College of Education
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Which Skills Predict School Success? Socioemotional Skills and the Achievement Gap(2016) Boyars, Michal Y.; O'Neal, Colleen R; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This cross-sectional study examined the relations of four socioemotional skills with academic achievement among ethnic minority (e.g., Asian, Black, Latino/a, and multiethnic) and White elementary school students. Method: Participants included public school upper elementary students (N = 257; Mage = 9.71; 58% female; 10% Black, 5% Asian, 6% Latino/a, 12% multiracial; 61% White). Measures included student-reported grit, growth mindset, engagement, and emotion regulation, in addition to a student literacy achievement performance task (Test of Silent Reading Efficiency and Comprehension, TOSREC) and student reading achievement scores (Measures of Academic Progress in Reading; MAP-R). Results: Across all analyses, socioemotional skills were more related to literacy achievement for ethnic minority students than for White students. While simple regressions supported several skills’ relation to achievement for both groups of students, multiple regressions suggested that grit was the sole significant predictor of achievement, and it was only predictive of minority students’ achievement. Although literacy achievement differed between the full samples of ethnic minority and White students, moderation analyses indicated that this achievement gap disappeared among high grit students. Yet, while these regression and moderation results suggested grit’s unique role as a predictor, SEM analyses suggested that the magnitude of all of the socioemotional skills’ prediction of achievement were more similar than different. These findings support a novel but cautious approach to research on socioemotional skills and the achievement gap: results suggest that the skills operate differently in students of different ethnicities, with grit playing a uniquely predictive role for minority students. The skills, however, may be more similar than not in the strength of their association with literacy achievement.Item Engagement as a Mediator of the Associations Among Expectancies and Values for Reading and Reading Outcomes(2014) Cambria, Jenna; Wigfield, Allan; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Previous research studies have shown that cognitive engagement could be included in the Eccles et al. (1983) expectancy-value model as the indirect means, or mediator, by which motivational influencers drive achievement (e.g., Greene et al., 2004; Hardré et al., 2007; Skinner et al., 2008). To explore the associations between values, expectancies, cognitive engagement and reading performance, I conducted a study with 1197 seventh graders. Values, expectancies, and cognitive engagement were measured using survey data. Performance was measured using the informational text comprehension test (ITC) and Reading/Language Arts grades. The main finding of this study was that cognitive engagement was a significant mediator of both expectancies and values with reading performance. Guthrie et al. (2012) discussed how reading requires effort and attention. Expectancies and values partially drive engagement, which is to say, they initiate engagement and not that motivation stops when a student becomes engaged in a task. When reading is valued and students believe they can be successful, students will be more persistent and put in more effort in deducing meaning from passages, like the ITC test. If students are more motivated, they will put in more effort and will result in better Reading/Language Arts grades. As discussed, the indirect effects of values and expectancies, and the direct of values, expectancies, cognitive engagement, and demographic controls were the same across the ITC and Reading/Language Arts grades. One exception to this association was the effects of gender and race on the reading outcomes. For gender, girls had higher grades than boys, but boys and girls did the same on ITC. This finding replicated previous research that males and females do not differ on standardized tests at this age and girls often perform better in Reading/Language Arts grades, which are typically seen as favoring females than do other classes such as mathematics (Banks & Banks, 2010). For race, there was no difference in performance in Reading/Language Arts grades, but there was a race difference on ITC. From an expectancy-value framework, mediation may mean that through engagement, expectancies for success and values may be actualized into achievement.Item A TALE OF TWO GROUPS: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MINORITY STUDENTS AND NON-MINORITY STUDENTS IN THEIR PREDISPOSITION TO AND ENGAGEMENT WITH DIVERSE PEERS AT A PREDOMINANTLY WHITE INSTITUTION(2009) Hall, Wendell Diedrik; Cabrera, Alberto F.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which minority students and non-minority students differ in their predispositions to engage in campus-based diversity activities upon entering college and engagement with diverse college peers during college. These ethnicity-based interactional differences were examined under a revised version of the Transition to College Model (Locks et al., 2008). The Diverse College Student Engagement Model accounts for the joint influence of student pre-college characteristics along with collegiate experiences, in shaping engagement with racially diverse peers at a predominantly White college. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Latent Means Modeling (LMM), this dissertation examined direct and indirect effects of factors that influence engagement with diverse students in college. Findings indicated that engagement with diverse peers does not take place in a vacuum; conditions and mechanisms that facilitate engagement also matter. Several pre-college variables and college variables were shown to influence predisposition to engage in diversity-related activities and engagement among diverse peers in college. Findings from testing the proposed model indicate that minority students were significantly higher in the latent factor Predisposition to Engage when entering college; however, no significant differences were found in the latent factor Engagement after the sophomore year of college. The differences appear to have been attenuated by some of the campus mechanisms the University of Maryland has in place to foster engagement among diverse students.Item Early Elementary Influences on Student Engagement in Learning(2006-12-11) Nese, Joseph F; Gottfredson, Gary D; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Student engagement is a process that combines the attention, interest, investment, and effort students expend in work towards learning. Studies have shown that engagement leads to academic achievement and that disengaged students have lower scores on achievement tests and a higher probability of dropping out of school (Connell et al. 1994; Finn et al., 1995; Marks, 2000). The goal of this study was to probe the validity of an explicit predictive model of the antecedents of engagement involving measures of prior achievement, ethnicity, sex, socioeconomic status, and parent involvement and the total effect of these variables decomposed into direct and indirect (via engagement) effects on academic achievement. Results indicate that a self-report measure of engagement was found to predict achievement for a sample of 676 third grade students but that engagement had no incremental validity in predicting achievement. The construct validity of engagement and parent involvement measures are discussed.