Developing the scales on evaluation beliefs of student teachers

The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to investigate the validity and the reliability of a newly developed questionnaire named ‘Teacher Evaluation Beliefs’ (TEB). The framework for developing items was provided by the two models. The first model focuses on Student-Centered and Teacher-Centered beliefs about evaluation while the other centers on five dimensions (what/ who/ when/ why/ how). The validity and reliability of the new instrument was investigated using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis study (n=446). Overall results indicate that the two-factor structure is more reasonable than the five-factor one. Further research needs additional items about the latent dimensions “what” ”who” ”when” ”why” “how” for each existing factor based on Student-centered and Teacher-centered approaches

2006 Eighteenth Annual IMSA Presentation Day

We believe that our goal of creating decidedly-different learners is already being met and will make a profound impact on the future of humanity.https://digitalcommons.imsa.edu/archives_sir/1020/thumbnail.jp

Practitioner Inquiry: Teaching literacy with English language learners

This qualitative research examines a practitioner inquiry group comprised of teachers of English Language Learners (ELLs) with the following research questions in mind: What happens when a group of ESL teachers collaborate in a dialogically inspired professional development context to learn about navigating discussion with complex texts and their ELL students? How does teacher learning evolve and address the complexities of the teacher/learner discourse under discussion in the professional development inquiry? What are the thematic and discursive contours of teaching and learning in this professional development context? In what ways will lesson development be relevant to the needs of those in the practitioners’ settings? This study documents the concerns, strengths, and weaknesses that ELL teachers express about teaching ELLs’ literacy through an examination of teachers’ experiences over eight months of group sessions. Dialogic teaching is presented in the inquiry as a lens to compare and contrast teachers’ ideas about their engagement with ELLs in comprehending complex texts in literacy learning. Data sources include (1) digital recordings of initial interviews, (2) field notes and digital recordings of group meetings, (3) digital recordings of exit focus group, (4) transcripts of observed lessons, (5) digital recordings of debriefing interviews after observations, (6) a case study of two teachers in their classrooms, and (7) the researcher’s reflexive journal. Case studies of two teachers include additional classroom observations and in-depth interviews. Data analysis tools included narrative structure (Gee, 2011; Labov & Waletzky, 1987), critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992; Rogers 2011), and grounded theory techniques (Strauss & Corbin, 2008). Findings show that practitioners’ discourse changed to include more positive appraisals of their students’ classroom discussions after working through readings about dialogic teaching (Alexander, 2008; Boyd & Markarian, 2011; Reznitskaya, 2012; Wells, 2002). An awareness of how EL students are positioned in higher education is revealed with an understanding of the complex nuances of English language practitioner discourse. This research adds to existing scholarship in professional development for English language teachers and in-service teachers as well as to narratives about teaching literacy with ELLs

Fostering Critical Thinking: Generative processing strategies to learn to avoid bias in reasoning

This dissertation focuses on fostering learning and transfer of critical thinking skills of higher education students. It has been investigated which instructional methods are effective in promoting an essential aspect of critical thinking, that is, the ability to avoid bias in reasoning and decision making

Automatically learning topics and difficulty levels of problems in online judge systems

Online Judge (OJ) systems have been widely used in many areas, including programming, mathematical problems solving, and job interviews. Unlike other online learning systems, such as Massive Open Online Course, most OJ systems are designed for self-directed learning without the intervention of teachers. Also, in most OJ systems, problems are simply listed in volumes and there is no clear organization of them by topics or difficulty levels. As such, problems in the same volume are mixed in terms of topics or difficulty levels. By analyzing large-scale users’ learning traces, we observe that there are two major learning modes (or patterns). Users either practice problems in a sequential manner from the same volume regardless of their topics or they attempt problems about the same topic, which may spread across multiple volumes. Our observation is consistent with the findings in classic educational psychology. Based on our observation, we propose a novel two-mode Markov topic model to automatically detect the topics of online problems by jointly characterizing the two learning modes. For further predicting the difficulty level of online problems, we propose a competition-based expertise model using the learned topic information. Extensive experiments on three large OJ datasets have demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach in three different tasks, including skill topic extraction, expertise competition prediction and problem recommendation

Metamodel for personalized adaptation of pedagogical strategies using metacognition in Intelligent Tutoring Systems

The modeling process of metacognitive functions in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) is a difficult and time-consuming task. In particular when the integration of several metacognitive components, such as self-regulation and metamemory is needed. Metacognition has been used in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve the performance of complex systems such as ITS. However the design ITS with metacognitive capabilities is a complex task due to the number and complexity of processes involved. The modeling process of ITS is in itself a difficult task and often requires experienced designers and programmers, even when using authoring tools. In particular the design of the pedagogical strategies for an ITS is complex and requires the interaction of a number of variables that define it as a dynamic process. This doctoral thesis presents a metamodel for the personalized adaptation of pedagogical strategies integrating metamemory and self-regulation in ITS. The metamodel called MPPSM (Metamodel of Personalized adaptation of Pedagogical Strategies using Metacognition in intelligent tutoring systems) was synthetized from the analysis of 40 metacognitive models and 45 ITS models that exist in the literature. MPPSMhas a conceptual architecture with four levels of modeling according to the standard Meta- Object Facility (MOF) of Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) methodology. MPPSM enables designers to have modeling tools in early stage of software development process to produce more robust ITS that are able to self-regulate their own reasoning and learning processes. In this sense, a concrete syntax composed of a graphic notation called M++ was defined in order to make the MPPSM metamodel more usable. M++ is a Domain-Specific Visual Language (DSVL) for modeling metacognition in ITS. M++ has approximately 20 tools for modeling metacognitive systems with introspective monitoring and meta-level control. MPPSM allows the generation of metacognitive models using M++ in a visual editor named MetaThink. In MPPSM-based models metacognitive components required for monitoring and executive control of the reasoning processes take place in each module of an ITS can be specified. MPPSM-based models represent the cycle of reasoning of an ITS about: (i) failures generated in its own reasoning tasks (e.g. self-regulation); and (ii) anomalies in events that occur in its Long-Term Memory (LTM) (e.g. metamemory). A prototype of ITS called FUNPRO was developed for the validation of the performance of metacognitive mechanism of MPPSM in the process of the personalization of pedagogical strategies regarding to the preferences and profiles of real students. FUNPRO uses self-regulation to monitor and control the processes of reasoning at object-level and metamemory for the adaptation to changes in the constraints of information retrieval tasks from LTM. The major contributions of this work are: (i) the MOF-based metamodel for the personalization of pedagogical strategies using computational metacognition in ITS; (ii) the M++ DSVL for modeling metacognition in ITS; and (iii) the ITS prototype called FUNPRO (FUNdamentos de PROgramación) that aims to provide personalized instruction in the subject of Introduction to Programming. The results given in the experimental tests demonstrate: (i) metacognitive models generated are consistent with the MPPSM metamodel; (ii) positive perceptions of users with respect to the proposed DSVL and it provide preliminary information concerning the quality of the concrete syntax of M++; (iii) in FUNPRO, multi-level pedagogical model enhanced with metacognition allows the dynamic adaptation of the pedagogical strategy according to the profile of each student.Doctorad

Un Retrato de Comunidad: A Portrait of a Community-Based Spanish Heritage Language Program in the New Latinx South

Over the past 30 years, the United States has experienced rapid Latinization. At the same time, bilingual education rights that often benefited Latinx students in schools have been rolled back. These two concurrent phenomena have only served to widen the opportunity gap between Latinx students and their White peers. To complicate matters, many Latinxs are settling in new arrival areas (such as the Midwest and the Southeast), which do not have a long-standing history of Latinx residents. The newly emerging and rapidly growing Latinx populations in the New Latinx Diaspora are presenting new challenges for both Latinx individuals and local institutions (Darder & Torres, 2015; Irizarry, 2011; Wortham et al., 2002). Across the nation, teachers are underprepared to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students, but this is more pronounced in new arrival areas (Cadiero-Kaplan & Rodríguez, 2008; Face the Facts USA, 2013; García, 2009; García & Kleifgen, 2010; Orosco, 2010). This research study employed portraiture methodology to investigate how a non-profit, community-based Spanish heritage language program (SALT) operates in the New Latinx South. This study also sought to discover how Latinx families leverage their Community Cultural Wealth to provide extracurricular supports for students. Portraits of the SALT community and its members were created and analyzed, in conjunction with other data, to illuminate how families and supporters experience the program. This study revealed that SALT community members see the Spanish heritage language program as (a) a means to increase linguistic capital, thereby granting access to other forms of Community Cultural Wealth, and (b) a physical space of community for its participants. This study, using Critical Race Theory (CRT) of education (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Solórzano & Yosso, 2001; Yosso, Villalpando, Delgado Bernal, & Solórzano, 2001) and Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001) lenses, brings into focus the ways that neoliberal language ideologies inform elements of the program's functioning and perceived value, reinforcing hegemonic linguistic practices. Findings from this research study may have implications for the implementation and development of similar programs, including the incorporation of critical pedagogies to transform the program into a radical third space (Bhabha, 1994; Fitts, 2009; Hinman & He, 2017; Moje et al., 2004). This research will contribute to the body of literature about Latinx education (particularly in the New Latinx South), bilingualism, Spanish heritage language development, and community-based programs targeted to Latinx students and families.Doctor of Philosoph