Technology-Enhanced Parent Involvement in Science Education

Parent involvement is a critical facet of academic success. Empirical studies and meta analyses highlight that it can increase students’ motivation, self-efficacy, and academic performance. Even though they recognize the importance of being involved, minority and immigrant parents are likely to have lower levels of parent involvement than white parents. This could be a contributing factor to the academic gaps that exist between white students and minority and immigrant students. Technology can provide new ways to increase parent involvement and can address equity issues by providing more innovative and flexible opportunities for parents to be involved in their students’ academic experiences. This chapter summarizes ideas from (ESPRIT) Fostering Equitable Science through Parent Involvement and Technology, a National Science Foundation funded project that utilizes a technology-rich social learning environment (SLE) to engage middle school science teachers and student-parent pairs in culturally responsive, science-related activities. A new model of parent involvement is presented, followed by a discussion of the roles parents play as they participate in the SLE activities with their children

The role of executive function abilities in interleaved vs. blocked learning of science concepts

This study investigated the relative efficacy of interleaved versus blocked instruction and the role of executive function in governing learning from these instructional sequences. Eighth grade students learned about three rock concepts (igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic) and their attributes (origin, texture, composition). Consistent with prior studies and as predicted by current theoretical accounts, students who received interleaved instruction showed better memory (i.e., accuracy on true–false questions) when tested 2 weeks later, whereas those who received blocked instruction showed better memory when tested on the same day as instruction. Also consistent with prior studies and theoretical accounts, the blocked group showed greater transfer when tested after a retention interval, although this advantage was not significant. Critically, and as predicted, the shifting and inhibition executive function abilities were more predictive of learning from interleaved vs. blocked instruction. These findings lay the groundwork for future studies investigating the role of executive function in learning from different forms of instruction

Executive function predictors of science achievement in middle-school students

Cognitive flexibility as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sort Task (WCST) has long been associated with frontal lobe function. More recently, this construct has been associated with executive function (EF), which shares overlapping neural correlates. Here, we investigate the relationship between EF, cognitive flexibility, and science achievement in adolescents. This is important because there are fewer educational neuroscience studies of scientific reasoning than of other academically relevant forms of cognition (i.e., mathematical thinking and language understanding). Eighth grade students at a diverse middle school in the Midwestern US completed classroom-adapted measures of three EFs (shifting, inhibition, and updating) and the WCST. Science achievement was indexed by students’ standardized test scores and their end-of-the-year science class grades. Among the EF measures, updating was strongly predictive of science achievement. The association between cognitive flexibility and science achievement was comparatively weaker. These findings illuminate the relationship between EF, cognitive flexibility, and science achievement. A methodological contribution was the development of paper-and-pencil based versions of standard EF and cognitive flexibility measures suitable for classroom administration. We expect these materials to help support future classroom-based studies of EF and cognitive flexibility, and whether training these abilities in adolescent learners improves their science achievement

Learn More & Achieve More - An Innovative Teaching Method Applying Economic Theories to Secondary Science Education

Faculty advisor: Keisha VarmaThis research was supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

Does shifting ability support interleaved learning of new science concepts inmiddle school students?

Prior research has shown that executive function (EF) ability predicts science achievement. Here, we ask whether EF alsopredicts science learning. We focus on the shifting EF, and predict that students with high (vs. low) shifting ability will beable to better learn new science concepts from interleaved (vs. blocked) instruction than students with low shifting ability.We are evaluating this hypothesis in a study where eighth graders learn about different attributes (origin, texture, compo-sition) of different rock types (igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic) in instruction that is either blocked by or interleavedacross rock types. We are measuring shifting using the WCST and local-global tasks. We are collecting post-test and long-term retention measures of learning and transfer. We predict better performance for high (vs. low) shifting individuals andfor interleaved (vs. blocked) instruction, and an overadditive interaction because shifting ability is critical for noticing thediscriminations that interleaved instruction highlights

Professional development for technology enhanced inquiry science

Leaders in education, science, and policy recognize the value of technology enhanced inquiry materials for science and are stressing the importance of teacher professional development. A recent synthesis of more than 25 meta-analytic studies investigating the Professional Development for Technology-Enhanced Inquiry Science Downloaded from http://rer.aera.net at Swinburne Univ of Technology on June 6, 2012 Professional Development for Technology-Enhanced Inquiry Science 409 role of computer-based technologies in student learning found that the teacher may play an even greater role in students’ technology-enhanced learning than the nature of the technology intervention itself. The effectiveness of the technology intervention depended on the teacher’s goals, pedagogy, and content knowledge (Tamin, Bernard, Borokhovski, Abrami, & Schmid, 2011). Few preservice programs prepare teachers to use technology-enhanced materials to enhance inquiry learning. As a result in-service professional development programs are the most common approach to introducing teachers to the goals and designs of technology interventions and to cultivating teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in this new domain

Scientific Reasoning Ability in Middle Schoolers related to MasterMind DiscoveryStrategy

A study, investigating the relationship between scientific reasoning and the capacity to discover the strategy to playan hypothetico-deductive game (MasterMind), posits that students being able to discover Complex Strategies (vs. GeneralStrategy, Feedback Related, No Strategy) were also, on average, performing higher on our measure of scientific reasoning,itself composed of evaluative, experimental and scientific knowledge measures. In addition to bridge the discovery of complexstrategies with higher SR ability, the finding also suggests the necessity to integrate rule discovery exercises in curriculum to 1-practice while 2- recognize valid reasoning procedures. Finally, inquiring about the middle schooler’s capacity to recognize themost effective strategy, will help to assess the class level as a whole. Such assessment will help the teacher identify some needsand target effective lessons to explain and facilitate the transfer of CoV strategies to novel situations, as suggested by “real life”problem demands