Dr. Susan Staats, associate professor in the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, is the recipient of the Cynthia Peterson Article of the Year award presented by the “Journal of College Reading and Learning”. Staats received the award for her article “Context in an interdisciplinary algebra writing assignment” published in fall 2009. The article was co-authored by Chris Batteen, a graduate student in linguistics.
Staats and Batten analyzed responses to an interdisciplinary writing assignment to investigate the relationship between students’ written portrayal of the context of a mathematics application and their mathematical argumentation. Writing about details of the application context–international funding for malaria reduction–was associated with the use of multiple data sources and with the mathematical support of an argument.
The citation for the article is:
S. Staats & C. Batteen. (2009). Context in an interdisciplinary algebra writing assignment. Journal of College Reading and Learning 40(1), 35-50.