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Abstract
Community colleges provide educational opportunity to a variety of goals including certificates, associate degrees, or transfer. These institutions are open-access which presents challenges to completion for students due to typically long developmental mathematics sequences. The purpose of this study was to explore Reading Apprenticeship (RA), which is a teaching and learning framework, in developmental math sections at a large urban community college. Differences in students’ math self-efficacy, persistence, and grade were analyzed for groups of students who were registered for an RA-led developmental math course compared to those who were in non-RA-led developmental math courses. RA is centered on metacognitive conversation through the social, personal, knowledge-building, and cognitive dimensions.
A quantitative quasi-experimental and correlational study used a pre and post-test design provided to students (N=537) across 34 sections of developmental math courses. Math self-efficacy was measured by pre and post-test. Math GPA and persistence data was provided by the research office with the dataset. There was no significance found between treatment and control group in math self-efficacy change, math GPA, and persistence in math (defined as registering for a math course in the following term). The results do lead to a discussion of the professional learning culture on campuses and areas of future research.
