Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to H M Alkhateeb.
This exploratory study was designed to assess undergraduate students' understanding of division of fractions. A paper and pencil instrument was administered as a pre- and posttest to 59 undergraduate students who major in elementary education. Analysis by independent t test of written responses provided by students on the pre- and posttests showed lack of understanding, even postinstruction.
The 1998 Crawford, Gordon, Nicholas, and Prosser Conceptions of Mathematics scale was administered to 156 first-year university students at a large public university in the midwestern United States. The scale represented fragmented and cohesive conceptions of mathematics. The reliability estimated as internal consistency had a Cronbach alpha of .80 for the fragmented scale and .87 for the cohesive scale. Factor analysis of the intercorrelations indicated the same two factors of fragmented and cohesive as in the original and other replicating studies. Students' conceptions of mathematics in this study were comparable to those reported in the original study.
To investigate the mathematics anxiety of 159 students in Grade 8 (M age = 14.3 yr.) in the United Arab Emirates a 28-item anxiety scale was administered. Analysis indicated some mathematics anxiety. Also, boys and girls scored significantly differently as boys had the higher mean.
This study compared the effects of two instructional strategies, small heterogeneous cooperative learning experience versus lecture and discussion, on students' attitudes toward mathematics. 54 boys and 57 girls in Grade 8 of four middle-school mathematics classes participated. Two classes (57 students) were taught using a cooperative learning method and the other two classes (54 students) were taught using traditional lecture and discussion. Differences between attitudes of boys and girls were also investigated and discussed in the light of Arabic culture. The results suggested that cooperative learning might be a valuable method with which to teach mathematics concepts to boys.
To investigate the preferences for numerical information of 157 tenth grade students (M = 16.1 yr.) in the United Arab Emirates, an Arabic translation of a questionnaire of Viswanathan developed, validated, and moderately stable over time was administered. Analysis indicated the preferences of Arab students for numerical information was positive. Also, these Arab students scored higher than American students in contrast with those in the Viswanathan study but the difference was not statistically significant using an independent t test.