Dissertation Proposal Announcement: Cristhian Altamirano “Graph comprehension among developmental mathematics students through a sociocultural perspective”

Graph comprehension is the ability to process accurately condensed information on graphs in various contexts such as education and one’s profession. Many factors contribute to one’s graph comprehension performance, including one’s prior experience and knowledge of the context area the graph is reflecting. This is evident in how culturally-responsive assessments and instruction result in favorable student outcomes when learners’ prior lived sociocultural experiences are considered in the task at hand. Consequently, the contexts of graphs can influence individuals in accurately pulling information from the graph.

Developmental math sequences are academic pathways designed for students who need remediation and support in math, to become college-ready and successful in completing the college-level math course towards the end of the sequence. 

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of students’ sociocultural background on their different levels of abilities in graph comprehension when graphs are represented in varying contexts, in students enrolled in the developmental math sequence. A series of ANCOVA analyses will be performed to examine (a) if there is a main effect of student math class type, which may suggest students enrolled in the developmental math sequence have significantly greater struggles in graph comprehension than students enrolled in college-level math courses, (b) if there is a significant interaction effect between student math classes and graph context conditions, which suggests the discrepancy of graph comprehension performance between the two math-class student groups vary on the graph context, and (c) if there is a significant interaction effect among student math classes, student family SES/underrepresented minority status, which may suggest that students’ backgrounds may moderate the influence of context on students’ graph comprehension. Lastly, to obtain validity of the self-developed graph comprehension assessment, participants will also complete the Graph Literacy Scale, so that graph comprehension scores will be correlated with the well-validated instrument to demonstrate the concurrent validity of the graph comprehension assessment.

To access the Zoom link required to attend this defense, please contact academic.services@gse.rutgers.edu.