Empowering Students for Mathematical College Readiness

The New Castle County VoTech School District (NCCVT) in Delaware, with St. Georges Technical High School as a school within this district, embraces the vision of creating graduates who are college and career ready, advocating for the use of rigorous academic curricula to equip students with the necessary skills for life beyond high school. Despite this, analyses of achievement scores and college remediation rates in mathematics indicate that a gap exists between the district's expectations and the student outcomes. These data suggest two possible problems: first, our students are not as college-ready as we would like them to be, and second, we need to develop more comprehensive means for assessing their readiness than relying on achievement scores alone. To better inform myself about possible solution paths, I engaged in a review of literature and a process of conducting action research. The review of literature revealed how the thoughtful and skillful combination of key elements of tasks, enactment, and productive student dispositions toward learning mathematics can work in unison to cultivate a classroom culture that better empowers students to be independent learners.Through action research, I experienced firsthand how these elements could play out with my own students. I developed rich tasks to provide students opportunities to grapple and connect with meaningful mathematics, and I engaged in a coaching cycle to aid in planning, enacting, and reflecting on these tasks. The use of surveys allowed me to analyze students' beliefs about learning mathematics and their reactions to cultural shifts I was attempting to create. The beginning of the year survey demonstrated that students espoused growth mindset ideals, while simultaneously holding unproductive beliefs about their own mathematical authority. Thus, there were gains to be made. Initial responses about their engagement with rich tasks were encouraging and indicated that gains seemed to be made, in that students expressed positive views regarding taking pride in their outcomes and collaborative experiences. I plan to share my ELP with district leaders, with the ultimate goal of positively shifting student beliefs so that they view themselves as more empowered learners so the gap can begin to close. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]