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Despite the benefits of homework and teacher feedback on students' mathematics achievement, relatively limited work has been done on analyzing the effect of feedback on homework. This study examined the effects of four types of feedback on eighth grade students' achievement in mathematics: no feedback, effort-based teacher feedback on paper-and-pencil-based homework, ability-based teacher feedback on paper-and-pencil-based homework, and online programmed feedback on computer-based homework. A total of 59 students from an inner-city school district in New York participated in the study. A repeated measures experimental design was employed to isolate/minimize the between group variability. Analysis of results revealed that although effort-based feedback appeared to be a variable of interest, there was statistically insignificant relationship between the effect of different type of feedback and academic achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research in progress examines two 8th grade female students' socially constructed mathematical identities. Using ethnographic and discourse analytic methods, the study examined how these evolving mathematical identities intersect with gender identities. Preliminary results indicate female students in this study actively disrupt stereotypes of femininity and of women in mathematics. This study offers a fine-grain analysis of how female students identify with mathematics at a social and cultural level, and it provides insight on how these mathematical identities can develop and change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reported Grade 8 students' analytical thinking and attitude toward science in teaching and learning about soil and its' pollution through science technology and society (STS) approach. The participants were 36 Grade 8 students in Naklang, Nongbualumphu, Thailand. The teaching and learning about soil and its' pollution through STS approach had carried out for 6 weeks. The soil and its' pollution unit through STS approach was developed based on framework of Yuenyong (2006) that consisted of five stages including (1) identification of social issues, (2) identification of potential solutions, (3) need for knowledge, (4) decision-making, and (5) socialization stage. Students' analytical thinking and attitude toward science was collected during their learning by participant observation, analytical thinking test, students' tasks, and journal writing. The findings revealed that students could gain their capability of analytical thinking. They could give ideas or behave the characteristics of analytical thinking such as thinking for classifying, compare and contrast, reasoning, interpreting, collecting data and decision making. Students' journal writing reflected that the STS class of soil and its' pollution motivated students. The paper will discuss implications of these for science teaching and learning through STS in Thailand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WebQuest is an inquiry-based learning activity that allows students to leam the lesson using the information provided in the internet resources. The study aimed to develop and implement the WebQuest on Biodiversity. Primarily, this research determines the students' performances in the achievement test after WebQuest was implemented to them. Secondly, it is also to investigate on their attitudes towards Biology before and after the activity as well as the level of development of their 21st Century Skills. This research utilized Quasi-experimental Non-randomized One Group Pretest/Posttest Design. The developed WebQuest that is based from the K-12 curriculum competencies were evaluated by selected experts in the Content (2), Pedagogy (2) and ICT (2) to assess the said activity in terms of content-pedagogy and ICT effects. It was then implemented in an intact group of grade 8 students. Findings revealed that the developed WebQuest was rated "Excellent"' for Content, Pedagogy and ICT effects. After utilizing the WebQuest activity on Biodiversity, students acquired more knowledge on the topic shows by the mean difference of 2.42, winch is highly significant based on t-test result. The overall students' attitude towards Biology as a subject changed positively after they did the activity due to novelty effects and the WebQuest itself with the mean difference of 0.46. Moreover, results shows that the students can developed 21st century skills considering that the Likert scale survey was given only to the students after the activity. Based on the result, 97% of total responses favored to have developed Critical Thinking skills, 98% on Collaboration skills. 97% on Creativity and Innovative skillp, 94% on Communication skills, 97% on Self-Decision skills, and 97% on ICT skills. The concentration of percentage of responses differed in two classes because Class A was composed of highlyselected students who underwent an entrance examination upon admission in school and Class B, a highly-generalized students whom have not taken an entrance examination. Respondents in Class A developed those skills mostly in ModerateHigh compared to Class B which developed those skills in Moderate-Slightly High level. In addition, students perceived the said activity as favorable based on the result in the self-assessment procedure. The WebQuest activity also helped them develop their creativity in coming up with the expected learning outputs. Despite the limited supply of personal computer, most of the respondents performed well in the written report, slides and video presentations which majority of the groups1 outputs were rated as "Very good"'. This study recommends that each learner should be provided with personal computer while learning through WebQuest. The administration of pretest in the evaluation for 21st Century skills development so that a higher attitude difference towards Biology^ will be manifested and to compare the changes of skills development among learners before and after the activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making a career decision has always been a difficult task, requiring the integration of different individual and contextual information. Eighth graders, especially, transitioning from late childhood to early adolescence, may face indecision, confusion and lack of readiness for making a career decision. Consequently, middle-school students need individual career counseling and guidance, an optimizing intervention, focused on their particular problems. The aim of this article is to highlight the importance of using Insight TestToolkit, an online instrument for students' career assessment and guidance, developed by AMN (Assess-Manage-Navigate), a leading software company that designs educational instruments. Being available on AMN Insight platform, from our practice, we consider this investigation tool to be complex, efficient and comprehensive as it provides multidimensional information about students, helping school counselors facilitate individual career counseling. The test addresses and measures several factors grouped in four categories: Capacity, Me, at school and at home, Big-Five Personality Test, School Guidance and Educational Counseling Questionnaire. One of the advantages of this test is that the scores at each category are compared to the mean of the group the student belongs to, as opposed to establishing a student's position by comparison to a fixed score. The individual results are presented in a detailed report that contains explanatory graphic representation. Furthermore in this article, we explore the ways in which each category provides core information that comprise content-related assessments that attend to variables such as cognitive abilities, interests, personality traits, motivation for learning, attitude and satisfaction level regarding school and home environment. In the end, our review emphasizes the relevance of the information obtained, as well as the correlations among different types of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the informational value of feedback choices on students' performance, their choice to revise, and the time they spend designing posters and reading feedback in an assessment game. Choices to seek confirmatory or critical feedback and to revise posters in a poster design task were collected from a hundred and six Grade 8 students from a middle school in California via Posterlet, a computer-based assessment. Results show that critical uninformative feedback is associated with performance, critical informative feedback is associated with students' learning strategies (i.e., willingness to revise and feedback dwell time), while confirmatory informative feedback is negatively associated with performance and learning strategies. This research has implications for designing the informational content of feedback messages to support student performance on an open-ended design task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inaugural Alabama Tech Trek, an immersive experience for girls that have completed 7th grade, was conducted July 20-25, 2014. Surveys conducted at the beginning of camp, at the end of the camp, and six months after the completion of camp show that girls' confidence can be increased by the experience with significant effect remaining after the euphoria of camp has dissipated. Quantitative and qualitative data speak to increased selfefficacy in STEM fields and increased interest in pursuing a career in science or technology. Additionally, girls participating nationally in Tech Trek camps report large increases in comfort, enjoyment and interest in pursuing a career in programming as a result of taking core classes in mobile app development using App Inventor from MIT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined differences in the extent to which mathematical processes (reasoning and proof, opportunity for mathematical communication, connections, and representation) were evident in 8th grade Turkish and American mathematics textbooks. The textbooks were analyzed using questions on end-of-chapter tests from six comparable topics using a framework developed by U.S. researchers and based on mathematical process standards from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Results suggest that students had almost equal opportunity in both textbooks to make realworld connections or interconnect two or more mathematical ideas. The percentage of questions that required students to know, understand or interpret vocabulary terms was higher in the Turkish textbook; in contrast, the American textbook placed greater emphasis on students' reasoning and communication skills. Students were given more opportunities to create or interpret graphics (graphs, pictures, or tables) in the American textbook than in the Turkish textbook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the types of emergent language eighth grade students in rural Maine middle schools use when they discuss energy in their first experiences with Project-Based Inquiry Science: Energy, a research-based curriculum that uses a specific language for talking about energy. By comparative analysis of the language used by the curriculum materials to students' language, we find that students' talk is at times more aligned with a Stores and Transfer model of energy than the Forms model supported by the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present the case of Estevan, an eighth-grader from Honduras whose interest in science lies primarily at the intersection of personal epistemology and identity. Drawing on video data from classroom interactions as well as interviews with Estevan and his teacher, Ms. K, we show how Estevan's passionate engagement in sensemaking about the seasons arose from an alignment between his epistemological stance that science involves figuring things out for yourself and his enacted identity as someone who faces challenges head-on. We use Estevan's case to highlight the importance of remaining open to the multiplicity of connections that might exist between interest in science and students' identities and to motivate looking deeper into such issues before prescribing how to engage students in science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the increased funding that an operating levy brings to a school district raise the academic achievement of students in that district? Extensive previous research has considered the connection between school funding and student achievement, but surprisingly little research has focused on the efficacy of this widely used policy mechanism for funding schools. We estimate random effects models of the relationship between annual school-level measures of Minnesota 8th graders' reading and mathematics achievement between 1998 and 2005 and indicators of the level of support that those schools received from publicly approved operating levies over that period. We observe that revenue from voter-approved operating levies modestly increase Minnesota 8th graders' reading and mathematics test scores. This is true net of the characteristics of schools and their students and net of other measures of schools' revenue streams. [Note: By August of 2009 we will also estimate models that test hypotheses about whether the effects of operating levies for academic achievement are heterogeneous across schools with different populations of students and with different streams of revenue from other sources.] ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although research uncovered some factors that inform mathematics teachers' curricular decisions, it is less clear how they make such decisions. I used the practical knowledge framework to explore the construct of image with a veteran eighth-grade mathematics teacher. Images are teachers' perceptions of teaching that involve emotionality, morality, and are intimately connected to personal and professional narratives. Data consisted of transcripts of conversations, weekly journals, and student-written work. The analysis uncovered two images: 1) Bringing the outside in, and 2) Reading students and moments. Both images express how the teacher made curricular decisions: Using lessons that brought the outside in and following her students. This study expands research on curriculum by illuminating how teachers make curricular decisions and therefore revealing teachers' practical knowledge in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines 8th grade students' coordination of quantitative units arising from word problems that can be solved via a set of equations that are reducible to a single equation with a single unknown. Quantitative unit conservation also emerges as a necessary construct in dealing with such problems. We introduce a theoretical framework that encompasses these two constructs. Our data consist of videotaped classroom lessons, student interviews and teacher interviews. We generated a thematic analysis by undertaking a retrospective analysis, using constant comparison methodology. Our first result is about students' coordination of pairs of units (e.g. dime standing for the name of the coin and/or the number of dimes, the value of a dime being the second unit). Our second result is about students' attempts to balance the two sides of an equation by conserving units. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with a study that examined student mathematical cognition in the domain of probability. The underlying perspectives and principles of the educational design work are cited. Pre-intervention interviews were conducted among grade eight students to gauge their entrance knowledge into the experimental unit. The study found that students solved correctly single-outcome problems that each of them initiated in various forms. Particular focus is given to students' source of confusion.

I. PURPOSE The Purpose of this presentation is to explain why "length x width" is difficult even in middle school, in spite of the repeated instruction given in grades 4-8. For more than 20 years, NAEP has reported that this formula is used only by about half of the seventh graders and 65 percent of the eighth graders when a rectangle is presented with its dimensions. The common solution to this problem recommended by educators is to cover a rectangle with small squares and to explain the multiplicative relationship with columns and rows of small squares. It will be explained why this solution is not likely to work and what else we might try. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of St. Thomas has a mission of reaching underrepresented individuals in STEM fields and one mechanism is a free program for middle school girls. In June of 2017, 92 sixthgrade and eighth-grade girls attended the program, called STEPs which stands for Science Technology & Engineering Preview Summer program. The program takes place in the university engineering labs and MakerSpace, and consists of engineering design challenges, social activities and student-centered inquiry lessons. Lessons are crafted to appeal to female students based on lessons detailed in existing literature of what draws women into underrepresented STEM fields. The program focuses on fostering opportunities for hands-on learning, a component that may be less accessible to female students, as well as peer communication and collaboration, which has been identified as often matching the preferred learning styles for many female students (Gollnick & Chinn, 2013). Another key program component is experiences of how engineering is a field in which people can help others, a factor which has been identified as aligning with female interests and career aspirations (USDOC, 2011; Hubelbank 2007). The program research focuses on three areas: 1. The program's impact on short-term interest and knowledge in engineering/STEM; 2. The effectiveness of matching lessons to learning goals; and 3. Differences between sixth-grade students and eighth-grade students in success, interest in activities, and problem solving methods. Through pre-program and post-program surveys, students answered Likert-scale based questions and short answer questions about their attitudes, interests, and knowledge in STEM. An analysis of qualitative short-answer questions allowed for an evaluation of students' interests and aspirations and an understanding of how the program influenced participants' future aspirations. Short, semi-structured interviews added another dimension of program evaluation. Researchers found that students met learning objectives as they gained new content knowledge and skills in engineering. They also discovered that the program broadened students' perceptions and definition of engineering. This paper discusses the program's activities and looks at an in-depth evaluation of student data in order to understand the program's impact and its indication on how age may play a role in student learning and attitudes around STEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes a robotics and engineering design course (REDC) developed by a team from Georgia Institute of Technology. The inquiry-based Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics Education (STEM) course was designed for use in the 8th grade Engineering & Technology classroom. The REDC course involves the use of engineering manipulatives such as LEGO MINDSTORM robot kits, engineering tools such as the SolidWorks three-dimensional (3-D) modeling software, and 3-D printing.

An anger management training program was implemented with four classes of students at an alternative school including fifth grade inclusion, seventh grade, eighth grade, and high school. Many of the students in the alternative school were placed there because of multiple discipline referrals at their home schools, for disruptive behavior including aggressive behavior, bullying behavior, and insubordination. Multiple students enrolled at the alternative school are or have been involved with the juvenile justice system. It is important for these students to learn healthy, positive ways to interact socially with peers and authority figures in an effort to reduce aggressive and inappropriate behavior. Each student involved in the study filled out a pretest consisting of 10-items and will be reevaluated at the end of the anger management program which consists of ten sessions. The sessions involve teaching students how to use physiological, thinking, and behavioral tools to control anger. Students utilize role playing to practice new skills and engage in positive ways to deal with situations that are antecedent to anger and consequently aggressive behavior. A teacher acceptability rating scale will be implemented following the completion of the program. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]