College of Education

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SUPPORTING EQUITABLE CLIMATE CHANGE DECISIONS IN A RURAL COMMUNITY THROUGH EXPANDED NOTIONS OF CLIMATE DATA: USING CRITICAL DATA PERSPECTIVES AND PRACTICES TO SUPPORT CLIMATE LEARNING WHILE CO-DESIGNING AN ONLINE, MAP-BASED, EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE
(2024) Killen, Heather Ann; Clegg, Tamara; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Climate change threats are ever increasing, forcing communities to ask: what do they value and how are they going to protect it? Community-based climate education should play a central role in supporting equitable local decisions regarding local responses to climate challenges. However, there is little research about how to best support communities, especially rural communities that may be skeptical of climate change, to see how climate change is affecting their landscapes. In my dissertation I explore a community-based effort to build a map representing a valued local landscape feature and how this effort can act to convene knowledge about local landscape and climate, ratify that knowledge through inclusion onto a map, and ultimately inform community decision making. Guided by the perspectives and practices of critical data science and storylistening I frame my research around data and story. Prior work has considered the role of climate data within environmental education and story within community scholarship, but there is still a need to explore expanded notions of data within community learning and the role of community-held stories in local decision making. My dissertation focuses on how local, personally held landscape and climate data might complement and extend local, institutionally held data and how map building might support data-rich storytelling and listening. Working within a conservative-leaning, rural community and using the ArcGIS StoryMap web application, I engaged six community members over six design sessions to collaboratively design an online, public map of a creek and associated nature trail at the center of their town. I find that participants engaged in six key map-building design processes as they interacted with their local landscape in new ways. I also find that participants used the knowledge they brought into the design space to collaboratively expand, challenge, and occasionally transform their shared understanding. Together these processes allowed local, often generationally held, climate and landscape knowledge to become community-held understanding that could be included as data within the map. Using this analysis, I present my Evidentiary Landscape Learning (ELL) framework, placing my insights into a community-based learning context. The ELL framework demonstrates a pathway for engaging community members to understand how local and beyond-local socio-cultural values and systems are physically embodied in their local landscapes.
Leveraging Complexity Science to Promote Learning Analytics Adoption in Higher Education: An Embedded Case Study
(2024) Moses, Phillip Scott; Ketelhut, Diane J; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) defines learning analytics as “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs” (SoLAR, n.d.). To fully realize the potential of learning analytics, especially in its perceived ability to reveal previously hidden aspects of the learning process, researchers have called for more intentional approaches in order to harness resources and affect change. These researchers argue that without this coordinated effort to integrate learning analytics into the fabric of higher education institutions, the field will continue to languish, with learning analytics tools and approaches left forever incapable of affecting more systemic change. At the same time, other researchers focused on leadership and change management have recognized the difficulty, if not impossibility, of such top-down approaches. Instead, many researchers have pointed to the need to view higher education institutions through the lens of complexity science, and, in particular, to consider higher education institutions as complex adaptive systems (CAS) in which change tends to happen through the process of emergence. Within such a paradigm, change occurs from the ground up, as a result of countless interactions among many different agents (students, educators, and administrators, to name a few). Recognizing this conflict between the sort of top-down approaches suggested by many learning analytics researchers, and the ground-up reality recognized by many complexity science researchers, this dissertation project investigates how learning analytics usage is happening within a higher education institution. Using an embedded case study methodology to examine current learning analytics practices across multiple academic units and stakeholders within a single higher education institution, I apply a CAS framework to determine how this institution might expand and grow their approach to learning analytics across key areas.
COMPUTATIONAL THINKING IN EARLY GRADE CLASSROOMS: HOW YOUNG LEARNERS INTERACT WITH PHYSICAL DEVICES TO GROUND THEIR UNDERSTANDING OF COMPUTATIONAL THINKING
(2024) Bih epse Fofang, Janet Shufor; Weintrop, David; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Computational thinking (CT) has been supported as an important skill every young person should possess for the 21st century, with possible implications for problem-solving, self-expression, and creativity. Numerous initiatives, both within and outside classroom settings, have been developed in response to policy mandates aiming at broadening participation for all K-12 learners to acquire CT skills. Consequently, there has been a proliferation of computational toys and tools specifically designed for young learners, including codable robots introduced into classrooms and educational environments. With the growing prevalence of computational devices in educational settings, educators, curriculum designers, and researchers must cultivate diverse teaching approaches and deepen their understanding of how young learners engage with these devices to acquire CT skills effectively within classroom contexts. In this dissertation, I present findings of how elementary-grade learners develop CT skills when they program Sphero robots in mathematics classroom activities. I specifically focused on the kinds of representations students developed, considering their perspectives (understanding) of the environment, and the practices they engaged in to accomplish given tasks.To understand how young learners acquired CT skills, I observed fourth-grade learners as they interacted with activities on the Sphero.Math curriculum to program the Sphero robot in mathematics classrooms. The Sphero.Math curriculum was developed through a collaborative effort between researchers and DCPS partners. Findings from this work revealed that representations play an important role in supporting young learners to engage in CT practices such as Pattern recognition, algorithm design, problem decomposition, and abstraction (PRADA). Findings showed that representations such as (1) concrete manipulatives, (2) language, (3) graphic, (4) symbolic and (5) embodied representations provide scaffolds for learners to gain (PRADA), CT skills through iterating, testing, debugging, abstracting, modularizing, and reusing code. Additionally, the design features of the Sphero robot and its programming environment support CT knowledge acquisition. Features such as (1) programmable LEDs provided opportunities for learners to break down tasks and create opportunities to organize and structure components to get visual feedback that helped them recognize patterns. (2) Taillight (“aim”) LED provided visual cues, that facilitated the involvement of geocentric orientation and embodied practices that empowered students to establish sensorimotor references. (3) Sphero’s virtual protractor supported students through the CT component of abstraction to address the geocentric aspects of the Sphero robot. (4) block-based environment/language, that involves the use of shapes and colors as effective visual aids and abstraction tools, to support the learners’ construct to algorithms. This research can serve as a resource for researchers, curriculum designers, educators, and designers to answer questions about design, choice of computational tools, and their respective programming environments that can afford meaningful CT experiences. Familiarizing learners with representations within CT robotics learning environments serves as a gentle initiation into emerging topics in education such as AI, ML, and data science, given the pivotal role representations play within these fields.
Techquity in the Classroom: Designing to Include Equity and Social Justice Impacts in Computing Lessons
(2022) Coenraad, Merijke; Weintrop, David; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Technology is ubiquitous in modern society. It affects our daily activities and exists in every household and on every street corner. Yet, research has shown that both the process of creating technologies and the technologies themselves are biased. New technologies are based on datasets, algorithms, and designs that encode developer and data biases. As youth increasingly use technologies in their daily lives, experience the effects of technologies and algorithms, and learn to be technology creators, it is important for them to critically explore and understand the ways that technology introduces and perpetuates inequities. In this three-article dissertation, I present a design study on the development and implementation of materials specifically designed to teach about Threats to Techquity. Threats to Techquity are aspects of computing and technologies that cause or could cause inequalities, especially inequalities based on marginalized identities (e.g., inequalities due to race, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, ability). To understand how to bring Techquity into the classroom, I partnered with youth and teachers using participatory design to develop the “Talking Techquity” curriculum for middle grades (5th through 8th grade) students. Findings from this work revealed: (1) youth initially named and identified examples of visible Threats to Techquity, but as they learned more about these threats, they uncovered and discussed invisible Threats to Techquity more frequently and identified these threats as topics to be taught to peers; (2) youth and teacher designers had similar instructional priorities and utilized similar pedagogical strategies when designing and critiquing learning experiences about online data collection and data use, but had contrasting ways of discussing examples and different learning goals; and (3) when implementing “Talking Techquity,” teachers who helped co-design the curriculum made adaptations to content and project requirements to provide more scaffolding and ensure students experienced success based on teachers’ perceptions of student needs and other factors. This research encourages researchers, curriculum designers, educators, and students themselves to consider how to teach and learn about the Threats to Techquity affecting youth’s daily lives and demonstrates how participatory design methods can help uncover key conceptualizations and instructional priorities that make this possible.
COMPUTATIONAL THINKING IN THE ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM: HOW TEACHERS APPROPRIATE CT FOR SCIENCE INSTRUCTION
(2021) Cabrera, Lautaro; Clegg, Tamara; Jass Ketelhut, Diane; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Researchers and policymakers call for the integration of Computational Thinking (CT) into K-12 education to prepare students to participate in a society and workforce increasingly influenced by computational devices, algorithms, and methods. One avenue to meet this goal is to prepare teachers to integrate CT into elementary science education, where students can use CT by leveraging computing concepts to support scientific investigations. This study leverages data from a professional development (PD) series where teachers learned about CT, co-designed CT-integrated science lessons, implemented one final lesson plan in their classrooms, and reflected on their experience. This study aims to understand how teachers learned about CT and integrated it into their classroom, a process conceptualized as appropriation of CT (Grossman et al., 1999). This dissertation has two parts. The first investigates how teachers appropriated CT through inductive and deductive qualitative analyses of various data sources from the PD. The findings suggest that most teachers appropriated the labels of CT or only Surface features of CT as a pedagogical tool but did so in different ways. These differences are presented as five different profiles of appropriation that differ in how teachers described the activities that engage students in CT, ascribed goals to CT integration, and use technology tools for CT engagement. The second part leverages interviews with a subset of teachers aimed at capturing the relationship between appropriation of CT during the PD and the subsequent year. The cases of these five teachers suggest that appropriation styles were mostly consistent in the year after the PD. However, the cases detail how constraints in autonomy to make instructional decisions about science curriculum and evolving needs from students can greatly impact CT integration. Taken together, the findings of the dissertation suggest that social context plays an overarching role in impacting appropriation, with conceptual understanding and personal characteristics coming into play when the context for CT integration is set. The dissertation includes discussions around implications for PD designers, such as a call for reframing teacher knowledge and beliefs as part of a larger context impacting CT integration into schools.
SEARCHING FOR A FACE: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF NON-FACE-TO-FACE UNDERGRADUATE LEARNING
(2021) Stakland, Steven Keyes; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Online education is increasingly dominating the experience of formal learning. Although possible at any level of formal education this non-traditional program of learning via the Internet seems to be most accepted for undergraduates. Few have explored the meaning of the experience. The purpose of this dissertation is to present the meaning(s) of non-face-to-face learning for undergraduates. I define online education as non-face-to-face since it never requires a fully embodied encounter with others in real time, e.g., even in a synchronous video exchange reciprocal eye contact is impossible. I met several times with nine participants from different institutions who had taken or were currently enrolled in online classes (prior to 2019). Over the course of my conversations with these participants I recorded and created a text from our conversations and their written accounts. Using the method of hermeneutic phenomenology I present themes here based on my interpretation of that text. I have found that the loss of face-to-face contact is essential to the phenomenon in ways I did not anticipate. The meaning of the phenomenon is related to the essence of technology itself. Considering the meaning of online learning engages with the definition and purpose of education. Although the experience is described in terms of efficiency (ease and convenience) it is also shot through with absence, multitasking and voyeurism. The feeling of efficiency gives a sense that learning is absent. This leads to frustration with the experience. Non-face-to-face learning is described as a kind of game. It can give undergraduates a greater sense of responsibility for their education but without embodied presence with others the vulnerability that leads to community is absent. The explicitness of the asynchronous textual nature of the exchanges between students and instructors introduces ambiguity. The purpose of earning credits comes to dominate the experience instead of the means of learning. I give insights related to the vital importance of in-person learning and indicate paths for further phenomenological work in online education particularly related to teaching. Non-face-to-face learning should be thought of as something different than in-person learning. It cannot ever be a copy or full replacement.
"We just learned from each other": ESOL pre-service teachers learning to use digital tools across coursework and student teaching
(2020) Durham, Carmen; Martin-Beltrán, Melinda; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Educators can use digital tools to meet emergent bilingual students’ unique needs (e.g., Andrei, 2017; Liu, Navarrete, & Wivagg, 2014; Lund, 2008). However, language teachers generally feel unprepared to use technology with students even though many use digital tools in their daily lives (e.g., Dooly, 2009; Kessler, 2006). Research can further examine how to prepare teachers to leverage technology to support emergent bilingual learners. In this study, I used ethnographic methods to explore six pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) experiences learning about and using digital tools in ways intended to support emergent bilingual students. I interviewed the PSTs and observed their participation across student teaching and a concurrent practicum course. I analyzed these data through the lens of cultural-historical activity theory (Engeström, 2001; Yamagata-Lynch, 2010) to examine how PSTs navigated dynamic, interacting activity systems. I also drew on polyfocality to conceptualize learners’ attention on multiple physical and virtual resources during interactions. Findings revealed that the PSTs’ participation in teacher education was characterized by a shared responsibility where all the PSTs, their teacher educator, and mentor teachers contributed new digital tools and polyfocally co-constructed knowledge about the possibilities for classroom technology implementation. The shared responsibility and polyfocal co-construction of knowledge afforded the PSTs opportunities to learn in the moment, and many described their learning as “playing around.” It also afforded PSTs opportunities to reflect on their future practice and evaluate new technologies. Within student teaching, the PSTs sanctioned specific digital tools, but their emergent bilingual students deliberately made choices about technologies that would support their learning about self-chosen topics. Because of the ever-evolving nature of educational technology and students’ complex uses of multiple digital tools simultaneously, teachers must be prepared to continually explore new technologies, critically analyze their benefits, and use them in ways that afford their emergent bilingual students opportunities to make independent choices.
WOMEN’S CYBERBULLYING EXPERIENCES AND THE RELATIONSHIP TO SOCIAL PRESENCE IN ONLINE DISCUSSIONS
(2020) Byrne, Virginia L; Ketelhut, Diane J; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In response to negative experiences like cyberbullying and online harassment, women have been found to chill their online participation by adopting defensive coping strategies in person and on social media (e.g., deleting their accounts, avoiding posting, increasing privacy settings). Cyberbullying affects the majority of undergraduate women, contributing to withdrawal from social media and chilling their participation in the growing world of collaborative online discussions. In this mixed-methods, three-article dissertation, I integrate surveys, observations, and interviews among undergraduate students (particularly women) to investigate how the chilling effect of cyberbullying extends into peer interactions within an increasingly common online instructional practice: online discussion boards. I observe that, in comparison to their non-victimized peers, women with prior cyberbullying experiences enact lower social presence and adopt self-silencing and conflict-avoidant coping strategies. In particular, these women avoid ever disagreeing with peers out of fear of starting “drama.” My research challenges educators to consider potential unintended consequences of instructional design choices and contributes to our understanding of how to design more equitable online learning environments for today’s socially networked adult learners.
School District Adoption and Implementation of a Learning Management System: A Case Study Using Rival Theoretical Lenses
(2018) Hyde, Laura Highstone; Croninger, Robert; Malen, Betty; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This study explored school district adoption and implementation of a learning management system. A substantial body of literature exists on school district data systems. However, this literature is highly rational in its view of data system adoption, and contains limited studies on learning management systems. With these liabilities in mind, this study used rival theoretical lenses from organizational theory, the rational perspective and the institutional perspective, to investigate these central questions: 1) how does a school district adopt and implement a learning management system and 2) how, if at all, do rational theory and institutional theory explain contextual forces and organizational actions in this process? These questions were answered with a single, exploratory case study in a school district that had recently adopted and implemented a learning management system. The multivocal literature that guided this study contains four strands: evaluative, status report, prescriptive, and specialized. Study findings revealed that the district engaged in a three-stage process of adoption, planning, and implementation of a learning management system. Although the rational perspective explained findings that aligned with the multivocal literature in the adoption and planning stages, district actions in the implementation stage were more clearly understood from the institutional perspective. Organizational processes in formalization, coupling, alignment, adaptiveness, and accountability, and external, contextual forces in accountability, privatization, and diffusion of innovation, proved to be salient concepts. These findings suggest that rival, theoretical lenses have utility in an investigation of school district learning management system adoption and implementation.
STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT EMOTIONS IN CHINESE CHEMISTRY CLASSROOMS
(2017) Gong, Xiaoyang; Ketelhut, Diane Jass; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Achievement emotions are critical for students’ academic performance and career choices. The previous literature has focused on one specific type of achievement emotions – test anxiety – in Western contexts and neglected other various emotions experienced in different occasions such as attending classes. The present study aims to address the research gap by examining students’ achievement emotions in a specific cultural and subject context – Chinese high school chemistry classrooms. Subjects were 103 16 or 17-year-old eleventh-grade students (45 female and 58 male) from two chemistry classes in the same high school in China. The qualitative and quantitative data was collected from four sources: pre- and post- surveys, open-response questions, classroom observations and teacher/student interviews. This dissertation examined Chinese students’ achievement emotions from both theoretical and practical perspectives. First, it theoretically investigated the dimensions of Chinese students’ achievement emotions in traditional chemistry classrooms and how these dimensions were related to its antecedent (i.e., chemistry self-efficacy) and effect (i.e., classroom engagement). The factor analysis indicated two distinct factors emerged from Chinese students’ emotions: positive emotions and shame (one specific type of negative emotions). The structural equation modeling showed that both chemistry self-efficacy and positive emotions were significant and positive predictors of students’ classroom engagement. Chemistry self-efficacy also significantly and positively predicted students’ positive emotions while predicting students’ perceptions of shame negatively. However, the path from shame to classroom engagement was not significant after controlling for positive emotions. Second, it practically explored how one specific pedagogical strategy of integrating the computer simulation – a visualization tool to review content knowledge – influenced students’ perceptions of achievement emotions and related affective variables (i.e., chemistry self-efficacy and engagement). Independent sample t-tests showed that the computer simulation significantly increased students’ chemistry self-efficacy beliefs and positive emotions. In contrast, its effects on negative emotions and classroom engagement were not significant. By scrutinizing qualitative data from different sources, I provided explanations for the computer simulation’s role in influencing the above four affective variables.

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