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 Prompting Rural Students' Use of Prior Knowledge and Experience to Support Comprehension of Unfamiliar Content(2018) Hattan, Courtney; Alexander, Patricia A; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Prior knowledge activation is foundational to students’ text comprehension. Yet, pedagogical techniques that teachers can use to prompt students’ knowledge activation are limited and empirical data on the relative effectiveness of those techniques is scant. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the effectiveness of traditional and novel knowledge activation techniques for supporting rural students’ comprehension of texts covering unfamiliar content. In this quasi-experimental study, 149 rural middle-school students were assigned to one of three conditions: knowledge mobilization (traditional), relational reasoning (new), or text annotation (control). Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling with text comprehension as the outcome variable and condition, relational reasoning ability, prior topic knowledge, gender, ethnicity, and grade level as predictor variables. The results demonstrated a statistically significant difference for overall comprehension between students in the relational reasoning condition and students in both the mobilization (β = 5.15, p < .00) and control conditions (β = 3.10, p < .00). There were no significant differences between students in the mobilization versus control conditions (β = -1.85, p = .07). Further, there were no comprehension differences for ethnic background or grade level. However, female students outperformed male students, and prior topic knowledge and relational reasoning ability were significant covariates in analysis. Qualitative analysis of follow-up conversations revealed the utility of the relational reasoning condition, especially for low-performing students. The results indicate that not all prior knowledge activation techniques are equally effective for all students engaged in the processing unfamiliar textual content. Additionally, the novel activation technique of relational reasoning proved highly effective for promoting students’ text comprehension.Item EXAMINING TRANS-SYMBOLIC AND SYMBOL-SPECIFIC PROCESSES IN POETRY AND PAINTING(2013) Loughlin, Sandra; Alexander, Patricia A; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)There is a growing interest in multiliteracies and the processes by which nonlinguistic and multisymbolic compositions are understood. However, as indicated by Unsworth (2008), there is currently no "trans-disciplinary" theoretical framework robust to these examinations. This study investigated the degree to which the Trans-Symbolic Comprehension framework (TSC; Loughlin & Alexander, 2012; Loughlin et al., 2013) might serve this purpose. The TSC posits that every act of comprehension, text or otherwise, entails both trans-symbolic and symbol-specific processes. Trans-symbolic comprehension processes are general processes that are necessary for understanding information encoded in a variety of compositional forms (e.g., text, paintings, musical score, physical formula), while symbol-specific processes are particular to a given symbol-system (e.g., text-specific processes). This study used the symbol systems of language and visual array to determine the viability of the TSC framework. Offline and online comprehension processes measures were administered before, during, and after studying a poem and a painting to capture the comprehension processes used by 12 English and 12 Art education majors. Verbal protocol analyses of these data resulted in the identification of 7 poem and 8 painting comprehension processes, which manifested in 48 associated subprocesses. The 48 comprehension subprocesses were then compared to determine degree of trans-symbolism. It was determined that a significant portion of the comprehension processes and subprocesses were shared; that is, iterative manifestations applied to both poem and painting. However, processes that did not appear to iterate were also identified (e.g., inferring mood). The discovery of these apparent trans-symbolic processes and symbol-specific processes is in line with the predictions of the TSC framework. Implications of this study for education research are discussed, specifically with respect to the burgeoning literature on nonlinguistic literacies. Preliminary implications for educational practice are also drawn in relation to the growing praxis of teaching literature, including poetry, through visual art in middle and high schools, and ongoing policy efforts to expand this type of instruction.Item Teacher Competence Support for Reading in Middle School(2012) McRae, Angela; Guthrie, John T.; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between student perceptions of teacher competence support, self-efficacy for reading, and reading achievement for African American and European American students. Previous studies of teacher support have emphasized emotional support and have found considerable evidence for positive effects on motivation and achievement (Wentzel, 2009). Over time, support for competence has increasingly emerged as a distinct dimension of teacher support (Beghetto, 2007; Wentzel et al., 2010) and there is a need for the extension of this empirical research on the association between teacher competence support, motivation, and achievement. This study seeks to narrow this focus to student perceptions of teacher competence support, student self-efficacy, and reading achievement in middle school. The study sample consisted of 366 seventh- grade students in an ethnically and economically diverse school district. Students completed measures of their perceptions of teacher competence support, which included encouragement and instrumental help in reading. Students also completed a reading self-efficacy questionnaire and an assessment of information text comprehension. While controlling for socioeconomic status, hierarchical multiple regressions and MANOVA were conducted. African American students perceived statistically significantly higher levels of teacher competence support for reading compared to their European American peers. European American students performed at a higher level on the reading achievement measure, and there was no significant difference between groups in self-efficacy. Teacher competence support was significantly associated with self-efficacy regardless of ethnicity, and was also significantly associated with reading achievement, but only for African American students. Self-efficacy was significantly correlated with reading achievement for both ethnic groups; however, this correlation was statistically significantly higher for European American students. Post hoc analyses revealed that the correlation between self-efficacy and reading achievement was significant for European American students regardless of perceived level of teacher competence support, and the self-efficacy and reading achievement relationship was significant for African American students only if they perceived high levels of teacher competence support.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.