School of Education

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Adapting Pink Time to promote self-regulated learning across course and student types
Baird, Timothy D.; Kniola, David J.; Hartter, Joel; Carlson, Kimberly; Rogers, Sarah; Russell, Don; Tise, Joseph (2020)
To explore new opportunities to promote self-regulated learning (SRL) across a variety of contexts, this study applies a novel assignment called Pink Time in seven different courses at two universities. The assignment asks students to “skip class, do anything you want, and give yourself a grade.” In each case, instructors adapted Pink Time to fit the needs of their course. Altogether, 165 students completed 270 self-directed projects and self-assessments targeting five component behaviors of SRL. Findings show that: (1) students were more likely to perceive success in certain behaviors of SRL than in others; (2) students’ perceptions across courses were similar for some behaviors but not others; and (3) subsequent iterations of the assignment supported higher perceived measures of some SRL behaviors but not others. Together these findings illustrate the value and flexibility of this progressive assignment as well as persistent challenges in supporting students’ SRL.
Enhancing place-based learning progression through epistemic agency: a response to toward a hypothetical place-based learning progression for haze pollution in the northern region of Thailand
Taylor, Lezly; Brand, Brenda R. (2021-05-12)
Luecha Ladachart, Manus Poothawee, and Ladapa Ladachart take a unique approach in their study entitled, "Toward a hypothetical place-based learning progression for haze pollution in the northern region of Thailand," whereby they frame acquiring disciplinary knowledge within a place-based learning progression in response to regional issues related to air pollution. From this study, the authors created a proposed learning progression that was designed to facilitate an understanding of the cause and effect of haze pollution as it relates to anthropogenic issues, geographical location, and seasonal patterns distinctly for the northern region of Thailand. The purpose of this response article is to discuss the design of Ladachart, Poothawee, and Ladachart's (2020) place-based learning progressions and to facilitate a discussion on enhancing place-based learning progressions through the development of identity, self-efficacy, and epistemic agency. Lastly, we will reflect on our research in the Mississippi Delta (USA) to engage a discussion on how anchoring learning progressions across epistemological dimensions enables students to advance cognitively and developmentally while experiencing the personal and social transformation that positions them as epistemic agents within their local communities.
Experimental and Statistical Investigation of Reservoir Properties with the Effect of Waterflooding Treatment
Li, Zihao; Du, Chenguang; Tang, Yongqiang; Li, Xiangming (2020-08-25)
An oilfield reservoir over long-term operation may have different petrophysical information, which has a significant impact on oilfield maintenance and finance. Successful oilfield enhanced oil recovery benefits a lot from identifying and analyzing the variations of the critical properties after long-term water-flooding treatments. Since the inspection wells drilled within different development periods contain the core samples that have the petrophysical information at that period, it is necessary to collect and test the samples from different periods to investigate the overall tendency of the petrophysical properties. The samples from four inspection wells, which were drilled in four stages since the very beginning of development, were subjected to in-laboratory core analysis methods to illustrate the variation of some critical parameters in the reservoir. The permeability and porosity variation are revealed clearly by the experimental results. The migration and dissolution of clay minerals play a crucial role in the variation of petrophysical information and pore structure. To quantify the variations above, we applied the multiple linear regression model into our investigation. The dependent variable and all of the predictors in the model come from the experimental results. The quantitative results show the closed correlation between different parameters in the formation. With the development stage moving forward, the weight coefficients for different predictors have multiple trends. The experimental and statistical approach provides a novel understanding of the reservoir properties with the effect of waterflooding treatment.
Faculty’s attitudes and perceptions related to applying motivational principles to their teaching: a mixed methods study
Snook, Abigail G.; Schram, Ásta B.; Jones, Brett D. (2021-03-29)
Background It is uncommon for faculty development professionals to assess faculty attitudes towards their teaching responsibilities and their perceived obstacles to teaching effectiveness. The purposes of this study were (a) to document faculty attitudes and practices related to applying motivation principles, and (b) to identify the perceived contextual factors that may shape these attitudes and practices. Methods A sequential explanatory mixed methods design was used. Faculty members (n = 272; 32% response rate) were surveyed about their responsibility for and application of the five motivational principles that are part of the MUSIC Model of Motivation: eMpowerment, Usefulness, Success, Interest, and Caring. Repeated measures ANOVAs and Student’s t-tests were computed to detect differences. Subsequently, two focus groups of faculty members (n = 11) interpreted the survey results. We conducted a thematic analysis and used the focus group results to explain the survey results. Results Faculty rated their responsibilities for applying principles related to Usefulness, Interest, and Caring significantly higher than they did for Success and eMpowerment. Most faculty also reported that they actually applied Usefulness, Interest, and Caring strategies within the past year, whereas over half of the faculty applied Success strategies and about a third of faculty applied eMpowerment strategies. Focus group participants identified factors that affected their ability to apply eMpowerment strategies, (e.g., offering choices), including students lacking generic skills (e.g., critical thinking, problem-solving), a lack of confidence in their abilities to implement empowering strategies and meet the needs of students, passive students, and large lecture-type courses. Focus group participants cited obstacles to implementing Success strategies (e.g., providing feedback), including difficulty in providing feedback in large courses, lacking time and assistant teachers, limited knowledge of technologies, and lacking skills related to guiding effective student peer feedback. Conclusions Faculty appear adequately prepared to implement some types of motivational strategies, but not others, in part due to contextual factors that can influence their attitudes and, ultimately, their application of these strategies. We discuss how these factors affect attitudes and application of motivational strategies and formulate suggestions based on the results.
Identification of county-level health factors associated with COVID-19 mortality in the United States
Pan, Wei; Miyazaki, Yasuo; Tsumura, Hideyo; Miyazaki, Emi; Yang, Wei (Journal of Biomedical Research, 2020-11-01)
Many studies have investigated causes of COVID-19 and explored safety measures for preventing COVID-19 infections. Unfortunately, these studies fell short to address disparities in health status and resources among decentralized communities in the United States. In this study, we utilized an advanced modeling technique to examine complex associations of county-level health factors with COVID-19 mortality for all 3141 counties in the United States. Our results indicated that counties with more uninsured people, more housing problems, more urbanized areas, and longer commute are more likely to have higher COVID-19 mortality. Based on the nationwide population-based data, this study also echoed prior research that used local data, and confirmed that county-level sociodemographic factors, such as more Black, Hispanic, and older subpopulations, are attributed to high risk of COVID-19 mortality. We hope that these findings will help set up priorities on high risk communities and subpopulations in future for fighting the novel virus.
Implementation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Smoke-Free Rule: A Socio-Ecological Qualitative Assessment of Administrator and Resident Perceptions
Horn, Kimberly; Johnson, Sallie B.; Rincón-Gallardo Patiño, Sofía; Krost, Kevin; Gray, Tiffany; Dearfield, Craig; Du, Chenguang; Bernat, Debra (MDPI, 2021-08-24)
In July 2018, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) implemented a mandatory smoke-free rule in public housing. This study assessed administrator and resident perceptions of rule implementation during its initial year in the District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA). Assessment included nine focus groups (n = 69) with residents and in-depth interviews with administrators (n = 7) and residents (n = 26) from 14 DCHA communities (family = 7 and senior/disabled = 7). Semi-structured discussion guides based on the multi-level socio-ecological framework captured dialogue that was recorded, transcribed verbatim, and coded inductively. Emerging major themes for each socio-ecological framework level included: (1) Individual: the rule was supported due to perceived health benefits, with stronger support among non-smokers; (2) Interpersonal: limiting secondhand smoke exposure was perceived as a positive for vulnerable residents; (3) Organizational: communication, signage, and cessation support was perceived as a need; (4) Community: residents perceived mobility, disability, weather, and safety-related issues as barriers; and (5) Public Policy: lease amendments were perceived as enablers of rule implementation but expressed confusion about violations and enforcement. A majority of administrators and residents reported favorable implications of the mandated HUD rule. The novel application of a socio-ecological framework, however, detected implementation nuances that required improvements on multiple levels, including more signage, cessation support, clarification of enforcement roles, and addressing safety concerns.
Instructional Readiness in the Inclusive STEM Classroom
Williams, Thomas O. Jr.; Ernst, Jeremy V.; Rossi, Louis (2020-12)
Since the implementation of school inclusion, STEM educators have been tasked with serving an increasing number of students with disabilities in their classrooms. Often this requires that STEM educators and Special educators work together in the same classroom. Although their initial instructional preparedness is very discipline specific, the increase in inclusive STEM education classrooms has created new opportunities for both STEM educators and Special educators to collaborate. This study utilizes the National Teacher and Principal Survey to identify similarities and differences in perceived readiness for beginning secondary STEM educators and Special educators in instructional best practices necessary to facilitate students with disabilities in the inclusive STEM education classroom. While no statistically significant differences in perceived readiness scores were found within STEM educators, Special educators had statistically significantly higher perceived readiness scores than STEM educators both collectively and individually.
Middle School Children's Thinking in Technology Education: A Review of Literature
Sherman, Thomas M.; Sanders, Mark E.; Kwon, Hyuksoo; Pembridge, James J. (Council on Technology Teacher Education and the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association, 2009)
Multilevel Analysis of Factors Associated with Left Behind Children in China
Du, Chenguang; Du, Hongfei (Canadian Center of Science and Education, 2020-09-24)
With the rapid development of urbanization in China, a growing number of rural workers migrate to urban cities for employment opportunities with leaving their children at home. These children are called left behind children (LBC) in China and their population has dramatically increased during the last 20 years. So far, many studies have examined what factors were associated with this increasing LBC populations. However, they were rarely guided by a holistic perspective. The current study investigated 1,691 left behind children in 166 communities using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) in 2011. Based on the human ecology theory, this study explored family and contextual (community) characteristics associated with the left behind children (LBC) in China. The main results for this subpopulation of families with children revealed stark contrasts with the literature for the general population of migrants. That is, for the families with children, (1) contrary to the literature, father‟s education was negatively associated with the probability of LBC at the individual level, even after the income was controlled; (2) community average father‟s education was also negatively associated with LBC; but (3) community average household income was not associated with LBC once the average father's education was controlled. The policy implications of these results are briefly discussed.
Next generation mobile learning: Leveraging message design considerations for learning and accessibility
Ofori, Eunice; Lockee, Barbara B. (International Academic Forum, 2021-08-27)
Access to mobile learning (mLearning) opportunities has become widespread and continues to proliferate as a means of educational continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to such proliferation, guidance is needed to inform the design of mobile learning content from both learning and accessibility perspectives. Though evidence-based recommendations for mobile learning message design do not currently exist, prior research in multimedia learning and instructional design-related areas may be used to support the planning and production of such educational programming. Design efforts for mLearning would also benefit from the incorporation of strategies to enhance the accessibility of mLearning for learners with differing needs. Taking evidence-based practices from instructional design and universal design for learning could inform the future development of mLearning toward more effective learning experiences for all learners. Employing a design and development methodology, this study focused on the creation of evidence-based guidelines for mLearning content design, informed by prior research on instructional message design combined with recognized universal design principles for media-based learning. The study resulted in a set of considerations to guide the message design of accessible and effective mLearning experiences. The resulting guidelines underwent validation by expert reviewers representing the areas of instructional design, message design, universal design, and mLearning. Their feedback informed the final version of the guidelines produced as the outcome of this study, research-based considerations which can be practically applied by those responsible for the creation of mLearning instruction.
Planning to Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement with the Department of Defense Education Activity
Kaufman, Eric K.; Cash, Carol S.; Coartney, Jama S.; Ripley, Dana; Guy, Timothy M.; Glenn, William J.; Mitra, Shreya; Anderson, James C. II (International Society for Educational Planning, 2019-11-26)
While continuous improvement is not new to education, implementing it with fidelity in various educational contexts remains difficult. This article provides a framework of the necessary components in planning for and implementing continuous improvement, based on current literature in the field of education. Key characteristics for consideration include: (a) purpose-driven; (b) change as a complex process; (c) data-based practices, structures, and systems; (d) relationships for professional collaboration; and, (e) capacity building. Utilizing a qualitative case-study design and aspects of action research, the framework is used to outline efforts of the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) in becoming a continuous improvement organization. Although implementation of continuous improvement is still in early stages, many lessons have been learned. As education researchers and policy makers continue to wrestle with best practices and strategies for continuous improvement, we encourage further investigation of successful case studies, including the potential of research-practice partnerships.
Positive attitudinal shifts and a narrowing gender gap: Do expertlike attitudes correlate to higher learning gains for women in the physics classroom?
Robinson, Alma; Simonetti, John H.; Richardson, Kasey; Wawro, Megan (2021-01-13)
A large body of research shows that using interactive engagement pedagogy in the introductory physics classroom consistently results in significant student learning gains; however, with a few exceptions, those learning gains tend not to be accompanied by more expertlike attitudes and beliefs about physics and learning physics. In fact, in both traditionally taught and active learning classroom environments, students often become more novicelike in their attitudes and beliefs following a semester of instruction. Furthermore, prior to instruction, men typically score higher than women on conceptual inventories, such as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), and more expertlike on attitudinal surveys, such as the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS), and those gender gaps generally persist following instruction. In this paper, we analyze three years of pre-post matched data for physics majors at Virginia Tech on the FCI and the CLASS. The courses were taught using a blended pedagogical model of peer instruction, group problem solving, and direct instruction, along with an explicit focus on the importance of conceptual understanding and a growth mindset. We found that the FCI gender gap decreased, and both men and women showed positive, expertlike shifts on the CLASS. Perhaps most surprisingly, we found a meaningful correlation between a student's post-CLASS score and normalized FCI gain for women, but not for men.
Read-Agree-Predict: A Crowdsourced Approach to Discovering Relevant Primary Sources for Historians
Wang, Nai-Ching; Hicks, David; Quigley, Paul; Luther, Kurt (Human Computation Institute, 2019)
Historians spend significant time looking for relevant, high-quality primary sources in digitized archives and through web searches. One reason this task is time-consuming is that historians’ research interests are often highly abstract and specialized. These topics are unlikely to be manually indexed and are difficult to identify with automated text analysis techniques. In this article, we investigate the potential of a new crowdsourcing model in which the historian delegates to a novice crowd the task of labeling the relevance of primary sources with respect to her unique research interests. The model employs a novel crowd workflow, Read-Agree-Predict (RAP), that allows novice crowd workers to label relevance as well as expert historians. As a useful byproduct, RAP also reveals and prioritizes crowd confusions as targeted learning opportunities. We demonstrate the value of our model with two experiments with paid crowd workers (n=170), with the future goal of extending our work to classroom students and public history interventions. We also discuss broader implications for historical research and education.
Releasing the conceptual spring to construct multiplicative reasoning
Zwanch, Karen; Wilkins, Jesse L. M. (2020-11-05)
Constructing multiplicative reasoning is critical for students' learning of mathematics, particularly throughout the middle grades and beyond. Tzur, Xin, Si, Kenney, and Guebert [American Educational Research Association, ERIC No. ED510991, (2010)] conclude that an assimilatory composite unit is a conceptual spring to multiplicative reasoning. This study examines patterns in the percentages of students who construct multiplicative reasoning across the middle grades based on their fluency in operating with composite units. Multinomial logistic regression models indicate that students' rate of constructing an assimilatory composite unit but not multiplicative reasoning in sixth and seventh grades is significantly greater than that in eighth and ninth grades. Furthermore, the proportion of students who have constructed multiplicative reasoning in sixth and seventh grades is significantly less than the proportion of those who have constructed multiplicative reasoning in eighth and ninth grades. One implication of this is the quantitative verification of Tzur, Xin, Si, Kenney, and Guebert's (2010) conceptual spring. That is, students who construct assimilatory composite units early in the middle grades are likely to construct multiplicative reasoning; students who do not construct assimilatory composite units early in the middle grades likely do not construct multiplicative reasoning in the middle grades.
Technology helps students transcend part-whole concepts
Norton, Anderson H. III; Wilkins, Jesse L. M.; Evans, Michael A.; Deater-Deckard, Kirby; Balci, Osman; Chang, Mido (2014-02)
How would your students make sense of the fraction 5/7? Would they interpret it as 5 parts out of 7 equal parts? Could they also understand it as a piece that is 5 times as large as 1/7? The former interpretation aligns with part-whole conceptions, whereas the latter aligns with partitive conceptions. Steffe and Olive (2010) have made such distinctions in students’ fractional knowledge to explain why students experience difficulties with fractions and to help students overcome those difficulties. (For summaries of this work, see Norton and McCloskey 2008 and 2009.) We introduce an educational video game (application, or app) designed to promote students’ development of partitive understanding while demonstrating the critical need to promote that development. The app includes essential game features of immediate feedback, incentives, and summary information for refl ection and discussion (Evans et al. 2013).
Understanding pandemic pedagogy: Differences between emergency remote, remote, and online teaching
Barbour, Michael K.; LaBonte, Randy; Hodges, Charles B.; Moore, Stephanie; Lockee, Barbara B.; Trust, Torrey; Bond, Mark Aaron; Hill, Phil; Kelly, Kevin (2020-12-21)
In the spring of 2020, the term ‘emergency remote teaching’ began to emerge to describe what was occurring in education at all levels, despite the more commonly used term “online learning” dominating media descriptions of the instruction offered to students forced to remain at home. Hodges et al. (2020) described emergency remote teaching as an attempt not “to re-create a robust educational ecosystem but rather to provide temporary access to instruction and instructional supports in a manner that is quick to set up and is reliably available during an emergency or crisis” (¶ 13). As the new school year began, most education jurisdictions across Canada offered some combination of face-to-face, hybrid, and/or online instruction for students, including pre-existing online learning programs. Yet both designed and established online learning programs and the remote teaching offered by classroom teachers were still described by many as “online learning”, ignoring the clear differences between both instructional methods. This report is a collection of revised works from other scholars, primarily focused on the higher education context, adapted for the K-12 sector. These works include a recent article that was published in EDUCAUSE Review entitled “The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning” (Hodges et al., 2020); as well as a number of blog entries from PhilOnEdTech blog (Hill, 2020; Kelly, 2020a, 2020b; Moore & Hill, 2020). Throughout the report, we have attempted to identify each of the sections that relied upon these sources. Soon the COVID-19 threat will diminish, yet when it does we should not simply abandon remote teaching and return to our prior classroom-only practices without ensuring that we preserve the lessons of 2020 for future public health and safety issues. For example, in recent years school campuses have been closed due to natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and the polar vortex (Baytiyeh, 2018; Mackey et al., 2012; Samson, 2020; Watkins, 2005). As such, the possible need for remote teaching – in both emergency situations and more planned contexts – must become part of a teacher’s skill set. This report argues the importance of avoiding equating emergency remote teaching with online learning. It is clear from most schools and teacher’s experience with emergency remote teaching that much more planning and deliberate attention be provided to teacher preparation, infrastructure, education policy, and resources to be able to maintain quality instructional continuity during a crisis. This report offers recommendations for how schools can be better prepared for future crises that incorporate both home-based and school-based learning opportunities mediated through online learning environments. While it is clear that schools remain a good place for children to be supported in their emotional growth and learning, with proper planning and good communication, homes and communities outside of school walls can be as well.

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