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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Subject: search.filters.subject.discourse analysis

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    Framing Engineering: The Role of College Website Descriptions
    (MDPI, 2017-12-31) Da Costa, Romina B.; Stromquist, Nelly P.
    This study contributes to the literature on women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by examining the framing of engineering on college websites, a major recruitment tool. We take websites to be key sources of textual data that can provide insights into the discourses surrounding the field of engineering. We ask whether women-only institutions (WOIs) frame engineering in ways that appeal more broadly to women. Our sample comprises the full range of WOIs offering engineering degrees in the US (14) and a comparison sample of 14 coeducational universities also offering engineering degrees. We employ established methods for discourse analysis, and both deductive and inductive coding processes in analyzing the textual data. Our main findings indicate that WOIs’ framing of engineering places a greater emphasis on collaboration, supports for students, interdisciplinarity, and the potential for engineering to contribute to improvements for society. In contrast, co-ed institutions tend to place a greater emphasis on the financial returns and job security that result from majoring in engineering. We conclude that co-ed engineering programs should consider a broadening of the descriptions surrounding the engineering field, since the inclusion of a wider set of values could be appealing to women students.
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    Relational Dynamics in Teacher Professional Development
    (2013) Finkelstein, Carla; Valli, Linda R; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Teacher professional development (PD) is considered essential to improving student achievement toward high standards. I argue that while current notions of high quality PD foreground cognitive aspects of learning, they undertheorize the influence of relational dynamics in teacher learning interactions. That is, current conceptions of high quality PD may be necessary but insufficient to engender teacher learning, and attention to relational dynamics may be essential to leveraging teachers' engagement and productive participation in learning opportunities. A review of the literature from related fields provides preliminary recommendations for addressing affective concerns and relational dynamics in learning, but extrapolation of these recommendations for PD is problematized by particular considerations of teachers as learners, including bureaucratic presses and hierarchical school contexts. A conceptual framework that incorporates power/knowledge considerations may allow for investigation of relational dynamics in PD interactions in a way that takes into account the participants' individual characteristics as well as institutional context. This study uses discourse analysis to examine interactions between three focal teachers and their PD facilitators in a science learning progressions project and a literacy coaching cycle. Examining moments of tension or questions raised by the focal teachers, my analysis finds that close attention to both verbal and nonverbal discourse moves in PD interactions illuminates the ways in which relational dynamics were consequential to the teachers' participation and can help explain the progress or lack of progress for each teacher.
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    FROM INTERACTION TO INTERACTION: EXPLORING SHARED RESOURCES CONSTRUCTED THROUGH AND MEDIATING CLASSROOM SCIENCE LEARNING
    (2010) Tang, Xiaowei; Coffey, Janet E; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Recent reform documents and science education literature emphasize the importance of scientific argumentation as a discourse and practice of science that should be supported in school science learning. Much of this literature focuses on the structure of argument, whether for assessing the quality of argument or designing instructional scaffolds. This study challenges the narrowness of this research paradigm and argues for the necessity of examining students' argumentative practices as rooted in the complex, evolving system of the classroom. Employing a sociocultural-historical lens of activity theory (Engestrӧm, 1987, 1999), discourse analysis is employed to explore how a high school biology class continuously builds affordances and constraints for argumentation practices through interactions. The ways in which argumentation occurs, including the nature of teacher and student participation, are influenced by learning goals, classroom norms, teacher-student relationships and epistemological stances constructed through a class' interactive history. Based on such findings, science education should consider promoting classroom scientific argumentation as a long-term process, requiring supportive resources that develop through continuous classroom interactions. Moreover, in order to understand affordances that support disciplinary learning in classroom, we need to look beyond just disciplinary interactions. This work has implications for classroom research on argumentation and teacher education, specifically, the preparation of teachers for secondary science teaching.