Education Commons^™

Morphology In Reading Comprehension Among School-Aged Readers Of English: A Synthesis And Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling Study, Dongbo Zhang, Sihui (Echo) Ke, Ya Mo

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article synthesizes the roles of morphology in English reading acquisition and reports a meta-analytic structural equation modeling study (k = 107, N = 21,818) that tested the effects of morphological awareness (MA) on reading comprehension in school-aged readers. Moderator analysis was conducted through a set of subgroup comparisons based on readers’ language status (monolingual vs. bilingual), age/grade (lower elementary, upper elementary, vs. middle/high school), and MA task modality (spoken vs. written). MA had significant indirect effects on reading comprehension via both word reading and vocabulary knowledge in the full sample as well as all subgroups. Its direct effect …

Physical Activity And Academic Achievement: An Analysis Of Potential Student- And School-Level Moderators, Peter J. Boedeker, Hannah G. Calvert

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Many children do not engage in sufficient physical activity, and schools provide a unique venue for children to reach their recommended 60 daily minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Prior research examining effects of MVPA on academic achievement is inconclusive, and few studies have investigated potential moderators of this relationship. This study examined whether student-level characteristics (gender, race/ethnicity, free/reduced-price lunch status) and school-level characteristics (proportion of students qualifying for free/reduced-price lunch, physical activity environment and opportunities) moderate the relationship between MVPA and academic achievement.

Methods: In a large, diverse metropolitan public school district in Georgia, 4,936 students in Grade …

Study Protocol For A Cluster-Randomized Trial Of A Bundle Of Implementation Support Strategies To Improve The Fidelity Of Implementation Of Schoolwide Positive Behavioral Interventions And Supports In Rural Schools, Lindsey Turner, Hannah G. Calvert, Christopher M. Fleming, Teri Lewis, Carl Siebert, Nate Anderson, Tate Castleton, Ashley Havlivak, Michaela Mcquilkin

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Improving the implementation of evidence-based interventions is important for population-level impacts. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is effective for improving school climate and students’ behavioral outcomes, but rural schools often lag behind urban and suburban schools in implementing such initiatives.

Methods/Design: This paper describes a Type 3 hybrid implementation-effectiveness trial of Rural School Support Strategies (RS3), a bundle of implementation support strategies selected to improve implementation outcomes in rural schools. In this two-arm parallel group trial, 40 rural public schools are randomized to receive: 1) a series of trainings about PBIS; or 2) an enhanced condition with training …

The Longitudinal Association Between Objectively-Measured School-Day Physical Activity And Academic Achievement In Us Elementary School Students, Paul N. Elish, Cassandra S. Bryan, Peter J. Boedeker, Hannah G. Calvert, Christi M. Kay, Adria M. Meyer, Julie A. Gazmararian

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: It is recommended that school-aged children accrue 30 minutes of daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in school. Current literature is inconclusive about the long-term associations between school-based physical activity and academic achievement. In this study, we use a large sample and longitudinal design to rigorously evaluate whether school-day MVPA is associated with academic achievement.

Methods: In a diverse suburban public school district, 4936 Grade 4 students were recruited in 40 elementary schools. Students wore accelerometers to measure school-day MVPA for 15 days across three semesters. Academic performance data was collected across Grade 3 fall to Grade 5 spring, including …

Tree-Based Methods: A Tool For Modeling Nonlinear Complex Relationships And Generating New Insights From Data, Ya Mo, Brian Habing, Nell Sedransk

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Our paper introduces tree-based methods, specifically classification and regression trees (CRT), to study student achievement. CRT allows data analysis to be driven by the data’s internal structure. Thus, CRT can model complex nonlinear relationships and supplement traditional hypothesis-testing approaches to provide a fuller picture of the topic being studied. Using Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten 2011 data as a case study, our research investigated predictors from students’ demographic backgrounds to ascertain their relationships to students’ academic performance and achievement gains in reading and math. In our study, CRT displays complex patterns between predictors and outcomes; more specifically, the patterns illuminated by …

Efficient Assessment Of Students’ Proportional Reasoning, Michele Carney, Katie Paulding, Joe Champion

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Teachers need ways to efficiently assess students’ cognitive understanding. One promising approach involves easily adapted and administered item types that yield quantitative scores that can be interpreted in terms of whether or not students likely possess key understandings. This study illustrates an approach to analyzing response process validity evidence from item types for assessing two important aspects of proportional reasoning. Data include results from an interview protocol used with 33 middle school students to compare their responses to prototypical item types to their conceptions of composed unit and multiplicative comparison. The findings provide validity evidence in support of the score …

Supporting Aesthetic Experience Of Science In Everyday Life, Leslie Atkins Elliott

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Researchers have argued that a central goal of science education is to transform students' out-of-school experiences, so that students have aesthetic experiences of the world that would not otherwise be available to them. The goal of this paper is to articulate a set of design principles that support this goal. In doing so, I will first position this as a problem of transfer, and describe a perspective on transfer in which an idea or experience is not so much abstracted from its original context, but one in which the learning context incorporates out-of-class contexts, and vice versa. After characterising a …

Recruitment Strategy Development For First Generation, Underrepresented, And Low-Income Masters Students, Briceland Mclaughlin, Julianne A. Wenner

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recruitment and academic success at the Master of Science (MS) degree level is an often-overlooked line of inquiry. The Stellar Engineering Students Graduate Program Scholarship (SEnS GPS), a National Science Foundation S-STEM funded program at Boise State University, is beginning to bridge this gap in our knowledge of masters-level students. Boise State is a medium-sized, metropolitan, rural serving institution in the mountain west with a large population of typically underserved student groups.

SEnS GPS is investigating the experiences of computer science and engineering MS students from pre-decision and recruitment to graduation. This project is working to determine if best practices …

Mechanisms Of Influence On Youth Substance Use For A Social-Emotional And Character Development Program: A Theory-Based Approach, Stefanie Holloway, Brian R. Flay, Carl Siebert

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: The Theory of Triadic Influence (TTI) provides a comprehensive framework for understanding adolescent substance use. Objectives: We examined mechanisms by which a TTI-guided social-emotional and character development program, Positive Action (PA), influences adolescent substance use. Study data come from the PA-Chicago, longitudinal matched-pairs cluster-randomized control trial. A diverse, dynamic cohort of approximately 1,200 students from 14 low-performing schools were assessed at eight points of time, between grades 3-8, across a six-year period. Students completed scales related to substance use, self-control, deviant peer affiliation, and school attachment, adapted from the Risk Behavior Survey, Social-Emotional and Character Development …

The Role Of Federal And State Policy In Addressing Early Childhood Achievement Gaps: Parent Perceptions And Student Outcomes Related To 21st Century Learning Centers Programming In The United States, Heather P. Williams

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

As policymakers and school communities work to address underlying causes of achievement gaps and access to quality early childhood education, this study considers the use of 21st Century Community Learning Centers to address early childhood education needs on western U.S. state, Idaho. The study sought to understand the relationship between federal and state policies related to out-of-school opportunities to enhance early childhood education. Utilizing data from a statewide evaluation of Idaho’s 21st Century Learning Centers, the study examined 92 centers providing after school, before school, or summer programs in grades preschool through the third grade to predominately at-risk children. Data …

The Relationship Between Teachers' Cue-Utilization And Their Monitoring Accuracy Of Students' Text Comprehension, Janneke Van De Pol, Tamara Van Gog, Keith Thiede

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

We investigated to what extent teachers' use of diagnostic cues and the accuracy with which they interpreted or judged the values of those cues affected teachers' monitoring accuracy. Forty-six secondary education teachers judged the text comprehension of six students (216 students in total). Mere use of diagnostic cues appeared not sufficient. Rather, accurately judging the values of a diagnostic performance cue was related to higher monitoring accuracy. Using non-diagnostic student cues hampered teachers' monitoring accuracy. The key to further improve monitoring accuracy might lie in improving teachers’ ability to accurately judge diagnostic cues and help them ignore non-diagnostic cues.

Prevalence Of Evidence-Based School Meal Practices And Associations With Reported Food Waste Across A National Sample Of U.S. Elementary Schools, Hannah G. Calvert, Punam Ohri-Vachaspati, Michaela Mcquilkin, Peter Boedeker, Lindsey Turner

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Providing meals at school is an important part of the hunger safety net for children in the United States and worldwide; however, many children do not receive school meals even when they qualify for federally-subsidized free or reduced-priced meals. This study investigates the prevalence of several evidence-based practices that have previously been shown to increase the reach and impact of school meals. A survey was sent to a national sample of US elementary schools, with items examining practices regarding school breakfast, school lunch, recess, the promotion of meals, nutrition standards, and food waste, during the 2019–20 school year. Almost all …

Tinkering With Theoretical Objects: Designing Theories In Scientific Inquiry, Shakayla Moran, Leslie Atkins Elliott

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The EDISIn Project (Engineering Design in Scientific Inquiry), taught in an undergraduate teacher preparation program, is investigating where engineering design opportunities emerge within contexts of scientific inquiry, with implications for how science teachers might productively engage in engineering design in their science courses without compromising on either the science or the engineering. In some inquiries, the opportunities for engineering were obvious, particularly with respect to novel experimental designs and in developing physical representations of models. In other inquiries, however, the investigations were either largely theoretical or the experimental designs were readily developed without a need for deliberate attention to design …

Effects Of Positive Action In Elementary School On Student Behavioral And Social-Emotional Outcomes, Kendra M. Lewis, Stefanie D. Holloway, Niloofar Bavarian, Naida Silverthorn, David L. Dubois, Brian R. Flay, Carl F. Siebert

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The national conversation about the importance of social-emotional competencies, such as prosocial behaviors, responsible decision-making, and problem-solving, has increased greatly in the last 2 decades. There is, however, less robust evidence for social and emotional learning programs’ impact on social and emotional outcomes when implemented in low-income, minority populations. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a school-based, universal program targeting social-emotional skills in late elementary school (grades 3–5) in a low-income, urban, minority population. Data were collected from 930 students over five waves. Growth curve analyses revealed evidence of favorable program effects on positive …

Implementation Of Physical Activity In Us Elementary Schools: The Role Of Administrative Support, Financial Resources, And Champions, Blake Densley, Hannah G. Calvert, Peter Boedeker, Lindsey Turner

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The intentional integration of physical activity in elementary school classrooms—including brief instructional breaks for activity, or integration into lessons—can benefit children’s physical activity and education outcomes. Teachers are key implementation agents, but despite physical activity in the classroom being an evidence-informed practice, many teachers do not regularly implement it. The aim of this study was to obtain updated nationally representative prevalence estimates in United States public elementary schools, regarding four key outcomes: (1) school adoption of physically active lessons (PA lessons); (2) school adoption of physical-activity breaks (PA breaks); (3) penetration in the classroom, defined as ≥50% of teachers using …

Stop-Motion Animation To Model The Analemma, Leslie Atkins Elliott, Amanda Hunter, Carl Krutz, Shakayla Moran, Elliot Sherrow

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Sun does not return to the same position in the sky every 24 hours. At local noon, for example, the Sun will appear higher in the sky as we move from winter to summer solstice. In addition, and perhaps more surprisingly, solar days (the roughly 24 hours between subsequent local noons) vary in length, causing the Sun to be east or west of its location 24 hours prior. Over a year, this variation traces out a figure 8, known as an analemma, as shown in Fig.1. It can also be seen in the sundial in Fig. 2, where the …

Study Protocol For Testing The Association Between Physical Activity And Academic Outcomes Utilizing A Cluster-Randomized Trial, Peter Boedeker, Lindsey Turner, Hannah Calvert, Christi Kay, Adria Meyer, Chuck Truett, Julie Gazmararian

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend adolescents engaging in 60 min of physical activity (PA) every day. Students should spend at least 30 min being active while at school. However, schools rarely provide that much PA time for students. This paper describes the planned analyses for a study evaluating the relationships between PA (measured as average daily minutes of Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity [MVPA]) and educational outcomes of standardized test scores and classroom grades cross-sectionally in 4 th grade and longitudinally from 4 th to 5 th grade. Investigations of moderators (both student- and school-level), mediators, and potential …

Truth, Success, And Faith: Novice Teachers’ Perceptions Of What's At Risk In Responsive Teaching In Science, Amy D. Robertson, Leslie J. Atkins Elliott

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Responsive teaching—or teaching that builds from the “seeds of science” in student thinking—is depicted in STEM education literature as both important and challenging. U.S. science education reform has been calling for teachers to enact instruction that attends to and takes up the substance of students’ STEM ideas; however, responsive teaching represents a substantial shift from the current state of affairs in most U.S. classrooms, where content is often presented authoritatively as facts, definitions, and algorithms, with little consideration of student thinking. Drawing on language from literature about sense‐making, this paper identifies some of the “vexation points” that novice science teachers …

Science Packs: Take-Home Stem-Themed Backpacks Provide Opportunities For Engaging Family Fun!, Julianne A. Wenner, Soñia Galaviz

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Families play a vital role in shaping students’ interest and engagement in science (Archer et al. 2012; Dabney, Chakraverty, and Tai 2013), yet are often left out of the loop. To encourage family involvement in science that is sustained over time, we took a cue from Freudenberg’s (2012) Science Sacks article and created science backpacks that students can take home over the weekends and share with their family members. We created three different activities for each grade level K–6, for a total of 21 different backpack activities throughout the school. Each classroom has duplicates of each activity, so it takes …

Professional Noticing On A Statistical Task, Courtney Nagle, Stephanie Casey, Michele Carney

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study explores secondary in-service mathematics teachers’ professional noticing of student work on a statistical task involving informally placing a line of best fit. The manuscript describes how teachers interpreted student work on the line of best fit task, how teachers responded to the student work, and associations between their interpretations and consequential responses. Findings related to teachers’ interpretations of student work revealed that teachers were often evaluative and tended to describe both students’ processes and underlying understanding, although the descriptions of understanding were frequently unsupported by the work. Teachers’ responses to students were typically open-ended but infrequently showed promise …

Scaffolding Development Of Clinical Supervisors: Learning To Be A Liaison, Jennifer Snow, Hannah Carter, Sherry A. Dismuke, Angel Larson, Stefanie Shebley

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Teacher education as a field has embraced the idea that clinically-based teacher education will better support teacher candidate learning and the learning of their future preK-12 students (AACTE, 2018; NCATE, 2010). Likewise, teacher education scholars have emphasized the importance of learning to teach well in clinical practice (Darling-Hammond, 2014). We five women teacher educators engaged in a collaborative self-study to investigate our different perspectives and our institution’s hope for mentoring and preparing new liaisons. Our collaborative self-study focused on the research question: What are the key factors that play a part in influencing the developmental trajectory of a liaison? Through …

Designing Teacher Preparation Courses: Integrating Mobile Technology, Program Standards, And Course Outcomes, Serena Hicks, Devshikha Bose

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This discussion paper demonstrates the need for applying backwards design principles to already-existing course syllabi in order to embed technology alongside pedagogy in teacher preparation programs. The problem is first addressed as a need to integrate technology in one secondary course based on lack of proficiency demonstrated on multiple measures. A design framework that was implemented is then explained, including a step-by-step process for aligning mobile technology applications to course standards and outcomes. Challenges to the process are explored, as well as supports available for duplicating this work in other contexts. The paper concludes with steps the instructor is now …

Modeling Potential Energy Of The Gaussian Gun, Leslie Atkins Elliott, André Bolliou, Hanna Irving, Douglas Jackson

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Gaussian gun is an arrangement of magnets and ball bearings (pictured in Fig. 1) such that—when the leftmost ball is released—the rightmost ball is ejected at high speeds. The device has been described in several articles on energy education. The sudden appearance of kinetic energy offers a productive context for considering a range of challenging ideas: the often-counterintuitive relationship between force and potential energy, the escape velocity for attractive forces, why energy is required to break bonds, and why energy is released when bonds form. Beyond these ideas, it is also useful for motivating the representation of a potential …

An Exploration Of Supports For Increasing Classroom Physical Activity Within Elementary Schools, Hannah G. Calvert, Julianne A. Wenner, Lindsey Turner

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Classroom-based physical activity (CBPA) can significantly benefit students’ health and educational outcomes, but many teachers do not utilize CBPA. This study examined teachers’ perceptions about the value and impact of several approaches to support CBPA implementation, and teachers’ weekly self-reported CBPA use. Interviews were conducted with 35 classroom teachers (including those using and not using CBPA) at two public elementary schools, and CBPA tracking logs were collected on a weekly basis. Interview transcripts were interpreted through key domains within implementation science. On average, teachers reported using one activity every other day. Interview data revealed that utilizing professional collaboration time for …

Engineering Design In Scientific Inquiry, Leslie Atkins Elliott

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Engineering Design in Scientific Inquiry (EDISIn) Project addresses the engineering preparation of secondary science teachers by embedding engineering design into a science course for single-subject STEM education majors (future secondary teachers), and developing a sequence of lesson plans and annotated video for faculty who seek to embed engineering design in their science courses. While undergraduate laboratories are rich with designed experimental apparatus, it is rare that students themselves play a role in designing and producing artifacts in the service of scientific inquiry. Our expectation is that (1) existing science courses offer opportunities for students to engage meaningfully with engineering …

Scaling Professional Development For Mathematics Teacher Educators, Michele B. Carney, Jonathan L. Brendefur, Gwyneth Hughes, Keith Thiede, Angela R. Crawford, Dan Jesse, Brandie Ward Smith

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

There have been multiple calls (Adler, Ball, Krainer, Lin, & Novotna, 2005; Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences, 2012; Kilpatrick, Swafford, & Findell, 2001) and extensive evidence (Hiebert, 2003; Lemke et al., 2004; National Math Panel, 2008; OECD, 2010) regarding the need to change K-12 mathematics education from procedural and memorization-driven to more conceptual and application-based. Professional development is viewed as an important mechanism to influence these changes in instructional practices (Fennema et al., 1996; Franke, Carpenter, Levi, & Fennema, 2001; Swafford, Jones, & Thornton, 1997) and student outcomes (Jacobs, Franke, Carpenter, Levi, & Battey, 2007). However, professional development is …

Comparison Of Two Approaches To Interpretive Use Arguments, Michele Carney, Angela Crawford, Carl Siebert, Rich Osguthorpe, Keith Thiede

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA, & NCME, 2014) recommend an argument-based approach to validation that involves a clear statement of the intended interpretation and use of test scores, the identification of the underlying assumptions and inferences in that statement—termed the interpretation/use argument, and gathering of evidence to support or refute the assumptions and inferences. We present two approaches to articulating the assumptions and inferences that underlie a score interpretation and use statement, also termed the interpretation/use argument (Kane, 2016). One approach uses the five sources of validity evidence in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing …

Building Capacity In Teacher Preparation With Practitioner Inquiry: A Self-Study Of Teacher Educators’ Clinical Feedback Practices, Sherry Dismuke, Esther A. Enright, Julianne A. Wenner

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This collaborative self-study of teacher educators’ feedback practices argues for an intentional process for teacher educators to develop an inquiry stance toward our own teaching. Data sources include formative observation forms, evaluations, observation notes, debriefings, surveys, researcher journals, and layered memos. Findings define influences and shared patterns of practice. Our professional learning from this self-study built our capacity as teacher educators by informing our development of an inquiry feedback cycle rooted in representations, approximations, and decomposition of practice (Grossman et al., 2009) to intentionally model and scaffold the development of an inquiry stance toward practice in our teacher candidates.

Thick And Thin: Variations In Teacher Leader Identity, Julianne A. Wenner, Todd Campbell

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recently, there has been more focus on issues related to the professional development of teacher leaders (TLs), but there is still much to learn. Situated within a larger study, the purpose of this research was to understand the ways in which individuals participated in teacher leadership and how participation and identities shaped and were shaped by communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Specifically, this study focuses on two TLs and the manifestation of what we are describing as ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ TL identities. Based on our findings, we see thick identity – that is, a TL identity that is …

On The Importance Of Engaging Students In Crafting Definitions, Angela Little, Leslie Atkins Elliott

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper we describe an activity for engaging students in crafting definitions. We explore the strengths of this particular activity as well as the broader implications of engaging students in crafting definitions more generally.