Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Illuminating Children's Scientific Funds of Knowledge Through Social Media Sharing(2019) Mills, Kelly; Ketelhut, Diane J; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The ubiquitous use of social media by children offers a unique opportunity to view diverse funds of knowledge. Connecting learning to students’ funds of knowledge is particularly important for non-dominant learners, who experience tensions between home, community and school science cultures. This study is embedded in a research project which iteratively designed a social media app to be integrated into a science learning program which engaged families in science in their community. I conducted an exploratory case study on children’s use of a social media app for science learning and found that three focal learners (ages 9-14) often shared scientific funds of knowledge through social media in an after-school learning program and in their homes and communities. Their teachers connected some scientific funds of knowledge they shared on social media to formal science concepts. However, other scientific funds of knowledge were not obvious by observing the posts alone. Rather, these tacit funds of knowledge emerged through the triangulation of posts, interviews and observations of their learning experiences in the life-relevant science education program. The findings suggest implications for the design of technology and learning environments to facilitate the connection of children’s implicit and more unconventional scientific funds of knowledge to formal science concepts. I build on these findings to explore how teachers can bridge funds of knowledge shared on social media to scientific practices in formal learning environments with a case study of three teachers from a diverse urban middle school. Using the framework for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), I seek to understand how to best support teachers to draw upon student’s funds of knowledge through social media sharing and connect them to formal scientific concepts. The teachers struggled to engage in dialogue with their students about their posts, missing opportunities to gain contextual information about students’ funds of knowledge, in order to facilitate connections to science concepts. These findings suggest that aspects of usability, policy and teacher beliefs are necessary to consider in order to promote the recognition of children’s funds of knowledge through social media sharing in formal learning environments.Item THE SALIENT MAP ANALYSIS FOR RESEARCH AND TEACHING (SMART) METHOD: POWERFUL POTENTIAL AS A FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN THE BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES.(2015) Cathcart, Laura Anne; Elby, Andrew; Higgins, William; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of two studies: 1) development and characterization of the Salient Map Analysis for Research and Teaching (SMART) method as a formative assessment tool and 2) a case study exploring how a paramedic instructor’s beliefs about learners affect her utilization of the SMART method and vice versa. The first study explored: How can a novel concept map analysis method be designed as an effective formative assessment tool? The SMART method improves upon existing concept map analysis methods because it does not require hierarchically structured concept maps and it preserves the rich content of the maps instead of reducing each map down to a numerical score. The SMART method is performed by comparing a set of students’ maps to each other and to an instructor’s map. The resulting composite map depicts, in percentages and highlighted colors, the similarities and differences between all of the maps. Some advantages of the SMART method as a formative assessment tool include its ability to highlight changes across time, problematic or alternative conceptions, and patterns of student responses at a glance. Study two explored: How do a paramedic instructor’s beliefs about students and learning affect – and become affected by – her use of the SMART method as a formative assessment tool? This case study of Angel, an expert paramedic instructor, begins to address a gap in the emergency medical services (EMS) education literature, which contains almost no research on teachers or pedagogy. Angel and I worked together as participant co-researchers (Heron & Reason, 1997) exploring the affordances of the SMART method. This study, based on those interactions with Angel, involved using open coding to identify themes (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) from Angel’s views of students and use of the SMART method. Angel views learning as a sense-making process. She has a multi-faceted view of her students as novices and invests substantial time trying to understand their concept maps. Not only do these beliefs affect her use of the SMART method; in addition, her beliefs are refined through the use of the SMART method.Item Examining the Effects of Students' Classroom Expectations on Undergraduate Biology Course Reform(2013) Hall, Kristi Lyn; Redish, Edward F.; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I perform and compare three studies of introductory biology students' classroom expectations -- what students expect to be the nature of the knowledge that they are learning, what they think they should be (or are) doing in order to learn, and what they think they should be (or are) doing in order to be successful. Previous work has shown that expectations can impact how students approach learning, yet biology education researchers have been reluctant to acknowledge or address the effects of student expectations on curricular reform (NRC, 2012). Most research in biology education reform has focused on students' conceptual understandings of biology and the efficacy of specific changes to content and pedagogy. The current research is lacking a deeper understanding of how students perceive the classroom environment and how those perceptions can shape students' interactions with the content and pedagogy. For present and future reforms in biology to reach their full potential, I argue that biology education should actively address the different ways students think about and approach learning in biology classes. The first study uses a Likert-scale instrument, adapted from the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (Redish, Saul, & Steinberg, 1998). This new survey, the Maryland Biology Expectations Survey (MBEX) documents two critical results in biology classrooms: (i) certain student-centered pedagogical contexts can produce favorable changes in students' expectations, and (ii) more traditional classroom contexts appear to produce negative epistemological effects. The second study utilizes a modified version of the MBEX and focuses on students' interdisciplinary views. This study documents that: (i) biology students have both discipline-specific and context-specific classroom expectations, (ii) students respond more favorably to interdisciplinary content in the biology courses we surveyed (as opposed to biology content introduced into the physics courses we surveyed), and (iv) biology faculty are not fully "on board" with interdisciplinary and integrative curriculum initiatives commonly endorsed in the current reform literature. The third study is a case study of students' classroom expectations. From this data corpus, I have identified distinct patterns of biology-specific classroom expectations. I believe these expectations have important implications for how researchers should approach curricular reforms in the future.Item IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT OF MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS AS LEARNERS OF SCIENCE AT AN INFORMAL SCIENCE EDUCATION CAMP(2011) Riedinger, Kelly Anne; McGinnis, J. Randy; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Education researchers and practitioners are increasingly recognizing the need for learning in informal settings to complement formal science learning (Bybee, 2001; Falk, 2001). Informal science education may be critical in meeting the goals of reform and in keeping students and the public informed of advances in science. As such, greater attention has been given to learning in informal science settings. A growing body of research examines how groups engage in learning conversations to make meaning from content and exhibits in these settings. The National Research Council (2009) speculated that individual and group identity might be shaped and reinforced during such learning conversations. The central research question guiding the study was: What is the role of conversation in influencing science learner identity development during an informal science education camp? Identity in this study was defined as becoming and being recognized as a certain type of person (Gee, 2001). This study focused particularly on discursive identity, defined as individual traits recognized through discourse with other individuals (Gee, 2005; 2011). The study used an exploratory case study. Data collection included videotaped observations, researcher field notes, interviews and participants' reflective journal entries. Each source of data was examined for the conversation that it generated. I used qualitative methods to analyze the data including discourse analysis and the constant comparison method for emergent themes. From the findings of this study, I theorized that the learning conversations played a role in developing participants' identities as learners of science. Participants used language in the following ways: to make sense of science content, to position themselves, to align their discourse and practices with science, to communicate with others which resulted in engagement, to re-negotiate power, and to see others in new ways. The findings of this research support and extend the research literature on identity, learning conversations in informal science education environments and science camp programs. Implications from this study include recommendations for the design of science camps to support identity development as learners of science for participants.Item Newly Qualified Teachers' Visions of Science Learning and Teaching(2011) Roberts, Deborah L.; van Zee, Emily H; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study investigated newly qualified teachers' visions of science learning and teaching. The study also documented their preparation in an elementary science methods course. The research questions were: What educational and professional experiences influenced the instructor's visions of science learning and teaching? What visions of science learning and teaching were promoted in the participants' science methods course? What visions of science learning and teaching did these newly qualified teachers bring with them as they graduated from their teacher preparation program? How did these visions compare with those advocated by reform documents? Data sources included participants' assignments, weekly reflections, and multi-media portfolio finals. Semi-structured interviews provided the emic voice of participants, after graduation but before they had begun to teach. These data were interpreted via a combination of qualitative methodologies. Vignettes described class activities. Assertions supported by excerpts from participants' writings emerged from repeated review of their assignments. A case study of a typical participant characterized weekly reflections and final multi-media portfolio. Four strands of science proficiency articulated in a national reform document provided a framework for interpreting activities, assignments, and interview responses. Prior experiences that influenced design of the methods course included an inquiry-based undergraduate physics course, participation in a reform-based teacher preparation program, undergraduate and graduate inquiry-based science teaching methods courses, participation in a teacher research group, continued connection to the university as a beginning teacher, teaching in diverse Title 1 schools, service as the county and state elementary science specialist, participation in the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, service on a National Research Council committee, and experience teaching a science methods course. The methods course studied here emphasized reform-based practices, science as inquiry, culturally responsive teaching, scientific discourse, and integration of science with technology and other disciplines. Participants' writings and interview responses articulated visions of science learning and teaching that included aspects of reform-based practices. Some participants intentionally incorporated and implemented reform-based strategies in field placements during the methods course and student teaching. The strands of scientific proficiency were evident in activities, assignments and participants' interviews in varying degrees.Item Peer Collaboration: The Role of Questions and Regulatory Processes in Conceptual-Knowledge Learning(2009) Winters, A. Fielding Ince; Alexander, Patricia A; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Peer collaboration and questioning are two pedagogical methods currently used under the assumption that they facilitate conceptual understanding in science classrooms. However, the literature on peer collaboration reveals many contextual factors that influence the success of peer learning, particularly for ill-structured tasks, and little research has been conducted on whether or how questions help students learn about complex science topics. This study investigated the impact of peer collaboration and reasoning questions on high-school students' (N = 133) conceptual-knowledge learning, through analysis of their regulatory learning processes as they studied the circulatory system using a hypermedia encyclopedia. Outcome variables were a measure of students' conceptual knowledge learning (pretest to posttest) and peers' collaborative discourse, which was collected via audiotape during the learning session. Data analysis consisted of quantitative analyses of variance of students' conceptual knowledge learning in peer and questioning conditions, and qualitative analysis of students' collaborative regulatory discourse. Results revealed variable approaches to collaboration and the task and variable success at conceptual-knowledge learning across pairs. Successful peer learners employed a variety of regulatory behaviors such as taking notes and summarizing to a greater degree than unsuccessful collaborating students, who tended to spend a large proportion of their time off-task. Students who answered an inferential reasoning question spent much of their time looking for a verbatim answer from the environment, often to the detriment of their learning. The results of this study reveal a number of factors that may be related to the success of collaboration and question-answering, including an accurate perception of the task goal; enough relevant prior knowledge about the topic to use a non-linear hypermedia environment effectively; and enough time to collaborate and learn. This study contributes to the literature on collaboration and question-answering by demonstrating the potential pitfalls of these methods and elucidating potential targets for support to bolster the efficacy of these methods.Item Epistemological Authenticity in Science Classrooms(2008-11-20) Hutchison, Paul; Hammer, David; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A scientifically literate individual understands important characteristics of both the nature of scientific knowledge and the activity that produces it, scientific inquiry. (NRC, 1996; AAAS, 1993) In support of these goals the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996) envisions science classrooms where students engage productively in activity that is similar to scientific inquiry. It is presumed that by engaging in this kind of activity students will come to deeper understandings of scientific inquiry and scientific knowledge. For this instructional approach to be successful it is necessary students not only engaging in activity that "looks" like science in important ways, but also view their own activity as authentically using knowledge for the purpose of making sense of natural phenomena. Notably the determination of what is authentic is problematic in a science classroom. There are two different possible arbiters "present" in a classroom, the students themselves and the discipline of science. And what is authentic to one might not be to the other. This work provides perspectives on classroom and teacher professional development implications of this view of science instruction. Chapter two articulates a conceptualization, epistemological authenticity, of the nature of student activity necessary to achieve these instructional goals. Such activity involves students engaging in scientific practices with the same purposes as scientists. Chapter three uses a case study of a science classroom to illustrate some of the features of student activity that provide evidence of more and less productive student expectations about the purposes of their own participation in a science class. It also discusses the role teacher instructional choices play in influencing how students perceive the purposes of classroom activity. Chapter four considers teacher professional development, specifically images of exemplary science classrooms in the Standards and a supplement to it (NRC, 2000). The depictions in those documents provide little insight into student activity, instead focusing on the pre-planned instructional sequence. This is poor preparation for teachers who must pay close attention to students. An alternative depiction is presented and contrasted with the images in the supplement to the Standards.