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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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Building Shared Understandings in Introductory Physics Tutorials Through Risk, Repair, Conflict & Comedy
    (2012) Conlin, Luke David; Hammer, David M; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Collaborative inquiry learning environments, such as The Tutorials in Physics Sensemaking, are designed to provide students with opportunities to partake in the authentic disciplinary practices of argumentation and sensemaking. Through these practices, groups of students in tutorial can build shared conceptual understandings of the mechanisms behind physical phenomena. In order to do so, they must also build a shared epistemological understanding of what they are doing together, such that their activity includes collaboratively making sense of mechanisms. Previous work (Conlin, Gupta, Scherr, & Hammer, 2007; Scherr & Hammer, 2009) has demonstrated that tutorial students do not settle upon only one way of understanding their activity together, but instead build multiple shared ways of understanding, or framing (Scherr & Hammer, 2009; Tannen, 1993a), their activity. I build upon this work by substantiating a preliminary finding that one of these shared ways of framing corresponds with increased evidence of the students' collaboratively making sense of physical mechanisms. What previous research has not yet addressed is how the students come to understand their activity as including collaborative sensemaking discussions in the first place, and how that understanding develops over the course of the semester. In this dissertation, I address both of these questions through an in-depth video analysis of three groups' discussions throughout the semester. To build shared understandings through scientific argumentation and collaborative sensemaking, the students need to continually make repairs of each other's understanding, but this comes with the risk of affective damage that can shut down further sensemaking discussions. By analyzing the discourse of the three groups' discussions throughout the semester, I show how each group is able to manage this essential tension as they each build and maintain a safe space to sensemake together. I find that the three groups differ in how soon, how frequently, and how deeply they engage in collaborative scientific sensemaking. This variability can be explained, in part, through differences in how the groups use hedging, irony, and other discourse moves that epistemically distance the speakers from their claims. This work highlights the connection between students' epistemology and affect in face-to-face interaction.
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    Service-Learning in Teacher Education: Weaving a Tapestry of Relationships
    (2006-04-24) Castellan, Catherine Marie; Valli, Linda; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The purpose of this interpretive study was to gain an understanding of the sense freshmen elementary education majors made of service-learning in their teacher education courses. Data were gathered from six majors during their Introduction to Education course in the fall and Learning Theory course in the spring of their freshman year. Three majors participated in a regular model of service-learning while another three participated in a cascading model. Data were inductively analyzed from codes organized into categories and then synthesized into themes. This study was conducted at a private college in a Mid-Atlantic city where many of the students came from middle and upper middle class backgrounds. Service-learning projects involved a local urban elementary/middle school. Findings indicated that majors made sense of their service-learning projects by recognizing that service-learning offered them the opportunity to establish relationships. A collaborative relationship was established between the majors and individuals in the school which resulted in majors learning how to collaborate and the benefits of collaboration. A reciprocal relationship was established between the majors and the teachers and students in the elementary school where the majors' service activities met school needs. A cognitive relationship was established as majors connected their course content to their service-learning experiences and learned the content. A relationship was established between the majors and others in an urban setting resulting in opportunities for majors to experience, address and adapt to issues related to diversity. Service-learning allowed majors to synthesize teaching principles from their experiences in an urban setting. There were some differences in perspectives between the cascading and regular majors. Cascading majors' experiences allowed them to develop more specific and in-depth insights into the world of elementary education than their regular model counterparts as they planned and carried out service-learning projects with the elementary school students. The cascading majors also experienced reinforced pedagogy when they taught the elementary students and then watched the elementary students teach others the same material. The effectiveness of the cascading majors' pedagogical approach was assessed by the application of that knowledge when elementary students introduced and taught the material to others.
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    Interagency Collaboration in Early Intervention: Participants' perspectives
    (2004-05-04) Tseng, Shu-hsien; Beckman, Paula; Special Education
    This qualitative study was an exploratory effort to investigate interagency collaboration in early intervention from a developmental view, and it applied Bronfenbrenner's (1995) bioecological paradigm as the underlying conceptual framework. The purpose of this study was to examine factors that facilitated collaboration and factors that interfered with it from the perspectives of agency representatives on a local Interagency Coordinating Council (ICC) in a northeastern state. Data collection included interviews with 22 members on the ICC, participant observations of meetings, and document analysis. Data were analyzed by the constant comparison procedure. The factors that emerged in this study are consistent with those identified in the literature. However, because of the differences across early intervention systems, the extent of the impact of factors varied greatly. Also, most influential factors interacted with each other to jointly influence collaboration. Thus understanding and improving collaboration require being aware of the way in which factors interact, observing the scope and duration of their impact, and considering the feasibility of change. Overall, the findings of this study agreed with previous research: (a) training in collaboration is necessary, (b) assessment of needs and influences of factors is needed, (c) the role of the ICC is important, (d) awareness of initiatives of collaboration should be promoted, and (e) ecological contexts influence providers' attitudes toward collaboration and need to be further explored. Other implications of this study included the importance of allocation of funding to work on collaboration, funding and mentorship support for leaders, installation of structural mechanisms for collaboration, education for professionals and parents to work together, communication among evaluation teams, service agencies and the lead agency, and opportunities for first-line workers to establish personal connections.
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    Self-Perceptions of Leadership Ability and Achieving Styles of Female Student-Athletes
    (2004-05-17) Swalley, Shandol; Komives, Susan; Counseling and Personnel Services
    This study examined female student-athletes' self-reported leadership ability and achieving styles and the relationship of individual and team sport female student-athletes' self-perceptions of leadership ability and achieving style preferences. An on-online survey consisting of a composite variable of 12 leadership-indicator items and the Achieving Styles Inventory was used to examine the research questions. The sample included 30 female student-athletes competing in Division I National Collegiate Athletic Association athletics at a Mid-Atlantic public institution. The results indicated individual sport female student-athletes have a significantly greater preference for using the Competitive Direct Achieving Style than team sport student-athletes. While individual and team sport female student-athletes demonstrated a similar perception of leadership ability, the team sport student-athletes consistently saw their achieving practices as being leaderly while the individual sport student-athletes saw only the Power Direct achieving style as being leaderly. Implications for enhancing student-athletes' relational leadership capacities are discussed.