MA+Learning+Outcomes


 * || Category || Description || BYU Aims ||
 * 1 || Scholarship || Graduates understand and can evaluate important issues, trends, theories, paradigms of research, and research findings in the field of mathematics education, as well as their implications for the teaching and learning of mathematics in the public schools, mathematics teacher development, and participation in mathematics education scholarship.

Direct Measures: Masters Exam Sections I and III, Thesis/Project Proposal Defense, Thesis/Project Final Defense

Indirect Measures: Completion of MthEd 550, 562, 590, 591, 598R, 608, 611R, 660, 661, 663, 695R, 698R, 699R || 2 ||
 * 2 || Research || Graduates understand research methods in mathematics education and can a) locate an interesting and important problem; b) conduct a literature review to situate the problem; c) develop a conceptual framework; d) establish focused research questions; e) choose and implement appropriate methods for collecting and analyzing data; f) address issues of research quality such as validity, reliability, and significance; and g) effectively communicate their work both orally and in writing.

Direct Measures: Masters Exam Sections II and III, Thesis/Project Final Defense

Indirect Measures: Completion of MthEd 550, 562, 590, 591, 598R, 608, 611R, 660, 661, 663, 695R, 698R, 699R || 2,4 ||
 * 3 || Mathematics || Graduates understand central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline of mathematics as well as core representations, canonical examples, and alternative algorithms germane to teaching school mathematics.

Direct Measures: Masters Exam Section IV

Indirect Measures: Completion of MthEd 550, 562, 598R, 608, 660, 661, 663 || 2 ||
 * 4 || Teaching || Graduates understand how to analyze topics from school mathematics in the context of the literature on students’ mathematical thinking, meaningfully apply research on teaching and learning mathematics in their teaching, and use scholarly inquiry as a lens to reflect on that teaching.

Direct Measures: Teacher Evaluation and Student Ratings

Indirect Measures: MthEd 550, 562, 590, 591, 598R, 608, 611R, 660, 661, 663 || 2,4 ||
 * 5 || Professionalism || Graduates have developed a level of professionalism that enables and compels them to continually seek opportunities to improve their own practice, keep abreast of advances and developments in the field both locally and nationally, and provide leadership in professional, school, and community organizations.

Direct Measures: MAPIBS All

Indirect Measures: MthEd 550, 562, 590, 591, 598R, 608, 611R, 660, 661, 663, 698R, 699R || 3,4 ||
 * 6 || Spiritual Stewardship || Graduates strive to follow the example of Jesus Christ in both their personal and professional lives, seek consistency between their understanding of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and principles of mathematics teaching and learning, and use this enriched understanding of teaching and learning to nurture the divine potential of all in their spheres of influence.

Direct Measures: MAPIBS 1-3, 7, 9

Indirect Measures: MthEd 550, 562, 590, 591, 598R, 608, 611R, 660, 661, 663, 695R, 698R, 699R || 1,3,4 ||

Rubric for Assessing Program LOs
The MA program will be assessed annually at the beginning of winter semester. Because the purpose of the assessment is to see if the learning outcomes have been met by the end of the program, it does not make sense to consider data from students who are still in the program. However, if data is limited to only students who either graduated or dropped out of the program the year before, the data points are insufficient to establish clear trends. Consequently, at each annual evaluation of the program, data will be considered for students who either graduated or dropped out over the past two years. While this means that the data from a particular student will be used in two consecutive evaluations of program learning outcomes, we nonetheless feel that data aggregated across two years will provide a fuller understanding of the success of our program than data from a single year.

In preparation to assess the program learning outcomes, each student who has graduated or dropped out of the program will be evaluated individually on each learning outcome to determine if that learning outcome was met by that student. The criteria for a learning outcome to be met by a student are given below. Once each student has been evaluated on each learning outcome, the number of students who have met each learning outcome will be tallied. If 70% of the students meet a particular learning outcome, then we will conclude that the program is satisfactory with respect to that learning outcome.


 * Criteria for Determining Whether a Student has Met a Particular Learning Outcome**

//LO 1: Scholarship// For each student, data from Sections I and III of the Master's Exam, from their Thesis/Project proposal defense and from their Thesis/Project final defense will be gathered. (If students were given a second chance on any of these measures, data will come from the last attempt.) Students meet this learning outcome if their performance on any two of the three measures is satisfactory.
 * Master's Exam Sections I and III: Students are considered satisfactory on this measure if the average of their scores on the four problems from Sections I and III is at least 70%.
 * Thesis/Project proposal defense: Students are considered satisfactory on this measure if they passed (initially or eventually) their proposal defense.
 * Thesis/Project final defense: Students are considered satisfactory on this measure if they passed (initially or eventually) their final defense.

//LO 2: Research// For each student, data from Sections II and III of the Master's Exam, and from their Thesis/Project final defense will be gathered. (If students were given a second chance on either of these measures, data will come from the last attempt.) Students completing a project meet this learning outcome if their performance on both measures is satisfactory. Students completing a thesis meet this learning outcome if their performance on the thesis defense is satisfactory.
 * Master's Exam Sections II and III: Students are considered satisfactory on this measure if the average of their scores on the four problems from Sections II and III is at least 70%.
 * Thesis/Project final defense: Students are considered satisfactory on this measure if they passed (initially or eventually) their final defense.

//LO 3: Mathematics// For each student, data from Section IV of the Master's Exam will be gathered. (If students were given a second chance to take the Master's Exam, data will come from the last attempt.) Students meet this learning outcome if the average of their scores on the two problems from Section IV is at least 70%.

//LO 4: Teaching// For each student, teacher evaluation and student rating data from the last two courses taught will be gathered and the better of each of those measures will be used for analysis. For students to meet this learning outcome, they must receive a satisfactory rating on both measures.

STUDENT RATINGS: On the student ratings measure, there is an overall course rating, an overall instructor rating, and 23 sub-questions. Eighteen of the 23 sub-questions are rated on a 1-8 scale. If 9 or more of the sub-questions are rated below a 6 or if the overall instructor rating is below a 6, the student will receive an unsatisfactory rating on this measure. TEACHER EVALUATIONS: On the teacher evaluations measure, if the student receives a rating below a 3 in any of the 4 areas (classroom organization; instruction, discussion, and tasks; content; communication), they will receive an unsatisfactory rating on this measure.

//LO 5: Professionalism// For each student, two MA PIBS—the last MA PIBS from the project/thesis advisor and the MA PIBS from the last 3-credit-hour mathematics education course the student took—will be considered. For the student to be considered satisfactory on an item, the student must receive a rating of "meets" or "exceeds" expectations for that item on both MA PIBS. If a students is unsatisfactory on 3 or more items, then the student will be considered unsatisfactory in professionalism.

//LO 6: Spiritual Stewardship// For each student, items 1-3, 7, and 9 from two MA PIBS—the last MA PIBS from the project/thesis advisor and the MA PIBS from the last 3-credit-hour mathematics education course the student took—will be considered. For the student to be considered satisfactory on an item, the student must receive a rating of "meets" or "exceeds" expectations for that item on both MA PIBS. If a students is unsatisfactory on 2 or more items, then the student will be considered unsatisfactory in spiritual stewardship.