04/02/2021
By Robin Hall

The College of Education invites you to attend a doctoral dissertation defense by Michael Strandberg on “The Relationship Between Advanced High-School Mathematics Course-Taking, Mathematics Achievement, and STEM Career Interest and Perceptions: An Exploratory Case Study in New York.”

Date: Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Time: 5 p.m. EST
Location: This will be a virtual defense via Zoom. Those interested in attending should email
Iman_Chahine@uml.edu at least 24 hours prior to the defense to request access to the meeting.

Dissertation Chair: Iman Chahine, Ph.D. Associate Professor, College of Education, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Dissertation Committee:

  • Katherine Miller, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, College of Education, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Patrick Morasse, Ed.D., Scholar of Practice

Abstract:

Students at Century High School (CHS), a Catholic all-boys high school on Long Island, New York, who started ninth grade with Algebra 1 instead of Geometry demonstrated less obvious career interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and lower mathematics achievement, as typically evidenced by Iowa Tests of Educational Development and SAT scores. To address the needs of students who did not take higher-level mathematics during their high-school program and thus started behind their college classmates in mathematics courses, CHS changed its mathematics course offerings to provide students with more advanced mathematics course opportunities. This research study explored high-school students’ STEM career interest, based on interviews and the STEM Semantics Survey and Career Interest Questionnaire, and mathematics achievement, based on SAT mathematics scores, for students with the revised mathematics course sequence beginning high school in Geometry compared to students in the previous sequence, many of whom began high school in Algebra 1. According to the surveys and interviews conducted, the researcher found that students in the most advanced mathematics classes taking the new course sequence had greater STEM career interest, compared to the students in the previous course sequence. In addition, according to the SAT mathematics data, the researcher found that students in less advanced mathematics classes taking the new course sequence had greater mathematics achievement, compared to the students in the previous course sequence.