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 THE MEDIATING EFFECTS OF THEORY OF MIND ON RELATIONS BETWEEN TEMPERAMENT AND SOCIAL COMPETENCE(2021) Caputo, Maryke Haasbroek; Teglasi, Hedwig; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)To better understand one mechanism by which social cognition affects social outcomes, the current study proposed that young children’s differences in temperament and Theory of Mind (ToM) contribute to teachers’ perceptions of their social competence (SC). Temperament refers to biologically based differences in behavioral regulation and reactivity, whereas ToM describes the process of inferring others’ mental states and making predictions about related behavior. This study examined the effects of ToM on relations between temperament and SC. Moreover, it expanded ToM measurement beyond traditional methods that explicitly provide the information required to correctly ascertain social cognitions (termed truth-based ToM) by introducing a novel approach to defining and measuring ToM that captures the individualistic process of inferring mental states without direct access to all relevant information (termed interpretation-based ToM). Two mediation models were proposed. The first hypothesized that both types of ToM would mediate relations between temperamental effortful control and SC. Results revealed a significant positive indirect effect for truth-based ToM, suggesting that effortful control positively influences truth-based ToM, which in turn positively influences SC. Results did not yield a significant indirect effect for interpretation-based ToM, suggesting that these may be multiply influenced. This was confirmed by the second model which illustrated connections between temperamental negative reactivity, ToM, and SC. It was hypothesized that interpretation-based ToM would mediate relations between negative affectivity and SC, with a moderating effect by effortful control. Results revealed a significant positive moderated indirect effect, suggesting that negative affectivity positively influences interpretation-based ToM, which in turn positively influences SC, specifically when effortful control is high. This study showcased a novel way to define and measure a subtype of ToM that captures the construct more broadly and may be more relevant when interpreting incomplete information than when all situational cues are explicitly provided. Moreover, results of the moderated mediation model illustrated the positive role of negative affectivity when paired with high effortful control in facilitating this more complex form of interpretation-based ToM and eventual SC. Implications of the findings for literature on ToM, temperament, and SC in young children are discussed.Item Understanding Teacher Stress: Relations of Implicit and Explicit Coping Processes with Teaching Outcomes(2017) Kim, Margaret Jordan; Teglasi, Hedwig; Special Education; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Teacher attrition within the first three years is a growing problem in the US. The current study focuses on teacher stress from a novel perspective by assessing how teachers cope with stresses of the profession at the earliest point in their careers – during their training. Coping is defined as a transaction between a person and their environment, influenced by conscious choices and automatic processes. Research relies on explicit measures (self-report on Likert scales) to assess coping, but critics note this approach is limited and does not assess the whole process. In addition to Likert scales, this study incorporates implicit measures (narratives, the Thematic Apperception Test), to examine the implicit processes of coping. As predicted, significant correlations were identified within, but not across methods of measurement. Implicit but not explicit measures were significantly correlated with external evaluations of teacher effectiveness. Implications for coping theory and measurement are discussed.Item The Distribution of Gender Differences in the Temperament and Social Competence of Preschoolers(2014) Schussler, Laura Elizabeth; Teglasi, Hedwig; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The literature has shown gender differences on many temperament and social competence (SC) measures, though there are gaps in understanding where differences lie and whether it varies by informant. This study investigated how temperament relates to SC and whether gender is a moderator. Rater source and the use of standardized versus raw scores and how they influence gender as a moderator was a main focus. Temperament was measured by the CBQ (Putnam & Rothbart, 2006) and the newly-developed CBQ, Teacher Form (CBQ-T; Teglasi, Schussler, & Gifford, under review). SC was measured by the SCBE (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1992), and all measures were administered to the parents and teachers of preschoolers (N = 113; M age = 57 months). For temperament, findings supported the fact that rater agreement is low and holds true for both genders. On the temperament scales on which parents significantly differed from teachers, parents tended to rate boys more favorably than teachers. The hypothesis that teacher ratings would yield more gender differences than parents was supported. There were also more differences in variability between genders for teacher ratings, revealing that teachers tended to provide more extreme ratings. Scales with distributional differences were ones that have consistently yielded gender differences. For SC, girls had significantly higher means on several scales with raw scores, and raw scores produced more temperament x gender interactions for parent ratings. Activity Level and Anger had opposite effects for gender with higher activity predicting higher SC for girls and lower SC for boys, and higher anger predicting higher SC for boys and lower SC for girls. On Sadness, there were opposite rater effects with Sadness positively associated with SC for parents and negatively associated for teachers. There were fewer gender differences for teachers when considering correlations of temperament and SC. Overall, findings support the importance of obtaining information from parents and teachers about children's temperament and SC. Moreover, these results suggest that raw SC scores are more useful than standard scores for studying relations between SC and temperament, particularly with parent raters. Shortcomings included a limited sample precluding full examination of distributional differences.Item Elementary Teachers' Grading Practices: Does the Reality Reflect the Rubric?(2011) Shanahan, Katherine Bruckman; Gottfredson, Gary D; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Report cards are the primary way that teachers, students, and parents communicate about student achievement in the classroom. Although many school districts develop rubrics to guide teacher grading practices, most research finds that in reality, grades represent a hodgepodge of factors that vary across teachers and across school systems. The current study investigates student factors that explain variance in elementary report card grades in a suburban school district. The sample includes 4th and 5th grade students (N = 8,555) and their classroom teachers (N = 374) from 45 schools. Multilevel structural equation models, with students nested within classrooms, tested two models describing variance in report card grades. One model included the factors listed on the school system grading rubric along with additional factors thought to be related to grades (non-rubric model). An alternative, nested, model included only the factors from the grading rubric (rubric model). Results suggested that the non-rubric model provided a better fit for the data, but effects for the additional non-rubric factors were uniformly small.Item THE MEASUREMENT OF SCHOOL CLIMATE USING SURVEYS: EXPLORING UNIT OF ANALYSIS(2009) Burkhouse, Katie Lynn Sutton; Gottfredson, Gary D; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)School climate researchers have used different units of analysis when assessing school climate features. Overall, there is little research available to understand how different levels of analysis, individual or aggregated, influence the psychometric properties of a survey instrument. The purpose of the current research was to explore the use of different unit of analysis choices in instrument development. Further, the present study sought to replicate findings that the wording of survey instruments may influence the conceptualization of school climate by survey informants. Results indicate that unit of analysis affects on the factor structure, but that there is some overlap in the factors that emerge. Further, the present research confirmed past findings that the wording of climate items appears to affect the perception of items by respondents. Limitations and future directions are discussed. Unit of analysis remains an important theoretical and methodological concept in school climate research.Item EFFECTS OF TEXT MARKERS AND FAMILIARITY ON COMPONENT STRUCTURES OF TEXT-BASED REPRESENTATIONS(2006-10-20) Davis, Marcia Hardisky; Guthrie, John T.; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Reading theorists agree that the outcome of reading comprehension is a text representation (Gernsbacher, Varner, & Faust, 1990; Kintsch, 1998). To measure reading comprehension, however, many use testing formats such as multiple-choice and short answer, that have been shown to provide very little information about the text representations created during reading (Kintsch & Kintsch, 2005). A different type of format, proximity measures, is a promising measure for text based representations, although few studies have examined the validity of this type of comprehension measure. The current dissertation addressed this issue by creating a proximity measure named the Passage Comprehension for Structured Text (PCST) and by examining the validity of the PCST through experimental manipulations on the text. This investigation tested the comprehension of 236 ninth-grade students with the PCST. Students were asked to read a short text followed by a computer task where the students rated the similarity of 11 concepts. Two components were extracted from the PCST, the textbase component and the situation model component. Text manipulations included changes in text coherence and familiarity. It was hypothesized that a coherence manipulation should have an effect on the textbase component and a familiarity manipulation should have an effect on the situation model component. Further, both manipulations should influence the strength of the factor that determines the scores on these components. A multivariate analysis of variance was used to compare the conditions. Results confirmed that students with coherent text outperformed students with incoherent text on the textbase component and students with familiar text outperformed students with unfamiliar text on the situation model component. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to further explore the effect of text manipulations on the structure of the PCST components. Results indicated that there was a stronger factor for the situation model component when the text was familiar compared to when the text was unfamiliar. Limited evidence suggests that there was also a stronger factor for the textbase component when the text included macrosignals compared to when the text did not include macrosignals.