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 More useful, or not so bad? Evaluating the effects of interventions to reduce perceived cost and increase utility value with college physics students(2017) Rosenzweig, Emily Quinn; Wigfield, Allan; Ramani, Geetha; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the present study I developed and evaluated the effects of two interventions designed to target students’ motivation to learn in an introductory college physics course. One intervention was designed to improve students’ perceptions of utility value and the other was designed to reduce students’ perceptions of cost. Utility value and cost both are central constructs from Eccles and colleagues’ expectancy-value theory of motivation (Eccles-Parsons et al., 1983). Students (N = 148) were randomly assigned to receive the cost intervention, the utility value intervention, or one of two control conditions. Compared to a survey control condition, neither intervention impacted overall students’ motivation, measured at 3 time points over the semester, or their course outcomes. In moderation analyses, neither intervention impacted any students’ perceptions of utility value. However, both interventions impacted some students’ perceptions of cost, competence-related beliefs, and course outcomes positively while impacting these variables for other students negatively. The cost intervention benefitted consistently and in different ways students who had low baseline competence-related beliefs, low prior achievement, strong malleable beliefs about intelligence, or who were female. However, the intervention showed consistent undermining effects on motivation and/or achievement for students with strong fixed beliefs about intelligence. The utility value intervention benefitted consistently the course outcomes of students who had low baseline competence-related beliefs, low prior achievement, or who were female. The intervention showed less consistent undermining effects on motivation for students with strong fixed beliefs about intelligence, high baseline competence-related beliefs, or high prior achievement. Prior researchers have shown that utility value interventions improve course outcomes for some students who are at risk for underachievement. The present study extends prior work by showing that utility value interventions benefit similar students in college physics courses. It also demonstrates that a cost intervention is a viable way to impact at-risk students’ physics course outcomes. Future researchers should consider carefully moderating variables and how to mitigate potential undermining effects for some students when implementing future expectancy-value-theory-based interventions in college physics courses.Item PERSPECTIVES OF VETERANS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: EXPLORING THE TERM "STUDENT VETERAN" AND THE IDENTITY SHIFTS BETWEEN MILITRAY AND COLLEGE(2014) Hernandez Baron, Paola Maria; Griffin, Kimberly; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Given changes in the G.I Bill, warfare, and higher education, post 9/11 veterans are a unique and expanding college student population. The purpose of this narrative inquiry study was to better understand how post 9/11 student veterans perceive and identify with the term "student veteran." The findings suggest that "student veteran" is more than a label and shares some qualities of a social identity. The participants wanted to be treated as "regular students," but also valued what the term "student veteran" signifies including a unique sociohistorical, cultural, and personal context and history that framed their academic experience. Participants described the term as a way to uphold military culture amidst the more ambiguous college culture. Participants felt the term carries imposed meanings and judgments different from that which participants themselves attribute to it. Findings suggest both theoretical and applied implications for expanded cultural competency around interacting with heterogeneous student veteran populations.Item The Lived Experience Of Latina/o Peer Mentees: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Approach(2012) Gomez Riquelme, Luis Angelo; Hultgren, Francine; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research is about the peer mentee experience of Latina/o students. For this purpose, a group of nine participants were selected, who were part of a peer mentoring program in a Mid-Atlantic public university. The experiences they shared were interpreted through the methodological lens of hermeneutic phenomenology. The purpose of this study is to begin filling in one of the voids in the mentoring practice, which is the experience of peer mentees, and what this study reveals is that the peer mentee experience is the result of loneliness and prejudice that Latina/o students are able to overcome when they have a good peer mentoring experience. This interpretation is done following Clark Moustakas' philosophy of being. Peer mentees receive guidance and help alleviating their solitude, which in this study is interpreted as being-with. Consequently, peer mentees find purpose and are reminded of the reason why they stay in college, which herein is interpreted through the existential concept of being-for. Finally, this study also reveals that being a peer mentee can help finding or making sense of being in college and recovering a sense of belonging, which is interpreted through the phenomenological concept of being-with. The recommendations of this study to improve this practice involve fostering community, creating a sense of belonging, and advocating for a pedagogical experience that is liberated of prejudices and assumptions about Latinas/os, in addition to continuing the support of peer mentoring.Item Exploring the effects of social perspective-taking and socio-cultural issues discussions on college students' civic identity(2012) Johnson, Matthew Robert; Komives, Susan R; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Colleges and universities have a long-standing tradition of preparing students to be civically engaged (Colby, Beaumont, Ehrlich, & Corngold, 2007; Jacoby, 2009; Kezar, 2002). In response to a decline in civic engagement among college students and the greater American public, colleges and universities began offering a wide array of civic engagement efforts designed to increase students' involvement in civic life (Jacoby, 2009). These efforts, such as service-learning, volunteering, and community service opportunities are prolific within higher education. However, the extent to which these civic engagement efforts effectively engage elements of diversity remains mostly unexplored (Dunlap & Webster, 2009; Hero, 2007; Hurtado, 2001, 2003, 2006). The primary research question in this study examined the role of social perspective-taking and socio-cultural issues discussions on college students' civic identity, while the secondary research question examined whether these relationships varied by race. Using 45,271 cases from the 2009 Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership, structural equation modeling was used to explore a model that included four latent variables: social change behaviors, socio-cultural issues discussions, social perspective-taking, and civic identity. Results from the primary research question showed positive, moderate relationships of social change behaviors on civic identity, social change behaviors on socio-cultural issues discussions, socio-cultural issues discussions on social perspective-taking, and social perspective-taking on civic identity. Weak, positive relationships were found for social change behaviors on social perspective-taking and socio-cultural issues discussions on civic identity. These results indicate that the direct effect of the relationship between engaging in social change behaviors on students' civic identity is much stronger than the indirect effects derived from including socio-cultural issues discussions and social perspective-taking. In addition, engaging in social change behaviors did not predict social perspective-taking and engaging in socio-cultural issues discussions did not predict civic identity. The secondary research question explored the differences by race in the structural paths in the model. This analysis showed significant variant paths between students of color and White students on every path except social change behaviors to socio-cultural issues discussions.Item BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE: AN ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT AND MIDDLE SCHOOL CULTURE ON EIGHTH GRADERS' ACADEMIC PREPAREDNESS FOR COLLEGE BY THE TWELFTH GRADE(2012) Bibo, Erin Ward; Cabrera, Alberto F; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study used a general two-level model to explore data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988-1992 to determine the extent to which student-level (parental involvement) and school-level (school culture of college preparedness) factors individually and collectively influenced eighth grade students' eventual academic preparedness for college by the time they reached the twelfth grade. The study's models supported my foundational hypothesis that the middle school years play a critical role in preparing students for college. That said, the impacts of both parental involvement and school culture, at the middle school level, appear to have a very trivial influence, on average, on students' eventual levels of academic readiness for college. The study's models' random effects results, however, paint a slightly more complex picture. These resulted indicated that, at some schools within the study, some or all of the four parental involvement variables had a statistically significant impact on students' eventual ACRES scores. While I was unable to determine whether these significant effects were mostly positive or negative, it certainly supports the notion that parental involvement indeed plays an important role in preparing students to be academically prepared for college. Additionally, the study determined that students' middle school grades had the most positive influences on ACRES scores, and student poverty levels and first-generation status were associated with the most negative impacts on students' academic preparedness for college. The study concludes by calling on policymakers, educational leaders, teachers, and parents to focus their time, attention, and resources on the middle school years to improve students' eventual academic readiness for college.Item Examining Developmental Stages of Leadership for College Students: A Validation Study of the Leadership Identity Development Model(2011) Wagner, Wendy; Komives, Susan R; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to confirm or disconfirm the leadership identity development (LID) model (Komives, Longerbeam, Owen, Mainella, & Osteen, 2006). The LID model identified six stages in the development of a leadership identity. Although used widely to inform the design of leadership development programs, it has not been validated by further research. This study used Q methodology to classify subjects with similar views of leadership into groups. The resulting groups were congruent with the stages of the LID model that are most frequently experienced during the college years. Thirty-nine subjects described their points of view about leadership and themselves as leaders through a 64-item card sort, placing the cards into piles along a continuum from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Principle components analysis was used to classify subjects into groups based on similarities in the card sorts. The way each of the four resulting groups described leadership was interpreted by examination of an aggregate card sort representing the views of the students in that group. These descriptions were compared to the stages of the LID model. Factor one from this study was similar to stages four through six of the LID model. There was no evidence distinguishing these three stages from each other in this subject sample. Factor two was similar to stage three with an independent view of self with others. Factor three was similar to stage three with a dependent view of self with others. Factor four had only a single subject, whose description did not readily fit into the LID model. Further research is needed to examine the LID stages experienced pre-college, as well as further exploration into whether LID stages four through six are truly distinct. However, the findings of this study do provide support for the existence of the stages of development most often experienced during the college years (stages three and four) as described in the LID model.Item EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COLLECTIVE RACIAL ESTEEM AND LEADERSHIP SELF-EFFICACY AMONG ASIAN AMERICAN COLLEGE STUDENTS(2011) Lee, Douglas Henri; Jacoby, Barbara; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis explored whether collective racial esteem was a significant predictor of leadership self-efficacy for Asian American college students. The subjects of the study were undergraduate students from the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership who identified as Asian and United States citizens. An aggregated Asian, Chinese, Filipino, and Indian/Pakistani samples were drawn from the MSL in order to study the diverse Asian American population. The aggregated Asian sample included all the ethnicities in addition to the three samples. The hypothesis was tested using a modified Input-Environment-Outcome model as an organizing framework and hierarchical multiple regression as the statistical method. Collective racial esteem was observed as a significant predictor of leadership self-efficacy for the aggregated Asian sample, the Chinese sample, and the Indian/Pakistani sample. The null hypothesis was rejected for these three samples. The null hypothesis failed to reject for the Filipino sample. The study's findings offer suggestions for practitioners and researchers.Item THE ROLE OF DEMOGRAPHIC, PRE-COLLEGE, AND INVOLVEMENT FACTORS ON POSTSECONDARY ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF FIRST-GENERATION COLLEGE STUDENTS: FINDINGS FROM A NATIONAL STUDY.(2009) Thomas, Isaiah Jerome; Komives, Susan R; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explored whether factors, such as demographic characteristics, pre-college academic achievement (measured by self-reported high school grade point average), and college involvement have an influence on the postsecondary academic achievement of first-generation college students as measured by self-reported college grade point average. This study addressed first-generation college students who attend a four-year institution. This exploration used Astin's (1970; 1993) inputs-environments-outcomes model as a theoretical framework and utilized multiple regression for statistical analysis. The findings showed that the four blocks in the study explained approximately 12.4% of the variance of postsecondary academic achievement. Specifically, demographic characteristics and pre-college academic achievement explained the majority of the variance of postsecondary academic achievement. This study's findings cautiously offer practical implications for higher education administrators and researchers.Item EXAMINING FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH LEADERSHIP SELF-EFFICACY IN COLLEGE STUDENT MILITARY PROGRAMS(2009) Wilson, Wendy L; Kurotsuchi Inkelas, Karen; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study examined the relationship between college experiences and socially responsible leadership with leadership self-efficacy for students who participate in military education programs. This study applied the social change model for leadership development, SCM, as the theoretical lens through which a socially responsible leadership process was understood in these programs. In addition, Astin's (1991) college impact model was applied to the design of the study in order to understand the relationship between involvement measures and leadership self-efficacy, an outcome of military education programs. This ex post facto study was a secondary analysis of data collected through the 2006 administration of the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership (MSL). The MSL provided a national sample of 1413 students who indicated involvement in a military student group. These military education programs were defined broadly and included participation in Corps of Cadets and ROTC students. The findings of this study indicate significant differences between students who participate in military education programs and other college students in terms of leadership self-efficacy. Military students indicated greater efficacy for leadership even when differences in background were accounted for. Second, the values of socially responsible leadership and leadership self-efficacy were positively correlated for students who participate in military education programs. Finally, the conceptual model designed for this study to understand leadership self-efficacy for military students was able to explain 49% of the variance in the criterion variable. Several factors significantly contributed to leadership self-efficacy, including demographic characteristics, a leadership self-efficacy quasi-pre-test, academic classification, leadership experiences, and socially responsible leadership. The study provided support for leadership self-efficacy as an outcome for students who participate in military education programs, and the use of socially responsible leadership as a means to understand leadership self-efficacy for this population. The study also identified areas of the campus environment that might be incorporated and developed further within military education programs in order to take full advantage of the college environment.Item Peer influence contexts of alcohol use among first-year college students: Investigating the roles of race, ethnicity, and gender through multigroup measured variable structural equation modeling(2006-12-18) Snyder, Kathryn Renee Baird; Komives, Susan R.; Hancock, Gregory R.; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The study purpose was to examine the contributions of peer context variables to the explanation of alcohol use of first-year college students by racial-ethnic group and by gender. Social norms theory and the theories of planned behavior, social identity/self-categorization, and status/status construction contributed constructs. Construct-related scores from sample survey responses demonstrated strong reliabilities ranging from .70 to .97. The following constructs provided measures for the study: Normative perception, subjective norm, affective attitude, cognitive attitude, social identity/self-categorization, status value, perceived behavioral control, intention and alcohol use. Normative perception and subjective norm were combined to create a single scale with stronger reliability than either had separately. Both cognitive and affective attitude were combined to create a single scale. Normative perception and attitude were measured the summer prior to college and in the fall; alcohol use was measured in the fall and in the spring. All other model variables were measured in the fall. Survey data were collected online in three waves and were from a representative sample (N=837) at a large state research institution with a predominantly White (65%) undergraduate student body. Rates of self-reported past month alcohol use and heavy episodic drinking of participants were comparable to those of similar samples in national and in-state studies. Applying multigroup measured variable structural equation modeling, the model explained between 60% of the variance in spring term alcohol use for Asian Pacific American students and 92% for African American/Black students. Data-model fit was acceptable (NFI, CFI > .95, SRMR < .08) for all groups in both analyses. Direct, indirect, and total effects of model variables were identified for each of five racial-ethnic groups in the study (African American/Black, Asian Pacific American, Latino/Latina American, White American, and Multiracial/Biracial American) and by gender for White men and White women. Tests of invariance demonstrated where specific paths in the model were significantly non-invariant (differed) and for which groups. Findings suggest the importance of pre-college intervention, the risk of increased alcohol misuse for first-year students, and the conditional effects of racial-ethnic group and gender.