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We partner with you to maximize the talent you have to increase performance. Experts are expected to “teach what they know”. If experts (e.g. teachers or doctors) are on average 70 percent unaware of their procedural knowledge, what might be the consequence for their students or even patients in the case of a poorly trained surgeon? Is it highly likely that students with lower ability levels and/or less prior knowledge and/or lower motivation to learn might be more vulnerable to learning difficulties when instruction is incomplete or gives inaccurate knowledge? We are experts in cognitive task analysis and capable of leveraging your staff development needs.
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Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA)
All learning is novel and therefore complex.
Feeling overwhelmed by the amount of simultaneous activity in a classroom is a common experience for teachers (Corcoran, 1981; Kagan, 1992; Olson & Osborne, 1991; Veenman, 1984; Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998). The attempt to attend to the needs and behaviors of an entire classroom while also trying to remember and implement a lesson plan inundates their available cognitive resources. Consequently, this cognitive overload limits the abilities of teachers to adapt effectively to complex classroom dynamics (Doyle, 1986). Therefore, having CTA at hand during lesson planning helps the teacher stay on track and not forget to cover essential steps when demonstrating a procedure. In short, it serves as a checklist! Our CTA experts will give your teachers the tools to perform significantly better.
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CTA professional development for math teachers
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Comparative CTA Study - Mathematics
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CTA PILOT STUDY
Comparative Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) Study
Mathematics - Solving Quadratic Equations by Factorization
Acquillahs M. Mutie, Ed.D.a,b*, Kenneth A. Yates, Ed.D.b, Camille Ramos-Beal, Ed.D.a, Angela ‘Laila” Hasan, Ph.D.b
INTRODUCTION
Cognitive task analysis (CTA) seeks to elicit the highly automated and often-unconscious knowledge experts use to solve difficult problems and perform complex tasks. Students taking algebra find solving and understanding quadratic equations very challenging yet quadratic equations are a major component of building mastery in algebra. The purpose of this pilot study was to perform a comparative experimental study for comparing the CTA guided instruction using a gold standard protocol with the regular instruction. As part of the comparative analysis, the results will also provide an initial assessment of the extent to which CTA guided instruction will translate into a K-12 classroom teaching learning environment.
PILOT STUDY QUESTION & METHODOLOGY
The overriding study question for this pilot study is: Do participants in the experimental group perform the procedural action and decision steps of solving quadratic equations through the factorization procedure more accurately and completely than participants in the control group?
METHODOLOGY
Eighty-nine high school students participated in the study. A pre-assessment of prior knowledge was administered to the students in both the control and experimental group with no significant difference in the results. The experimental group of 29 high school 9th grade algebra students were taught using CTA techniques that strictly followed a CTA developed protocol for teaching solving quadratic equations while the control group of 60 high school students were taught using the traditional methods by a highly qualified teacher with 4 years’ experience in teaching high school mathematics. Only one procedure for solving quadratic equations was taught, the factorization procedure. This researcher and the other teacher planned this lesson together and together came up with the lesson notes and examples to be taught to students. Guided practice for both groups of students used the same questions. This researcher and the other teacher met twice a week to compare notes and discuss how the students were fairing on.
POST-ASSESSMENT
Once the control and experimental groups were taught how to solve quadratic equations using the factorization procedure, both groups were given an assessment to find out if there was any significant difference in the performance between the students that were taught using the traditional teaching methods and those taught following CTA guided instruction.
DATA RESULTS
The results demonstrated a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and the control group. The mean score of the experimental group was 9.2 points out of a possible score of 10 points with a standard deviation of 1.265 points while the mean of the control group was 6.6 points with a standard deviation of 2.808 points.
We performed a statistical test at the significance level of the null hypothesis where the mean score of the control group and the mean of the experimental group were equal against the alternative hypothesis . The sample test statistic was, and the p-value = 4.19x10-8.
Since the experimental group had a mean score of 9.2 on the post assessment, and the control group had a men score of 6.6. The standard deviations for the two groups, experimental and control were 1.265 and 2.808 respectively. The effect size (Cohen’s d) for this study was calculated to be 1.19. This means that the average score in the experimental is 1.19 of a standard deviation larger than the mean score of the control group.
CONCLUSION
Since the p-value is approximately zero and is less than the significance level, these results give sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the mean score of the experimental group is significantly greater than the mean score of the control group. In fact an average effect size of 1.19 shows that students in the experimental classroom improved by 38 percentile points. That is, students scoring at the 50th percentile on standardized tests would be predicted to score at the 88th percentile after being taught using the CTA methodology and following a gold standard protocol.
*Author and researcher
ABOUT
Acquillahs Muteti, Ed.D. is an expert in cognitive task analysis (CTA) training and has experience in training trainers to offer professional development that maximizes on teachers content knowledge to significantly increase student performance.
Dr. Muteti teaches in the College of Education and Integrative Studies of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and the Sanford College of Education, National University. He also uses his expertise to train teachers on cognitive task analysis in a local school district where he is an administrator.
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