Carver Project
A recent article in the Des Moines Register drew attention to the fact that on average, 10 to 15 % of freshmen in the regents institutions make unsatisfactory progress during the first year of college. When the focus is on selected first year courses (chemistry, statistics, business, engineering, etc) the rate of unsatisfactory performance goes up. When college professors are asked to identify what it is that these students lack, a frequently targeted deficiency is the lack of mathematical problem-solving skills from high school (Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II). This is not a case of students failing to learn specific algebra algorithms or geometric axioms, rather a failure to develop general problem-solving aptitudes built on basic numeracy and mathematical logic that can serve as the basis for problem-solving transfer from high school coursework to college coursework in classes requiring quantitative problem solving skills.
To address this problem and to initiate a solution, the Roy J Carver Charitable Trust has funded a three-year longitudinal study that will develop a virtual collaborative model between regent's institutions and local school districts. This initiative is unique in three major respects 1) it is an effort to test and evaluate the impact of learning outcomes in high school mathematics courses and later application of the outcomes in the college classroom; 2) it reflects an integration of high school mathematics performance and college classroom performance with a focus on problem-solving transfer (Klauer, Willmes & Phye, 2002; Phye, 2004a; 2004b; 2005a; 2005b) from high school to college, and 3) it is integrated into the existing Enhancing Education Through Technology (E2T2) consortium infrastructure of participating school districts. The Carver initiative is also integrated with the Ever Student Counts Core Curriculum Initiative.
The Carver initiative is a collaborative effort between the Psychology in Education Research Lab (PERL) at Iowa State University, the Iowa Department of Education (DOE), and Heartland Area Education Agency and 35 school districts.
Title: Mathematics problem-solving transfer: From high school to college.
Principle Investigator: Gary Phye, Dept. of Curriculum & Instruction, College of Human Sciences.
Co-Principle Investigator: Amy Froelich, Statistics Dept., College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.
C0-Principle Investigator: Arlene de la Mora, Psychology in Education Research Lab.
