Teaching, Learning, Policy & Leadership Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2759

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    Reading Analyses with Chilean Children
    (2021) Cubillos Guzman, Montserrat; Turner, Jennifer; Galindo, Claudia; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Chilean data show that a large reading-proficiency gap exists between students with high and low socioeconomic status (SES), that most children do not see themselves as readers, and that half of adolescents read below grade level (Agencia de Calidad de la Educación, 2019; Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes, 2014). To understand the reasons behind these phenomena, I conducted three complementary studies on reading comprehension, motivation, and literacy-related home practices with over 800,000 Chilean students, using nation-wide secondary data analysis.In the first study, I examined the association between the frequency of early literacy parent-children interactions (e.g., reading together, reading labels and signs, singing songs, etc.) before they entered first grade and students’ reading scores in fourth grade, while accounting for their second-grade proficiency. I observed that parents frequently engaged in literacy interactions with their children, that those interactions significantly predicted students’ later reading proficiency, and that the effect was steeper for families with high SES than for those with low SES. In the second study, I explored the association between parents’ reading motivation and frequency and their children’s. I examined data of students from sixth, eight, and tenth grade. I found that adolescents were more likely to be motivated and frequent readers if their parents were also keen readers. I also found that SES was a powerful predictor of the likelihood of being a keen reader, and that the effect of having a keen-reading parent was more positively pronounced for adolescents with low SES than for those with high SES. In the third study, I explored whether tenth graders’ reading motivation and frequency was associated to their reading scores. I observed that a large percentage of students who were proficient readers in fourth grade failed to achieve proficiency in tenth grade and that the odds of achieving proficiency in tenth grade increased when students were motivated and frequent readers. Furthermore, students’ odds of being proficient readers increased when their classmates reported high levels of reading motivation and frequency of reading. I discuss the implications of this and my other two studies.
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    BUILDING READINESS AND INTENTION TOWARDS STEM FIELDS OF STUDY AMONG HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
    (2017) Kurban, Elizabeth R.; Cabrera, Alberto F; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation study investigated the cognitive and contextual influences contributing to the developmental process that high school students undergo in preparing for and considering the selection of an academic major in a STEM field. Guided by the theoretical framework of SCCT (Lent et al., 1994) and Wang’s (2013) conceptual model, I developed a new conceptual model for understanding the STEM readiness and intention development process. The STEM Readiness and Intention Development (SRID) Conceptual Model addresses gaps in previous research, such as the absence of parental involvement. In addition, my research design overcame measurement and analytic shortcomings, while examining the moderating effect of self-efficacy on high school students’ intention to major in a STEM field. Through the use of structural equation modeling with data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, I tested the SRID Conceptual Model and examined the indirect effects of self-efficacy on high school students’ intention to major in a STEM field. The results of these analyses suggest several cognitive and contextual influences contributing to building STEM readiness and students’ intention to major in STEM during high school. This study revealed that STEM readiness is impacted directly by several factors, including SES, math ability, parental involvement, math self-efficacy, science self-efficacy, math interest, and science interest. Intention to major in STEM is directly impacted by STEM readiness, as well as high school students’ interest in math and interest in science. In addition, I found that self-efficacy in math and science had a mediating effect through math and science interest on high school students’ intention to major in STEM, emphasizing the critical impact of self-efficacy throughout the career development process. Overall, this dissertation study expands our knowledge of the process that leads high school students to become prepared for and aspire to pursue majors in STEM. Through facilitating this process among all student populations, we may improve overall enrollment and persistence through the STEM pipeline and contribute to the national goal of increasing the number of graduates in STEM fields of study.