Novice Therapist Responsiveness: Description and Development

There is increasing empirical evidence that psychotherapy is very effective when therapists tailor interventions in ways that fit their clients’ difficulties and needs (Kramer, 2009; Snyder & Silberschatz, 2017), a concept that has been named “therapist responsiveness” in the psychotherapy literature (Bacal, 1985; Stiles, Honos-Webb, & Surko, 1998). However, the question of how therapists learn to be responsive rarely has been addressed in research (Hatcher, 2015). The central question of this study was, “How did you learn how to be responsive to clients as a novice therapist, and in what ways are you responsive?” Eleven graduate student therapist trainees were recruited. Phone interviews were conducted in a semi-structured style to ask novice therapists from clinical and counseling psychology Masters-level and doctoral programs to describe their experiences. A grounded-theory approach was used to create themes from the qualitative data. The analysis showed that trainees learned to improve their responsiveness to clients by: (1) becoming more aware of cues related to psychotherapy processes, in client-therapist dynamics, and clients’ identities and contexts; (2) managing their own emotions and engaging in self-care; and (3) adopting mindsets that facilitated trying new relational or therapy approaches while also considering professional boundaries. The implications of these findings to help training programs improve teaching about responsiveness and optimize supports for trainees’ providing responsive treatment were discussed

Critiquing Antipatterns In Novice Code

Students in introductory computer science courses, are learning to program. Indeed, most students perceive that learning to code is the central topic explored in the courses. Students spend an enormous amount of time struggling to learn the syntax and understand semantics of a particular language. Instructors spend a similar amount of time reading student code and explaining the meaning of the cryptic error messages displayed by compilers. Messages provided by compilers are intended to give feedback on the adherence of one’s code to the language specification and conventions. Unfortunately, these message are geared towards experts who have a clear understanding of the language syntax and semantics and a deep model of what comprises a program and how a program is developed. These students are novices who lack fundamental understanding of the structure of a program and have no basic mental model of how a program works. Novices make different kinds of mistakes than experts. Instructors need to spend a lot of time simply assisting novices in using compilers and understanding their output. In addition to mastering the syntax and semantics of their first programming language, novices are exposed to the question of what constitutes good design. Instructors can identify virtuous design choices and articulate areas of improvement. But contact time with students is limited, and waiting for in-person feedback or replies to personal messages can be a critical delay. Novices, still struggling to use the compiler, have not yet developed the sophisticated analytical processes employed by experts and this is reflected in their design choices and the kinds of mistakes they make. When a novice approaches an instructor with a question, the instructor must often provide a balanced critique that assists the student with understanding both the structure and the design aspects of their own code. My research has focused on whether we can identify examples of early programming antipatterns that have arisen from our teaching experience, and describe different ways of detecting them automatically. Novice students may produce code that is close to a correct solution but contains syntactic errors; code critiquers attempt to salvage the promising portions of the students submission and suggest repairs in ways more meaningful than typical compiler error messages. Alternatively, a student misunderstanding may result in well-formed code that passes unit tests yet contains clear design flaws; through additional analysis, code critiquers can detect and flag these flaws. Finally, certain types of antipatterns can be anticipated and flagged by the instructor, based on the context of the course and the programming activity; code critiquers allow for customizable critique triggers and messages. This dissertation presents several key contributions to our understanding of novice misconceptions and their representation, diagnosis and repair using antipatterns. My research focuses on identifying antipatterns and detecting them in novice code, then using this information to provide the student with a meaningful critique of their work. I have developed WebTA, a tool to critique student programs in introductory computer science courses. WebTA is used to teach students test-driven agile development methods through small cycles of teaching, coding integrated with testing, and immediate feedback.Through the use of WebTA in introductory computer science courses since 2014, I have amassed a significant corpus of novice programmer submission data. Lastly, I have compiled a library of antipatterns found in novice code

Teachers’ perceptions of their own classroom management:

This case study investigated the experiences of teachers in an urban, Midwestern high school. Specifically, student teachers, novice teachers (1-3 years of experience), and veteran teachers (4+ years of experience) reflected on the perceptions of their own classroom management. The data for this study included classroom observations, field notes, and personal communication with 25 participants. The uniqueness of this study compared to other published research stems from my dual role as both researcher and teacher at the case site. The data informed a grounded theory of how teachers perceived their own experiences throughout the various stages of teaching. The central theoretical premises of this analysis relied Goffman’s dramaturgy and moral career, van Gennep and Turner’s rites of passage, and Dreyfus’ skill acquisition model. Analysis of the data identified classroom management issues as a significant stressor in a teacher’s career. The presence of a formal building mentor helped alleviate a negative perception of self. Although the mentor was found to be essential in the early stages of teachers’ careers, veteran teachers also indicated a need for support and guidance

Beyond Automated Assessment: Building Metacognitive Awareness in Novice Programmers in CS1

The primary task of learning to program in introductory computer science courses (CS1) cognitively overloads novices and must be better supported. Several recent studies have attempted to address this problem by understanding the role of metacognitive awareness in novices learning programming. These studies have focused on teaching metacognitive awareness to students by helping them understand the six stages of learning so students can know where they are in the problem-solving process, but these approaches are not scalable. One way to address scalability is to implement features in an automated assessment tool (AAT) that build metacognitive awareness in novice programmers. Currently, AATs that provide feedback messages to students can be said to implement the fifth and sixth learning stages integral to metacognitive awareness: implement solution (compilation) and evaluate implemented solution (test cases). The computer science education (CSed) community is actively engaged in research on the efficacy of compile error messages (CEMs) and how best to enhance them to maximize student learning and it is currently heavily disputed whether or not enhanced compile error messages (ECEMs) in AATs actually improve student learning. The discussion on the effectiveness of ECEMs in AATs remains focused on only one learning stage critical to metacognitive awareness in novices: implement solution. This research carries out an ethnomethodologically-informed study of CS1 students via think-aloud studies and interviews in order to propose a framework for designing an AAT that builds metacognitive awareness by supporting novices through all six stages of learning. The results of this study provide two important contributions. The first is the confirmation that ECEMs that are designed from a human-factors approach are more helpful for students than standard compiler error messages. The second important contribution is that the results from the observations and post-assessment interviews revealed the difficulties novice programmers often face to developing metacognitive awareness when using an AAT. Understanding these barriers revealed concrete ways to help novice programmers through all six stages of the problem-solving process. This was presented above as a framework of features, which when implemented properly, provides a scalable way to implicitly produce metacognitive awareness in novice programmers

An Exploration of Student Reasoning about Undergraduate Computer Science Concepts: An Active Learning Technique to Address Misconceptions

Computer science (CS) is a popular but often challenging major for undergraduates. As the importance of computing in the US and world economies continues to grow, the demand for successful CS majors grows accordingly. However, retention rates are low, particularly for under-represented groups such as women and racial minorities. Computing education researchers have begun to investigate causes and explore interventions to improve the success of CS students, from K-12 through higher education. In the undergraduate CS context, for example; student difficulties with pointers, functions, loops, and control flow have been observed. We and others have utilized student responses to multiple choice questions aimed at determining misconceptions, engaged in retroactive examination of code samples and design artifacts, and conducted interviews in an attempt to understand the nature of these problems. Interventions to address these problems often apply evidenced-based active learning techniques in CS classrooms as a way to engage students and improve learning.In this work, I employ a human-centered approach, one in which the focus of data collection is on the student thought processes as evidenced in their speech and writing. I seek to determine what students are thinking not only through what can be surmised in retrospect from the artifacts they create, but also to gain insight into their thoughts as they engage in the design, implementation,and analysis of those artifacts and as they reflect on those processes and artifacts shortly after. For my dissertation work, I have conducted four studies: 1. a conceptual assessment survey asking students to “Please explain your reasoning” after each answer to code tracing/execution questions followed by task-based interviews with a smaller, different group of students 2. a “coding in the wild” think aloud study that recorded the screen and audio of students as they implemented a simple program and explained their thought process 3. interview analyses of student design diagrams/documentation in a software engineering course, tasking students to explain their designs and comparing what they believed they had designed with what is actually shown from their submitted documentation. These first three studies were formative, leading to some key insights including the benefits students can gain from feedback, students’ tendencies to avoid complexity when programming or encountering concepts they do not fully grasp, the nature of student struggles with the planning stages of problem solving, and insight into the fragile understanding of some key CS concepts that students form. I leverage the benefits of feedback with guided prompts using the misconceptions uncovered in my formative studies to conduct a final, evaluative study. This study seeks to evaluate the benefits that can be gained from a guided feedback intervention for learning introductory programming concepts and compare those benefits and the effort and resource costs associated with each variation, comparing the costs and benefits associated with two forms of feedback. The first is an active learning technique I developed and deem misconception-based feedback (MBF), which has peers working in pairs use prompts based on misconceptions to guide their discussion of a recently completed coding assignment. The second is a human autograder (HAG) group acting as a control. HAG simulates typical autograders, supplying test cases and correct solutions, but utilizes a human stand-in for a computer. In both conditions, one student uses provided prompts to guide the discussion. The other student responds/interacts with their code based on the prompts. I captured screen and audio recordings of these discussions. Participants completed conceptual pre-tests and post-tests that asked them to explain their reasoning. I hypothesized that the MBF intervention will offer avaluable way to increase learning, address misconceptions, and get students more engaged that will be feasible in CS courses of any size and have benefits over the HAG intervention. Results show that for questions involving parameter passing with regards to pass by reference versus pass by value semantics, particularly with pointers, there were significant improvements in learning outcomes for the MBF group but not the HAG group

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance as a Site for Adolescent Social-Emotional and Political Development

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values of Hip hop dance history relate to adolescents’ uses of multimodal Hip hop dance discourses. Social-emotional development is defined herein through intrapersonal and interpersonal processes which give a child the ability to establish positive and rewarding relationships with others; with which children experience, express, and manage their emotions (Cohen, Onunaku, Clothier, & Poppe 2005). Social-emotional development, according to the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2004), permits a child to have the ability to (1) identify and understand one’s own feelings, (2) to accurately read and comprehend emotional states in others, (3) to manage strong emotions and their expression in a constructive manner, (4) to regulate one’s own behavior, (5) to develop empathy for others, and (6) to establish and maintain relationships (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2004).Critical consciousness is defined herein as a sociopolitical tool in education which engages learners to question the nature of their historical and social situation by providing learners with a critical lens for reading the world (Freire, 1970; Freire, 1973). Freire defined the goal of critical consciousness, to be that students act as subjects in the creation of a democratic society (Freire, 1970; Freire, 1973). Freire implies an intergenerational equity in education between students and teachers in which both learn, question, reflect and participate in meaning-making (Freire, 1970; Freire, 1973; Mustakova-Possardt, 2003). I used an activity-meaning system research design that involved sampling discourses across Hip hop dance history and sampling various discursive expressions by adolescents participating in different Hip hop programs. This study sampled adolescents in a cross-sectional design sampling novice, intermediate and advanced dancers. Novice dancers were sampled from a large northeastern urban non-profit organization, intermediates were sampled from a public charter school in the American Southwest, and advanced dancers were sampled from a 2nd generation historic Hip hop dance crew in New York City. This activity meaning system design included Hip hop dance pledges. The written genre included both a peak dance moment in narrative format and an I dance because essay. Teams of dancers were prompted to choreograph a dance routine with a social justice theme for the United Nations as their audience. Dancers were asked to perform an evocative, political piece about a social justice issue of their choosing (i.e. poverty, domestic violence, abuse, trauma, discrimination and/or racism). This dissertation compares data collected from written genres and dance video recordings of the performed choreography in order to compare across the written and movement modes of dance expression and also between varying levels of cultural expertise. I analyzed this database of texts, videos, and transcripts with values analysis. Values are principles people strive to live by, enduring moral codes, norms or cultural cues that are believed (Daiute, 2014). Therefore, as a method of narrative inquiry, values analysis is a way to identify narrative meaning as guided by worldview and interaction in the environment (Daiute, 2014). The major findings of this research are presented in three results chapters that describe and discuss values expressed across the activity meaning system, mode and genre, and level of expertise. I have also included a fourth chapter on preliminary results based on pilot data from the novice participants of this study. Values across participant discourses in the activity meaning system differed substantially, with major differences between global, institutional and individual stakeholders (Group A) in comparison to local stakeholders (Group B). Local stakeholders valued relationship skills, emotional expression, self-awareness, and preservation and development whereas the global, institutional and individual stakeholders (as measured in the pledges) valued preservation, critical consciousness and social-awareness. These differences showcase a distinction between dominant values of stakeholder Group A which values only socio-cultural values, in comparison to Group B which values both socio-cultural and social-emotional values. Results also indicate discrepancies between value frequencies across genres: pledges, written and dance. Preservation was most dominant in the pledges, self-awareness was most dominant in the written genre, and relationship skills was most dominant in the dance genre. There was a difference between the dominant values across written modes with preservation being 14.9% more frequent in essays than narratives, and self-awareness being 15.2% more frequent in the narratives than essays. These differences are important to note since they explicate why Hip hop dance provides affordances through multimodal expression. Results mean that the various modes of Hip hop dance expression are multifaceted and that the complex meaning system permits the development of various capabilities and skills. Results of the study by level of expertise were multifaceted with critical consciousness emerging across all levels of expertise only in the dance genre. Critical consciousness, defined above, consistently emerges across all dancers only in the dance genre. This results means that there is something about the activity of dancing in communities (i.e. the embodied act of performing dance captured in the video genre here) that stimulates critical consciousness among dancers. These findings have implications for educational, therapeutic and civic interventions with adolescent dance communities and also for the preservation and development of Hip hop dance culture

Teachers of Color and Urban Charter Schools: Race, School Culture, and Teacher Turnover in the Charter Sector

This article explores working conditions in charter schools with varying rates of teacher turnover. Ethnographic data with 28 racially diverse teachers explores teachers’ experiences, their explanations for moving charter schools, and patterns of movement when teachers leave a charter school for another school. A brief conceptual framework was used to understand multiple dimensions of working conditions in charter schools for teachers of color. Findings indicate teachers most often made structural moves between charter types, primarily from charters managed by nonprofit organizations to standalone charter schools. Teachers of color describe tensions with sociocultural conditions that limited culturally inclusive practices. Discussion includes implications for policies that push to replicate charter schools in communities of color, particularly schools with poor working conditions associated with high turnover and weak propensities to retain teachers of color

public class Graphic_Design implements Code { // Yes, but how? }: An investigation towards bespoke Creative Coding programming courses in graphic design education

Situated in the intersection of graphic design, computer science, and pedagogy, this dissertation investigates how programming is taught within graphic design education. The research adds to the understanding of the process, practice, and challenges associated with introducing an audience of visually inclined practitioners—who are often guided by instinct—to the formal and unforgiving world of syntax, algorithms, and logic. Motivating the research is a personal desire to contribute towards the development of bespoke contextualized syllabi specifically designed to accommodate how graphic designers learn, understand, and use programming as an integral skill in their vocational practice.The initial literature review identifies a gap needing to be filled to increase both practical and theoretical knowledge within the interdisciplinary field of computational graphic design. This gap concerns a lack of solid, empirically based epistemological frameworks for teaching programming to non-programmers in a visual context, partly caused by a dichotomy in traditional pedagogical practices associated with teaching programming and graphic design, respectively. Based on this gap, the overarching research question posed in this dissertation is: “How should programming ideally be taught to graphic designers to account for how they learn and how they intend to integrate programming into their vocational practice?”A mixed methods approach using both quantitative and qualitative analyses is taken to answer the research questions. The three papers comprising the dissertation are all built on individual hypotheses that are subsequently used to define three specific research questions.Paper 1 performs a quantitative mapping of contemporary, introductory programming courses taught in design schools to establish a broader understanding of their structure and content. The paper concludes that most courses are planned to favor programming concepts rather than graphic design concepts. The paper’s finding can serve as a point of departure for a critical discussion among researchers and educators regarding the integration of programming in graphic design education.Paper 2 quantitatively assesses how the learning style profile of graphic design students compares with that of students in technical disciplines. The paper identifies a number of significant differences that call for a variety of pedagogic and didactic strategies to be employed by educators to effectively teach programming to graphic designers. Based on the results, specific recommendations are given.Paper 3 proposes a hands-on, experiential pedagogic method specifically designed to introduce graphic design students to programming. The method relies on pre-existing commercial graphic design specimens to contextualize programming into a domain familiar to graphic designers. The method was tested on the target audience and observations on its use are reported. Qualitative evaluation of student feedback suggests the method is effective and well-received. Additionally, twenty-four heuristics that elaborate and extend the paper’s findings by interweaving other relevant and influential sources encountered during the research project are provided. Together, the literature review, the three papers, and the heuristics provide comprehensive and valuable theoretical and practical insights to both researchers and educators, regarding key aspects related to introducing programming as a creative practice in graphic design education

Silencing the Critics: A Conceptual Framework in Teacher Preparation for Social Justice

Teacher preparation programs are making concerted efforts to prepare practitioners to transform urban education. Current studies rely heavily on self-reported data with little to no inclusion of the voices of teachers or perceptions of principals. This qualitative case study aimed to fill that gap by exploring how alumni of one social justice–themed University Teacher Preparation Program (UTPP) defined and implemented socially just teaching practices in urban elementary classrooms. Participants included six teacher alumni in their first, second, or third year of teaching, two supervising principals, and one UTPP staff member. Methods included semistructured interviews, full-day classroom observations, and a review of program documents. The study was guided by 12 characteristics of socially just teaching outlined in a new practice- based conceptual framework. Major findings combatted current critiques of social justice education and highlighted the importance of relationships, collaboration, craft, and selection in teacher preparation. Minor findings revealed the impact of school culture, critical reflection, and teaching experience on social justice pedagogy. Recommendations include a need for UTPP to pay greater attention to the craft of teaching for social justice, develop assessment literacy in preservice candidates, and model activism inside and outside the classroom

Patterns of interaction in peer response: the relationship between pair dynamics and revision outcomes

Sociocultural researchers in SLA consider the interface between the social dynamics of pair interactions and language learning. Using Storch’s (2002) patterns of interaction coding scheme, studies have found that students who adopt a collaborative pattern are more successful in using language as a learning tool. SLA theorists, however, have suggested research projects that further analyze peer interaction and learning outcomes, including writing development, in ecologically valid settings (Swain, 2002; Ortega, 2012). Peer response is a pedagogical practice where focus on pair dynamics in relation to learning is particularly relevant. Despite its popularity and the theoretical argument for peer response, not all peer response is successful, and Ferris (2003) called for projects that consider both characteristics and outcomes of peer response. This study bridges the gap in these two related research areas, L2 writing and SLA, examining patterns of interaction during peer response, and considering associations between these and revision outcomes. Five pairs of non-native English speaking undergraduates were recording during peer response sessions three times, and also contributed first and second drafts of the papers they discussed. Peer response conversations were coded as exhibiting one of the four patterns (collaborative, expert/novice, dominant/dominant, and dominant/passive) identified by Storch (2002), which was enhanced by students’ perceptions of the peer response sessions that they provided in interviews. Second drafts were analyzed for improvement, and these gains were compared by pattern of interaction. Results show that two patterns (collaborative and expert/novice) are indeed associated with better revision outcomes. What is more, stimulated recall interviews with these students revealed that they become more successful at peer response when they attend to not only the task, but the interpersonal relationship. Overall, results provide classroom-based evidence on the relationship between peer-peer interaction and writing acquisition. These findings complement SLA interaction studies conducted in more experimental settings, as well as contribute to the peer response research in L2 writing by describing in detail students’ social interactions. This study also provides valuable pedagogical implications about training and pairing students for peer response. Finally, this study contributes to the emerging research trend of interfaces between SLA and L2 writing (Ortega, 2012)