Human Development & Quantitative Methodology
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2248
The departments within the College of Education were reorganized and renamed as of July 1, 2011. This department incorporates the former departments of Measurement, Statistics & Evaluation; Human Development; and the Institute for Child Study.
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Item Maturity in reading, revisited: A closer look at adult competent and mature reading(2012) Fox, Emily; Alexander, Patricia A; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study investigated the nature of higher-level reading development in adults. Theories of reading development vary in what they identify as the desired endpoints of reading development, with one key difference being whether reading is fundamentally seen as instrumental for accomplishing tasks or as a mode of personal growth. Difficulties associated with understanding higher-level reading development from the point of view of reading as essentially instrumental include the conflict between understandings of higher-level reading development as increasingly specialized and understandings of higher-level reading development as involving consistency of reading performance, even in situations of low knowledge or interest. Gray and Rogers (1956) conducted a study of maturity in reading in which they considered the full flowering of the potential of reading to be the engagement in reading as a form of self-development. This study revisited Gray and Rogers's investigation and expanded upon it by including additional relevant aspects of reading maturity derived from consideration of other theories of reading development and the theoretical and empirical literature on higher-level reading development and by focusing on graduate students as competent and potentially mature readers. The current qualitative, descriptive study aimed at seeing what shape mature and competent reading take with regard to the associated experiences, habits, perceptions, ideas, attitudes, behaviors, and cross-situational reading performance of adult readers with strong academic experience and active regular experience of challenging, specialized reading. Reader profiles were created that highlighted aspects of the data that distinguished possible reading maturity, and three individual and more elaborated exemplary case studies were developed based on those profiles. Finally, descriptions of the underlying phenomena of reading maturity and reading competence were developed. Reading maturity was seen to have the essential character of critical openness, to pursue reading for self-development, and to involve a unified view of reading. Reading competence was seen to have the essential character of being schooled, to pursue reading for task-completion or escape, and to involve the dichotomization of reading into effortful, information-gathering reading of nonfiction for school and pleasurable, entertainment-seeking reading of fiction for personal purposes. In addition, reading competence was seen to take two forms, a generalized cross-situational reading capability, and a situationally-reliant reading that depended on familiarity and interest to support successful reading. This latter form was also connected to the high competence associated with expertise.Item CONTRIBUTIONS OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE, MOTIVATION, AND STRATEGIES TO KOREAN COLLEGE STUDENTS' L2 WRITING DEVELOPMENT(2011) Chae, Soo Eun; Alexander, Patricia A; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study examined Korean college students' L2 writing development and performance, motivation, and strategies while taking ESL writing classes. The present study expands the literature by examining the effects of various learner characteristics on L2 writing development. The selection and the expected effects of learner variables were particularly guided by the Model of Domain Learning (MDL). Prior work has demonstrated motivation, strategy, and prior knowledge are associated with L2 writing development. For example, a study by Leki (2007) showed L2 writing motivation (i.e., goals) to be related to L2 writing proficiency. He (2005) developed a model and a measure for assessing strategies relevant to motivation in L2 writing. The current study sought to expand and elaborate on previous works, as the extant L2 writing literature has been limited in showing changes in learning factors over time and in incorporating learner characteristics into studies of L2 writing. The current study sought to answer the following questions: 1. To what extent and in what manner do Korean college students' initial self-efficacy and interest contribute to changes in L2 writing performance over time?; 2. How are Korean college students' interest and self-efficacy at the beginning (Time 1) and at the conclusion (Time 3) of an L2 writing course related to L2 writing performance and self-reported strategiy use at time 1 and 3?; 3. How is Korean college students' prior L2 writing knowledge associated with their L2 writing motivation, self-reported strategy use, and writing performance? In order to answer these questions, a multi-methods design was performed, where interviews were used to support what was found in analyses results with self-report measures. Results based on growth curve modeling with cohort data at three time points suggested that students' motivational orientation significantly predicts Korean college students' L2 writing performance at the beginning of a semester. However, the influence of initial motivation on the growth rate of L2 writing proficiency, specifically L2 writing performance, was negative. The cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses in this study concluded that the contributions of motivation constructs to L2 writing performance depended on time. While there were a few exceptions (i.e., non-significant relation between L2 prior knowledge and students' interest at Time 1), study findings generally indicated that L1 and L2 writing prior knowledge were significantly related to L2 writing motivation, performance, and strategy use. In addition, interview data demonstrated students' level of L2 writing self-efficacy, interest, and strategy uses. While the records from self-report data and interview data did not perfectly match, the two data sets were similar.