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Gemma

Holdman EDG 6931 Knowing and Learning Clinical Interview Task 2 Initial Impressions

The initial interview I conducted with my participant, whom we will call Amanda, involved performing a series of activities used to assess her understanding and ability to solve problems related to probability, more specifically the counting principles. Throughout the interview I verbally asked Amanda a series of questions with five being specific problems to solve for the content area and provided her pencils and paper to solve the problems. I structured the ordering of the questions in regards to their difficulty levels from easier questions to harder questions. My goal of this was to help build the motivation and confidence of the participant. After reading Amanda a question, I gave her ample think time to complete the problem and explain her reasoning to the solution. Since all students think differently and require varying amounts of time, I gave her the flexibility to explain the problems in her own way. By asking a variety of questions and providing Amanda with flexibility, it allowed me to get a good grasp of her understanding, knowledge, and disposition towards the subject. Overall, I believe the first interview went very well. Throughout the interview, I noticed a few components in which I could have planned more effectively and needed to adjust (please refer to my modifications section). As a whole, I consider the data I retrieved to be relevant and useful in regards to assessing Amandas understanding. I would classify Amanda as a novice at probability, having a negative disposition towards the subject, but can solve easier problems with little to no effort. By conducting a modified clinical interview, I will be able to further analyze Amandas knowledge and understanding of probability and either confirm or adjust my initial assertions.

Gemma Holdman EDG 6931 Knowing and Learning Clinical Interview Task 2 Modifications

In the initial clinical interview, I made a few significant mistakes. My biggest and most obvious mistake was not pre-solving the example problems I provided to my participant. I noticed this (incredibly foolish in my opinion) error after I started reading Amanda the first question. For the second clinical interview, I printed out a copy of the questions and solved out each and every question, including the general formulas I used for each problem. Another mistake in the initial interview was verbally asking her the questions. Not only did she have to understand what I was saying (my English accent can occasionally make it difficult to decipher my word usage) but also had to pull out the important information needed to solve the problems. I should have provided the questions printed out to eliminate these difficulties. That way Id truly be testing her knowledge on the concepts. For my modified clinical interview, I provided Amanda with the printed questions, pencils, and scrap paper. In addition to providing the printed questions, I also read the questions to her, allowing her multiples avenues for learning both visual and audio. The third notable mistake I made during the first clinical interview was how I worded a couple questions. Due to my confusing wording or lack of clarification, in one problem, Amanda believed that a single person could potentially fill multiple positions. In another problem, she believed I wanted her to physically transform shapes to create completely new shapes, rather than just pair up the shapes. For my second clinical interview, I adjusted the wording of those questions to ensure I was assessing Amandas understanding of the content, rather than her ability to interpret my word choices.

Gemma Holdman EDG 6931 Knowing and Learning Clinical Interview Task 2 In addition to the previously mentioned mistakes I needed to adjust for the follow-up interview, I also altered the numbers in the problems I provided Amanda. This ensured me that she would once again use her knowledge and understanding of probability as opposed to remembering the answers she calculated in the initial interview. Including the modifications listed above will help me achieve a more complete understanding of Amandas knowledge and use of the counting principles of probability. Analysis of Individuals Knowledge

Before asking Amanda to directly solve probability problems, I asked for her to explain

her understanding of probability and the counting principles. Amanda verbally expressed that she is familiar with probability but doesnt know the ins and outs. Furthermore, when learning probability less than a year ago, she claimed to use logic, breaking problems into small parts, and formulas to solve. Having said that, Amanda also stated that she was uncertain of the specific formulas used to solve many probability problems. In the modified interview I asked her to formulate her own real world examples of probability and she provided several, quite quickly. It appeared to me from Amandas initial responses and examples from the interviews that she had an adequate knowledge base of the content area but did not have rote memorization of the formulas. I needed to investigate deeper and find out more. It has been noted that having a productive disposition is one of the important strands in regards to mathematical proficiency. Additionally, a productive disposition is interrelated and helps promote the other four strands. After conducting both interviews, Amanda, while very capable to answer and perform a majority of the requested questions/tasks, did so with apathetic tones. I was very interested to further test her procedural and conceptual

Gemma Holdman EDG 6931 Knowing and Learning Clinical Interview Task 2 understanding of the material after sensing her negative disposition towards the content. Given what I had already found out, I would imagine Amanda has a decent foundation of the concepts but would not be able to easily retrieve information and would have difficulties solving problems with multiple components due to her disinterest in the topic. During the interviews, I noticed that Amanda was more performance oriented than mastery oriented. She was incredibly concerned and insecure about her answers, continuously asking me if they were correct. This could be partly due to her indifferent disposition towards the subject at hand. She just wanted to get the question right and move on. When given a question to test her knowledge of the fundamental counting principle, I was intrigued to see her results and hear her explanation. The correct answer was a simple multiplication of two numbers, 3 x 5, making 15 different options. Amanda confused this principle with permutations. She multiplied 5! By 3!, producing 720 possible outcomes. When I asked her to explain her reasoning, she stated that the answer she proposed was not right and concluded that it is impossible to make 720 possible outcomes from two positions with three applicants for one position and five for the other. After further questioning, Amanda decided to assign each applicant a letter, pair up the letters (ex: AF, AG, AH, BF, BG, BH, etc.), and count the different outcomes, resulting in obtaining the correct answer. Amanda did a very good job of analyzing her thinking, using metacognition, and adjusting her answer based on logic and prior experiences with the concepts. This demonstrates that she has a sufficient understanding of the fundamental counting principle. For another task, I wanted to assess Amandas prior knowledge of permutations. After

reading her the question, she very excitedly responded thats 6!. When I assessed Amandas understanding of permutations and factorials, she informed me that order and positioning matters; after the first position, the number decreases by one, so on and so forth. Not only did 4

Gemma Holdman EDG 6931 Knowing and Learning Clinical Interview Task 2 Amanda correctly answer the question but she did so using both procedural and conceptual understanding of permutations due to her quick and clear explanation of the problem at hand and the steps she took to solve the problem. When I conducted the modified clinical interview, Amanda successfully completed the above two questions with little to no mistakes or confusion of the concepts. This proves that she has an adequate level of procedural and conceptual understanding of probability for less intuitive problems. During the interviews, I used scaffolding with the difficulty levels of problems. I believe

this was helpful in providing me with a clear picture of how deep a level her understanding was. When presenting Amanda problems of higher difficulty (permutations of events and combinations), she had issues, was unable to complete them, and could not provide a general mathematical representation used to solve these types of problems. She often said I have no ideaI believe its related to either permutations or combinations, but Im uncertain of what to do next. This informed me that her understanding was at a shallow level. I believe her negative disposition had a large impact on how much information she retained in long-term memory. After conducting two interviews on my participant, I would I would consider Amanda as

a novice in probability and the related counting principles. She has a basic knowledge foundation of probability and its uses in the real world. Furthermore, she demonstrates adequate amounts of procedural and conceptual understanding for basic problems since she can very quickly and efficiently solve lower level problems. This places less stress and effort on her working memory. As problems become more complex however, she struggles and becomes defeated. Amanda continually displayed a negative disposition, which could explain why she does not have a deep and thorough understanding of the concept and its respective formulas. 5

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