The relationship among language, classroom discourse, cognitive development, achievement, and vocabulary of developmental mathematics students.

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to examine how focusing on language and classroom discourse impacts the cognitive development, achievement, and vocabulary development of college developmental mathematics students. Two classes of basic algebra students were used in this quasi-experimental study. One class served as the control group and the other the experimental group. The experimental treatment was journal writing, which consisted of writing prompts about vocabulary and concepts specific to the algebra course. Three instruments were used for pre- and post-testing to study the relationships between the variables. The Scale of Intellectual Development-IV measured cognitive development based on Perry's model. The College Placement Test (CPT) measured student achievement. A researcher constructed vocabulary test measured vocabulary development. Student evaluations of the journal writing process were also used to add a qualitative component to the study.

According to the results of quantitative and qualitative analyses, the journal process impacted specific interest groups differently. The females in the experimental group indicated that through the production of more complete journals, that they received a greater benefit from and attributed more value to the exercise than the males. By reviewing the journal evaluations written by the students, it was apparent that the males felt more comfortable defining terms in their own words, while the female students did not enjoy this part of the exercise. Students who were dualistic stated that they did not like that answers to all the questions could not be found in the text. The dualistic students copied definitions from the text, while students with cognitive development beyond dualism were able to paraphrase the meanings of words. The freshmen in the experimental group also had significant results from the journal writing exercise, including an increase in achievement and a significant change in both cognitive development and vocabulary development. The nontraditional students in the control group were able to increase their vocabulary development without the use of journals. The independent, self-motivating nature of nontraditional, adult students may have influenced this result. The results of this research should be further explored.