interested to see where it will bring me, from a classroom role to other careers to research based or working for the Ministry of Education. I am passionate about inquiring what credible and equitable assessments there are to help students learn and grow and get the bets opportunities available to them. Learning differences is such a huge topic and getting struggling students to succeed and grow is an important topic, and I feel just as strongly as I feel for high achieving students that might have their learning and opportunities capped under our education model. We are moving to the mastery, standards-based model which should help some part of it, but I feel that you shouldn't need to have wealthy parents that send you to IB or private schools in order to have access to the best opportunities, because we are aiming for a world class education for everyone and students shouldn't have to jump through many hoops and systems to get to where they want. I am interested to see how I can incorporate this in my teaching as well as professional development and maybe different career paths from there! (and more studying? Some of my course instructors encouraged us to do a MEd as soon as possible since it's extra pay over your career and opens up new roles that we might be interested)

I hope to catch up with you all in the coming year and have a good winter break!  

Dec 9 Presentation

 

 

 

Here is the link just in case the embedding doesn't work.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1n_m6j80J3MebmLkYMpblC4nsPIEmnoyG-sD6SIbmQbo/edit?usp=sharing

Dec 02: Exit Slip on Permutation fun in class

 Today we had some fun with different ways of representing permutation. As opposed to just writing ABCD on paper, telling students that you can generate 24 ways of arranging ABCD in a sequence, we went through many interesting ways of representing this mathematical concept. The sound hearing process, as well as the visual organization of origami paper and poem making activities are really mind opening and I am hoping I get to try at least one out of the three on my long practicum. 

I am not sure if I will get to teach a unit on combinatorics (did it disappear from the curriculum content?), but I will certainly think about what are some ways I can transform some concept in an auditory form like the octave bell for sequences/series, or organizing origami paper to represent a arithmetic/geometric sequence in a visual and touchable way (there is something satisfying about putting these colourful square paper just nicely on a table).

Nov 25 Annotated Bibliography

 

Here is a PDF version of the annotated bibliography. The link to the live google doc is here

Nov 18 exit slip

 It's nice to be back after practically one month from the previous class. My short practicum went great, and my SA was really progressive and I'm seeing all the things being discussed in class in use. 

My plan is that in the coming Tuesday visits, I will get a chance to casually chat with him about his opinion on standardized exams, university admission,etc. We already had some conversation in that direction, when we had some time to talk in meetings with just us or with other math teachers at the school, and I think I will be able to tell him about my inquiry project and he will be happy to offer some of his insight after working with so many students in math classes.

As for our project, I think our focus is on standardized assessment and the impact on students, and we were able to find some results studying what happens when they are removed and tracking student learning via some metric. We were able to get some good results searching and we will likely continue. One particular article sparked our interest as the author discusses the effect of standardized testing on ELL learners in English speaking countries. We were thinking of giving a test to teachers like in Ontario, maybe with difficult language or even another language like French to give a sense of what it would be like to face these so called fair assessment as a ELL student.

Oct 21 Exit Slip - Gender, Sexism, Equity?

 I went to my undergrad in math in UBC, and looking up their directory here. We see that out of the two Assoc. Head in different affairs, one is male and one is female. Looking at the faculty list, we see that there are many male names but also female names. I counted roughly for one female professor there is about 5 male professors on the list.

Another interesting thing I noted is that most often, the full tenure Professors are male after 5-6 years of being at UBC, whereas female professors that have spent just as long are often still Associate Professor, although I don't know if the metric for tenure is based not on time but on say research. I also noted texperhat most tenure Professors have graduate education from US Ivy League or private well known institutions, which I don't know if it would factor into UBC's decision of hiring or advancing their title. It seems that even though we emphasize mastery and it's never too late and we learn at different rates, those that do the best starting from childhood will have an advantage into pursuing their dream jobs. Those that did good early on in say high school can move on to top institutions if that's their goal and make connections by being at those famous places with alumni and other current students.

Speaking from my own experiences though, I have taken quite a handful of math courses talk by female Professors, and I have had an equal representation when I sent for advising for math major related topics. (Not to name names but I also find that the lectures given by female Professors are often more interesting and engaging than the other ones I received, but that probably depends on the background of each Professor as in how much teaching did they do and how long they have been teaching undergrad classes)