DEVELOPING COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT JUDGMENT: USING ONLINE PROGRESSIVE CASES TO INTRODUCE REALISTIC AND UNEXPECTED CHALLENGES

A project is a finite activity aimed at producing a tangible product or service. Designing and developing instruction is a type of project. Instructional design projects (design projects) require instructional designers (IDs) to manage multiple and often overlapping work tasks, balance the triple constraint (time, budget, and quality), and react to project changes. Thus, project management (PM) is a critical aspect of instructional designer competencies. Traditionally, professional development (PD) involves the use of cases that present a complex, realistic problem for learners to discuss. Most of these cases are static; the problem does not change during the learning process. Static cases do not engage learners in anticipating and resolving project changes, including client requests for scope additions, or changes in budget or timelines; therefore, novice IDs and project managers (PMs) are often ill-prepared to work on real-world, complex, dynamic projects. PD should engage learners in thought and action around messy project problems. Zingers, realistic and unexpected challenges, were introduced while graduate students were developing a PM plan for a design project. These zingers were designed to simulate the complex, dynamic real-world practice of PM within instructional design (ID) work. This dissertation study aimed to inform the design of instruction to develop the expert-like thinking strategies and practice strategies required to respond to unexpected events and solve messy problems. The case study research method (CSRM) was used to describe the learning process during the progressive case by tracking participants’ flexible thinking (cognitive flexibility [CF]) and PM judgment in thought and action dimensions over a semester. In general, the selected teams approached the zingers differently. In most cases, teams made optimistic assumptions, did not balance constraints, and submitted PM plans with internal inconsistencies. While teams had difficulty executing responses to unexpected changes on their PM plans, they exhibited flexible thinking and an understanding of PM concepts in their reflections and discussions. Thus, participants demonstrated more CF than PM judgment, and their thoughts exhibited more CF and PM judgment than their actions

Retrieval-, Distributed-, and Interleaved Practice in the Classroom:A Systematic Review

Three of the most effective learning strategies identified are retrieval practice, distributed practice, and interleaved practice, also referred to as desirable difficulties. However, it is yet unknown to what extent these three practices foster learning in primary and secondary education classrooms (as opposed to the laboratory and/or tertiary education classrooms, where most research is conducted) and whether these strategies affect different students differently. To address these gaps, we conducted a systematic review. Initial and detailed screening of 869 documents found in a threefold search resulted in a pool of 29 journal articles published from 2006 through June 2020. Seventy-five effect sizes nested in 47 experiments nested in 29 documents were included in the review. Retrieval- and interleaved practice appeared to benefit students’ learning outcomes quite consistently; distributed practice less so. Furthermore, only cognitive Student*Task characteristics (i.e., features of the student’s cognition regarding the task, such as initial success) appeared to be significant moderators. We conclude that future research further conceptualising and operationalising initial effort is required, as is a differentiated approach to implementing desirable difficulties

Capturing the interconnected and interpersonal nature of emotion concepts: implications for social-emotional learning

The current multimethod study adopts a developmental perspective to address how emotional learning relates to social learning and its import to education settings. The aim is to add to the social-emotional learning (SEL) literature by setting precedent for future research on how we identify emotions in others that simultaneously addresses the roles of language, temperament/personality, and interpersonal accuracy (IA). Three studies were undertaken to approach the main research question via different lenses. The first, a systematic review and meta-analysis of intervention studies with SEL programmes universally implemented in Primary Years 4 to 6, addressed the question of how emotions have been ‘taught’ in primary schools in the past decade, and whether SEL programme participation directly promotes child emotion understanding (EU). The second study, a linguistic analysis of child-produced emotion definitions, explored the relationship between emotion representation and emotion language across middle childhood. The third study focused on the impact of emotion representation on IA in a sample of first- and final-year undergraduates, and potential links with personality, the ability to identify and describe one’s own emotional states, and sense of social connectedness. Results: A total of 54 studies were included in the review (Study 1) based on the presence of an SEL programme targeting a specific aspect of EU and transparent reporting of programme components. EU areas most frequently targeted were: ‘Recognition’ (38 programmes), ‘Regulation’ (33 programmes), ‘Decision/Action’ (33 programmes), ‘External Cause’ (30 programmes), and ‘Belief’ (26 programmes). A sub-set of 20 studies from the systematic review were included in the meta-analysis that indicated SEL programme participation had a small positive impact on child EU (Hedge’s g = 0.22) as compared to a control group. Study 2 was a small-scale corpus analysis of 1,239 definitions of 27 emotions produced by 49 children (Mage = 9.24; SD = .75; 46.9% Female). All emotion words appearing in definitions co-occurred with at least one additional emotion term. Emotion term co-occurrence patterns were also operationalized as a ‘blend score.’ A significant regression equation was found between emotion term co-occurrence and non-emotional mental state term (MST) production (F(1, 47)= 20.879, p less than .001) with an R2 of .308; average MST production increased by 1.233 for each average blend score. Independent samples t-tests indicated a statistically significant difference based on gender for average MST production (t(47) = -2.811, p = .007), with female children producing more MSTs across emotion definitions as compared to male children, but there was no statistically significant relationship between gender and emotion blend score. Thematic analysis indicated that common topics across child emotion definitions included: interpersonal dynamics (e.g., rejection, conflict), experiencing a non-social situation (e.g., a disappointing/negative event), non-emotional human behaviour (e.g., sleeping), and performing an activity (primarily leisure, such as playing or reading a book). Study 3, an online cross-sectional study with a sample of 150 undergraduates (67.3% Female; Mage = 19.93, SD = 2.05), found a small positive relationship between an emotion language manipulation (i.e., condition) on the researcher-developed IA task and below-average trait-based behaviour prediction accuracy (rs(148) = .18, p = .025). General difficulty appraising one’s feelings predicted self-reported levels of social connectedness (R2 = 0.147, F(1, 148) = 25.431, p less than .001), and was inversely correlated with personality dimensions—specifically participant ‘Extraversion’ (r(148) = -.19, p = .020) and ‘Agreeableness’ (rs(148) = -.20, p = .016). Social connectedness was also positively correlated with certain participant personality dimensions including ‘Agreeableness’ (rs(148) = .26, p = .001) and ‘Extraversion’ (r(148) = .29, p less than .001). Conclusions: The three studies provide preliminary evidence in support of: a) the positive impact of SEL programme participation across middle childhood on EU development (Study 1); b) the interrelated nature of emotion concepts across middle childhood, the importance of context for anchoring EU, and a relationship between gender and MST production rates in emotion definitions across middle childhood (Study 2); and c) positive relationships between levels of social connectedness, the ability to describe and identify one’s own emotional states, and personality in young adults (Study 3). To the researcher’s knowledge, this study is the first to: a) identify trends in how emotions have been taught across middle childhood by synthesizing SEL intervention literature to reflect broader emotion socialization practices in schools; b) provide statistically significant evidence of the direct impact of SEL programme participation on the development of child emotion understanding; c) provide evidence of spontaneous emotion term co-occurrence across definitions in order to stress the inter-relational dimension of emotion concepts from the child’s perspective, a consideration often lacking in SEL literature and programme content; and d) to directly explore the impact of emotion representation on IA. By ‘inter-relational’ is meant the interconnected nature of emotion concepts within a representational system as well as the primacy of social experience in forming the conceptual understanding of emotions. In addition to findings, contributions to the field include the creation of a corpus of child emotion definitions, a data visualization protocol for translating emotion term co-occurrence patterns found in emotion definitions into network maps that highlight interrelationships amongst emotion concepts, and a new IA task that captures personality trait attribution, trait-based behaviour predictions, and trait covariance ratings. Implications for the promotion of social-emotional development in classroom settings (in particular the need to consider the classroom’s social-emotional reality pre-intervention) and the potential for student well-being are discussed, in addition to how SEL as a field can embrace individual and cross-cultural differences in understanding SEL programme implementation

The impact of mathematics teaching efficacy on teachers’ pedagogical practices

This study explores the pedagogical practices of 167 Year 4 and 160 Year 8 New Zealand mathematics teachers who have different levels of mathematics teaching efficacy. Using data from the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement 2013, the teacher questionnaire items believed to be the indicators of mathematics teaching efficacy were selected, represented by six items such as “I feel confident about teaching maths”. Then, low, mid, and high efficacious teachers were identified and compared to see how they differed with respect to their teaching profile and the frequency they used effective pedagogies when teaching mathematics (italicised below) (Anthony & Walshaw, 2007). Twenty eight percent of Year 4 and 41% of Year 8 teachers had high mathematics teaching efficacy. Compared with the other teachers, teachers with high mathematics teaching efficacy were better able to provide an ethic of care in their classroom, they more frequently arranged their classrooms for learning to enable students to collaborate, and more frequently expected their students to communicate their thinking and debate ideas with others. They more frequently provided students with worthwhile mathematical tasks, they more frequently provided opportunities for their students to build on their own thinking, and to explore how new learning linked to or changed what they already knew. They more frequently expected their students to make mathematical connections by reflecting on their learning, to use multiple representations, and use ideas and skills from different curriculum areas

Conditions Supporting the Development of Scientific Argumentation in High School Chemistry Classrooms: The Role of Question Prompts and an Interactive Simulation

The purpose of this case study was to provide benefit to preservice and inservice science teachers, who have an interest in applying scientific argumentation in their high school chemistry instructions, by investigating role of question prompts and an interactive simulation supporting the development of scientific argumentation. In particular, the study examined the quality of students’ arguments changing over time in scientific argumentation when they constructed and defended their arguments using the “Gas Properties” computer simulation. For this purpose, forty-seven11th grade students from four classes first worked in pairs and then, all the pairs returned the classroom for discussion. One pair was selected as a focal group by their chemistry teachers within each class resulting in a total of four focal groups. The chemistry teachers posed the driving question of Part I to familiarize students with scientific argumentation while exploring the effect of gravity on the behavior of air molecules in space. Then, the teachers challenged the students with the driving question of Part II to help students construct and defend more elaborate scientific arguments while comparing the behaviors of air and Helium molecules in space. I examined what type of arguments participants found convincing and also searched which conditions (i.e. challenged by the driving question, counter-arguments, peer question or self-questions, or prompted by representation of investigation, teacher questions, or similar arguments) helped students to improve their arguments in scientific argumentation. The results depicted that in pair discussions, argumentation was a way of participants’ collectively supporting a scientific claim based on evidence from the interactive simulation and trying to agree on conclusions drawn from this evidence. Though, only two focal groups generated the highest quality of arguments with the waxing and waning amount of consensus over time from Part I to Part II. On the other hand, in classroom discussions focal groups tried to win their opponents over to their points of view and to weaken opposing views with making their evidence visible on the interactive simulation, which led four focal groups to produce the highest quality of arguments from Part I to Part II

Improving Hybrid Brainstorming Outcomes with Scripting and Group Awareness Support

Previous research has shown that hybrid brainstorming, which combines individual and group methods, generates more ideas than either approach alone. However, the quality of these ideas remains similar across different methods. This study, guided by the dual-pathway to creativity model, tested two computer-supported scaffolds – scripting and group awareness support – for enhancing idea quality in hybrid brainstorming. 94 higher education students,grouped into triads, were tasked with generating ideas in three conditions. The Control condition used standard hybrid brainstorming without extra support. In the Experimental 1 condition, students received scripting support during individual brainstorming, and students in the Experimental 2 condition were provided with group awareness support during the group phase in addition. While the quantity of ideas was similar across all conditions, the Experimental 2 condition produced ideas of higher quality, and the Experimental 1 condition also showed improved idea quality in the individual phase compared to the Control condition

Technology to promote concept-based, active learning and enable education research

This dissertation centers on development of two web-based, in class learning tools, the AIChE Concept Warehouse (CW) and the Web-based Interactive Science and Engineering Learning Tool (WISE), and describes the investigation of student learning through their use. The intent of these tools is to promote deeper conceptual understanding in students through engaging them in active learning pedagogies in the classroom. While the tools provide many useful features, this dissertation will focus primarily on a line of research into activities afforded by the technology’s ability to facilitate the presentation of concept questions to individual students in class and the subsequent collection of student responses in the form of multiple-choice answer selections and associated short written reflections justifying that answer choice. The dissertation presents four studies that investigate aspects of student learning using these tools in the active learning classroom. The first study investigates a structured pedagogy called peer instruction. In peer instruction students first answer a question individually, then form small groups where they discuss their answers and explain their reasoning, and finally re-answer the same question individually. The effect of displaying a histogram of responses to the class of their individual answer selections before group discussion is investigated. It found that students improve their understanding when engaging in peer instruction even if they answered correctly at first and that students tend to change to the popular answer irrespective of the histogram. It also found that even though the histogram does not appear to influence correct answer selections, it did influence self-reported confidence ratings. The second study uses a crossover experimental design to investigate the influence of prompting students to write an explanation justifying their answer choice when they respond individually. Results show improved thinking with written explanations. It argues that improved thinking is prompted by the students’ construction of logical arguments to justify their answer choices. The third and fourth studies further explore written explanations. The third illustrates the novel use of word clouds as a quick analysis method for large quantities of written explanations, and describes the integration of that feature into the CW. The fourth study characterizes the amount of time that it takes for students to answer questions. The results show that response time is affected by writing an explanation, whether students chose the correct multiple choice answer or not, and the question difficulty. Finally, some preliminary data are presented on developing a psychometric measure, based on modified Item Response Theory (IRT), to provide an automated mechanism of question quality control in the CW