Search

Background: A better understanding of departmental climate and its relationship to engineering identity is needed to diversify engineering and improve marginalized students' experiences. Purpose/Hypothesis: We investigated whether undergraduate engineering students from 16 social identity groups perceived departmental climate differently from one another and examined psychological and behavioral factors contributing to these perceptions and their relationship to engineering identification. Design/Method: We surveyed 398 undergraduate engineering students about departmental climate and engineering identity, testing structural models across race and gender. Qualitative analysis of open-ended items complemented quantitative results. Results: Students rated climate for dominant identities (White, male, and/or US-born) as more welcoming than for 14 nondominant identities, broadening the notion of "nondominant" identities in engineering. In structural models, invariant across race and gender, students' perceptions of bias, safety, and faculty support predicted climate ratings; peer relations and microaggressions predicted engineering identity. There were mean differences in perceptions across intersections of race and gender, but students in all groups perceived a climate gap favoring dominant identities. Open-ended responses highlighted students' desire for a more diverse, inclusive program and the importance of peer relations. Conclusions: Departmental climate can be less welcoming for engineering students with many different nondominant identities. Attending to both students' own social positioning and their perceptions of climate for other students can open opportunities for change in engineering departments. Results suggest that efforts to improve peer relations in group work could be important in promoting disciplinary identification in historically marginalized groups.

Disciplinary activity in science is tool-mediated, and instructional designers often build in opportunities for students to use the conceptual and material tools of the discipline as they engage in activity. When this activity takes place in schools, students and teachers may modify or reject disciplinary tools to fit the goals of schooling. We report collaborative, design-based research to develop and optimize material tools to mediate student and teacher activity in a project-based high school environmental science course along dimensions thought to promote productive disciplinary engagement. We use Engeström's Cultural-Historical Activity Theory to understand both the collaborative design process (university-based researchers and classroom teachers) and the implementation in classrooms. In addition to quantitative analyses of student engagement, two cases of design-test-redesign-retest cycles are presented to illustrate our methods and provide evidence for the use of material tools to support productive disciplinary engagement. Based on our research, we suggest design principles for developing material tools to support disciplinary engagement which take into account the necessary hybridity of project-based learning in schools. Implications for design and implementation of project-based science are discussed.

This paper describes a three-year, design-based research project to redesign a year-long, project-based advanced placement environmental science course to better support student engagement and the development of environmental citizen identities. In the initial implementation, students' increased understanding of environmental problems paradoxically led to disengagement as students felt pessimistic and powerless. We describe design cycles across three implementation years and investigate the impact of design features on engagement and identity. Curricular design features (positioning students as change agents and widening projects' spheres of influence from local to global), alongside expansive framing for transfer, contributed to engagement and the development of practice-linked identities as environmental citizens. We discuss implications for designing courses for engagement and identification with disciplinary content.

In this commentary, I identify some common themes in the six articles in this special issue, including the importance of aligning research methods with research questions and embracing the complexity of educational phenomena. Then, I reflect on some differences in how authors responded to the request to discuss the role of their inquiry world view and their own take on the meaning of equity in research. Finally, I offer a few reflections on the state of methodology in educational psychology.

Contribution: Student engagement and interest in engineering is compared between virtual and physical laboratory projects, designed to be realistic and replicate engineering practice. Reported motivation and engagement was greater in the virtual project than the physical projects. Results are interpreted in terms of the different affordances for instructional design using physical and virtual laboratories. Background: Interest is increasing in incorporating virtual laboratories in engineering curricula. Numerous studies report equal or greater gains in students' conceptual understanding in a virtual laboratory than a corresponding physical laboratory, but many researchers question if virtual laboratories can stimulate the same level of excitement for engineering as physical laboratories. Research Questions: Do students' self-reports of interest in engineering depend on the instructional design afforded by the laboratory mode? How do instructional designs of virtual and physical laboratory projects relate to students' perceptions of engagement, their contribution to the team, and the transfer of prior coursework to meet project objectives? Method: In a within-subjects design, 118 students' interest and engagement in two physical laboratory projects and one of two virtual laboratory projects in a senior-year capstone course is investigated. Separate principal components analyses were used to develop reliable scales for interest and for engagement. Findings: Students reported greater engagement, perceptions of contribution to their group's learning, opportunities to transfer prior learning from coursework, and end-of-course interest in engineering problem solving in the virtual laboratory project rather than the physical laboratory projects. The positive outcomes are connected to instructional design through the affordances of the virtual laboratory.

We describe progress on a comprehensive, programmatic change initiative whose goal is to create an inclusive culture that fosters diversity and a shift towards more meaningful, consequential work. While this initiative has several elements that target different aspects of unit practices and culture, we focus here on pedagogical change. Our design-based implementation research approach involves a continually interacting set of components, including: theory, implementation, and data collection, analysis and interpretation. We show how the threads of identity, academic success and professional formation in the core chemical engineering curriculum can be intentionally interwoven to form a network of practices that fosters student achievement (one atom in the covalent bond) as well as diversity and social justice (another atom).

Background: In taking up educational technology tools and student‐centered instructional practice, there is consensus that instructors consider the unique aspects of their instructional context. However, tool adoption success is often framed narrowly by numerical uptake rates or by conformity with non‐negotiable components. Purpose: We pursue an alternative ecosystems framing which posits that variability among contexts is fundamental to understanding instructors' uptake of instructional tools and the ways their teaching trajectories develop over time. Design/Method: Through a multiple‐case study approach using interviews, usage data, surveys, and records of community meetings, we examine 12 instructors' trajectories to illustrate the dynamic uptake of a technology tool. Results: Cross‐case analysis found that instructors' trajectories are tool‐mediated and community‐mediated. We present five cases in detail. Two foreground ways that instructors gained insight into student learning from student responses in the tool. Two illustrate the role played by the project's Community of Practice (CoP), an extra‐institutional support for deepening practice. The final case illustrates the complexity of an evolving instructional ecosystem and its role in instructors' satisfaction and continued use. Conclusions: Use of the educational technology tool perturbed ecosystems and supported instructors' evolving trajectories through mediation of instructor and student activity. Instructors' goals guided initial uptake, but both goals and practice were adapted using information from interactions with the tool and the CoP and changes in instructional contexts. The study confirms the need to understand the complexity of the uptake of innovations and illustrates opportunities for educators, developers, and administrators to enhance uptake and support diversity goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although open‐ended projects are common in the first and final years of US engineering programs, middle‐year courses tend to utilize simpler highly constrained problems. Such problems can elicit knowledge and social practices typical of school activity ("School World"), with limited applicability in real engineering work ("Engineering World"). They can also result in inequitable participation in groups. Purpose: We investigate whether a single‐session, complex studio task can promote equitable disciplinary engagement in the middle years, where time is limited and students' engineering knowledge needs to be developed. We ask whether and how the task is taken up by teams "thinking and acting like students" versus "thinking and acting like engineers." Design/Method: This microgenetic laboratory study analyzes video data of three student teams completing a realistic complex task. Results: Teams initially used "School World" strategies and social arrangements, but eventually the task demands and facilitator framing shifted activity to "Engineering World." We found within‐team, between‐world differences in reasoning, tool use, and social practices. Examination of shifts from School World to Engineering World pointed to the importance of task framing, material tools, peer interaction, and facilitator support. Conclusions: Activity can shift to the disciplinary social and knowledge practices of engineering in a single task, expanding opportunities to learn those practices and promoting more equitable interactions. Instructors should seek to support disciplinary practices while preserving students' authority to make decisions. Future research should explore the impact of a steady diet of these kinds of studios in the middle years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a situative approach to studying motivation to learn in social contexts. We begin by contrasting this perspective to more prevalent psychological approaches to the study of motivation, describing epistemological and methodological differences that have constrained conversation between theoretical groups. We elaborate on issues of the unit of analysis, the conceptualization of contexts, and the role of identity as a central construct. Finally, we argue that the design of learning environments and interventions to change learning environments are informed by attention to the relationships among meanings, identities, and motives in context. We illustrate our argument with examples of design-based research and design-based implementation research focused on motivation to learn in children and adults.

In this article, our focus is on the methodological issues in taking a situative approach to studying the interconnected development of motivation, identity, and learning in multiple social contexts. We illustrate our description with data acquired from a cross-context, longitudinal, ethnographic study of novice teachers' learning, motivation, and identity development (Horn, "Mathematical Thinking and Learning," 10(3), 201-239 2008; Nolen et al., "Cognition and Instruction," 29(1), 88-122, 2011; Nolen et al. 2009; Ward et al., "International Journal of Educational Research," 50(1), 14-20, 2011). We focus our methodological discussion on structuring longitudinal interviews and the interdependence of interview and observational techniques in understanding motivation in social contexts, including the methodological challenges inherent in ethnographic work. One challenge we consider in depth is accounting for the interview as a social context in which motivation and identity develop as learning occurs and how this challenge is particularly important to address in longitudinal work. We end by raising some additional methodological issues in studying motivation, identity, and learning from a situative perspective.

Formative assessment has been widely promoted as a means to support student learning and motivation. This practice has potential for communicating to students the value of what they are learning, both in the classroom and beyond (Brophy, 2008). To make good on those promises, however, requires an understanding of the connections between formative assessment practices and the realities of the social systems in which they are employed. In this article, I consider the importance of classroom systems, including the purposes of assessments, their function in the classroom social structure (including issues of power, identity, and competing values), and teachers' multiple concerns with effects on student learning and motivation. I also address the role of conflicts between the practice of formative assessment and grading policies, departmental assessment norms, school district structures, and external assessment mandates. Finally, the recommendation of Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, and Wiliam (2004) are examined in light of these issues. (Contains 1 note.)

We present a longitudinal study of novice teachers' appropriation, negotiation, and recontextualization of assessment tools and practices. During the four years of the study, we observed and interviewed beginning mathematics and social studies teachers, along with their colleagues, mentors, and supervisors, from their time in a graduate secondary teacher education program through their second year of professional teaching. Analysis of fieldnotes, interview transcripts, and artifacts suggests that assessment tools function as boundary objects in negotiations within and between the social worlds in which novices learn to teach. Boundary objects serve as reifications or representations of values, goals, and meanings (Bowker & Star, 1999; Star & Griesemer, 1989; Wenger, 1998). Assessment tools and artifacts, as boundary objects, facilitate engagement of teachers, administrators, students, and their families in coordinating activity across social boundaries and are central to the function of educational organizations. Novice teachers' motivation to learn promoted assessment tools and their affiliated practices changed as they crossed boundaries between university and school and changed positions from student teacher to newcomer to experienced novice. Implications of this analysis for understanding novice teacher learning and motivation, and for assessment policy more broadly, are discussed. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure and 7 footnotes.)

In a 3-year longitudinal, mixed-method study, 67 children in two schools were observed during literacy activities in Grades 1-3. Children and their teachers were interviewed each year about the children's motivation to read and write. Taking a grounded theory approach, content analysis of the child interview protocols identified the motivations that were salient to children at each grade level in each domain, looking for patterns by grade and school. Analysis of field notes, teacher interviews, and child interviews suggests that children's motivation for literacy is best understood in terms of development in specific contexts. Development in literacy skill and teachers' methods of instruction and raising motivation provided affordances and constraints for literate activity and its accompanying motivations. In particular, there was support for both the developmental hypotheses of Renninger and her colleagues (Hidi & Renninger, 2006) and of Pressick-Kilborne and Walker (2002). The positions of poor readers and the strategies they used were negotiated and developed in response to the social meanings of reading, writing, and relative literacy skill co-constructed by students and teachers in each classroom. The relationship of these findings to theories of motivation is discussed.

Perry and Winne (2006) describe their computer program, "gStudy", and argue that it facilitates valid measurement of self-regulated learning (SRL) over time. This commentary addresses the assumptions underlying this argument and raises additional validity questions regarding the use of this tool. These include issues related to the development of SRL in young children, the difficulty in embedding assessments in a learning tool, and the extent to which the log analyzer can separate SRL sequences from other behavior. Finally, the extent to which behavior "inside" gStudy reflects SRL in other contexts is discussed.

Examines the relationship between high school students' perceptions of their science learning environments and their motivation, learning strategies, and achievement. Discusses the focus of shared perceptions and instruction and indicates that shared perceptions focused on understanding and independent thinking positively predicted students' self-reported satisfaction with learning. (Author/KHR)

Describes the planning and implementation of a team-taught two-course sequence for secondary educators on adolescent education. The courses included substantial information on disabilities and special education. The approach to team teaching, based on a constructivist model of learning, is illustrated through the presentation of specific learning activities. (Author/CR)

The usefulness of traditional concepts of validity and reliability, developed for large-scale assessments, for the classroom context is explored. Alternate frameworks that situate these constructs in teachers' work in classrooms are presented, and their use in an assessment course for preservice teachers is described. (SLD)

Arizona teachers and administrators (n=2,444) were surveyed to determine (1) use of standardized test scores; (2) teachers' perceptions of others' use of scores; (3) how schools prepare students to take tests; (4) conditions under which tests are given; and (5) views of current testing program effects. (SLD)

Presented are the results of surveys given to high school science students measuring their beliefs regarding four kinds of study strategies, three types of motivational orientation to science, their reported ability, and attitude toward science. (CW)

A model of personal and environmental influences on students' valuing of two deep-processing strategies for studying expository texts is described. Questionnaire data from 281 high school science students indicated that students' task orientation and perceptions about teacher expectations were central to students' attitudes. (TJH)

Fifty severely to profoundly deaf students (grades 4-12) were given a forced-choice picture selection test to investigate effects of context on comprehension of difficult sentences. Analysis showed a significant facilitative effect of context for relative-clause sentences across reading levels. (Author/CL)

The article discusses the relevance of the situative perspective in educational psychology. The article mentions various methods to identify an individual's approach to a cognitive condition by different researchers and authors wanting to explore this context of study of human psychology. The conclusions from all the methods show the cognitive and situative perspectives have cultural context reflecting in the reaction to different situations.

Examines the construct validity of Goals and Strategies for Studying Science (GSSS) to measure student's beliefs in the value of various study for learning in science and their perceptions of the teacher's goal for student learning. Theoretical model of student strategy beliefs; Methodology of the study; Results and discussion of the study.

Describes an approach to teaching assessment to prospective teachers that is congruent with current theories of learning. Comment about the nature of traditional assessment courses; Challenges faced by educational psychologists; Details of teaching assessment concepts; Decisions about the goals of students learning about assessment.