UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item FORMATIVE-HOME CULTURAL INFLUENCES OF SCIENTIFIC SENSE-MAKING: A CASE STUDY ON THE AFFORDANCES OF PEDAGOGICAL “BIO MECHANISTIC THOROUGHNESS” (“BMT”)(2020) Powell, Kweli Bennett; Chazan, Daniel; Elby, Andrew; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Science education research continues to struggle with clarifying the formative-home culturally pedagogical merits of everyday, vs formal science vocabulary focused, classroom discourse (ex. Hammer, et al, 2005; Warren et al, 2001). More broadly, cross-contextual cultural pedagogical efficacy is a resonant aim for education scholar-practitioners in general, regardless of topic (ex. Chazan, 2000; Howard, et al, 2017). While a bio-mechanically thorough (BMT) methodological lens could offer robust theoretical insight into these questions, such an application has yet to become widely evident. In this dissertation, I apply a bio-experimental theoretically based case study approach (Yin, 1989) to interrogate the BMT-causal African-American cultural dynamics of two science sense-making transcripts. The first transcript (2010) featured a first year cohort of teachers as they engaged in the same science sense-making discourse that we researcher-trainers aimed for them elicit in their classrooms. Findings indicate that, from a BMT-aligned perspective, the learning practices of the two African-American (formative-home) cultural participants (out of 5), indeed evinced signatures of their formative-home culture’s discursive-behavioral influence. The second transcript (2012) featured a first year cohort of teachers as they engaged in a facilitated science sense-making structure identical to that applied in 2010. Again, BMT-informed findings indicate that the learning practices of the three African-American participants (out of 6) showed signatures of said culture’s motivating impact. Further notably, relative to the first (2010) context, the 2012 cohort evinced markedly more on-topic discursive-learning per unit time. This dissertation models the affordances of a BMT-aligned case study lens (Yin, 1989) for understanding the culturally causal dynamics of productive sense-making. Results suggest that the distinction between the two transcript outcomes rooted in a deeper sense of ‘starting familiarity' or 'communalism' amongst the focal cultural participants in the 2012 group, a factor shown to uniquely resonate among African-American learners (ex. Boykin, 1994; Seiler, 2001). These findings demonstrate how science sense-making educational contexts that cultivate 'everyday', thus including formative-home culturally rooted, discourse can facilitate learning. This model can inform the development of cross-contextually robust forums for sense-making based teacher-preparatory policy, regardless of topic.Item DESIGN THINKING: COGNITIVE PATTERNS IN ENGINEERING DESIGN DOCUMENTATION(2012) Westmoreland, Sophoria Nicole; Schmidt, Linda C.; Mechanical Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Engineering design is an integral resource that on the surface uses creative, scientific, and process knowledge. Over the years many research driven improvements have been made to the methods and tools used for crafting the engineering design profession. Some progress has been made in exploring the cognitive processes, reading between the lines, and thinking about design thinking. This information is valuable to engineering designers in visualizing and performing the product development process. This dissertation is interdisciplinary in nature. The goal of this research is to apply cognitive research techniques to engineering design documentation to understand what happens in the mind during the design process. This research can be considered as an exploratory study of uncovering cognitive processes during design by developing a coding scheme that is applied to student and professional design journals. A successful cognitive coding scheme can be used in different domains and leads to development of new metrics for examining journal activities. This first study will enable future work aligned with the larger research goal of improving the understanding of design thinking. Engineering design documentation is one method of revealing insights into the mysteries of the mind. Design journals are used in this study combined with a Cognitive Coding Scheme created by the author to explore design thinking. This dissertation focuses on identifying patterns in cognitive behavior of engineering designers. Design documentation is also analyzed for insights on attitudes towards design journaling. This dissertation will make a contribution to the field of engineering design research by presenting a cognitive coding scheme capable of revealing insights into the mind of the designers.