Thesis advisor: Curt Dudley-Marling / This qualitative dissertation, informed by sociocultural theory (Gee, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978), examines how a fourth grade teacher and his students learned to participate in Shared Inquiry, a discussion practice where students learn how to build an evidential argument, including a claim that is supported by evidence and justified by a warrant (Toulmin, 1969). Students also learn how to weigh the merits of opposing arguments and how to modify their initial opinions as evidence demands. Over the course of ten weeks, the fourth grade teacher implemented Shared Inquiry as part of the Junior Great Books (JGB) program, offered as a supplement to a district mandated reading program. The teacher was observed while using the JGB program and while providing instruction through the mandated reading program. He participated in action research (Stringer, 2007) to examine how to make Shared Inquiry most successful. This dissertation describes how the teacher's action research enabled his students to become successful with Shared Inquiry, after they initially struggled with the practice. Over time, they learned a new way of engaging, not only with literature, but also with fellow classmates. This dissertation also describes how the fourth grade students learned a different set of literacy practices through the mandated reading program. The argument is made that Shared Inquiry has the potential to be a far more substantively engaging (Nystrand, 2006; Nystrand & Gamoran, 1991, 1997) literacy practice compared to the mandated reading program. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Thesis advisor: Michael Barnett / This mixed method study examined the impact of a LEGO<super>TM</super>-based, engineering-oriented curriculum compared to an inquiry-based curriculum on fifth graders' content learning of simple machines. This study takes a social constructivist theoretical stance that science learning involves learning scientific concepts and their relations to each other. From this perspective, students are active participants, and they construct their conceptual understanding through the guidance of their teacher. With the goal of better understanding the use of engineering education materials in classrooms the National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council in the book "Engineering in K-12 Education" conducted an in-depth review of the potential benefits of including engineering in K-12 schools as (a) improved learning and achievement in science and mathematics, (b) increased awareness of engineering and the work of engineers, (c) understanding of and the ability to engage in engineering design, (d) interest in pursuing engineering as a career, and (e) increased technological literacy (Katehi, Pearson, & Feder, 2009). However, they also noted a lack of reliable data and rigorous research to support these assertions. Data sources included identical written tests and interviews, classroom observations and videos, teacher interviews, and classroom artifacts. To investigate the impact of the design-based simple machines curriculum compared to the scientific inquiry-based simple machines curriculum on student learning outcomes, I compared the control and the experimental groups' scores on the tests and interviews by using ANCOVA. To analyze and characterize the classroom observation videotapes, I used Jordan and Henderson's (1995) method and divide them into episodes. My analyses revealed that the design-based Design a People Mover: Simple Machines unit was, if not better, as successful as the inquiry-based FOSS Levers and Pulleys unit in terms of students' content learning. I also found that students in the engineering group outperformed students in the control group in regards to their ability to answer open-ended questions when interviewed. Implications for students' science content learning and teachers' professional development are discussed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

The purpose of this study was to examine belonging at classroom and academic domain levels, extending research that has primarily investigated general school and classroom-level belonging. This examination accounts for the context-specific, instructional, and domain experiences of students’ belonging. More specifically, the goals of the research were to investigate the relations between belonging in science class with engagement, and to contrast students’ perspectives of science classroom belonging in traditional compared to inquiry curricular contexts. Middle school students from traditional and inquiry science contexts completed self-reported measures of science classroom belonging and science engagement. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to evaluate students’ experiences of belonging in science class. Science classroom belonging was correlated with science engagement, with students from inquiry contexts reporting higher belonging and engagement quality. In both contexts, students reported common social, academic and contextual sources of belonging, with additional emphasis on content-based and interpersonal interactions. In comparing justifications between contexts on the role of competence for experienced belonging, students in traditional contexts reflected on self-focused, intrapersonal competence, while students in inquiry contexts reflected on interpersonal forms of competence. Students’ differentiated reports and conceptualization of belonging were related to contextual supports for involvement in authentic disciplinary practice and peer responsiveness.

My research measured completion and retention of procedural learning tasks, and declarative and procedural components of engagement in indoor and outdoor settings. Instructor-assisted Self-Directed Learning and Non-instructor-assisted Self-Directed Learning were implemented in the context of an Experiential Learning approach. Experimental covariates included student-specific variables such as background and experience, and environment-specific variables such as temperature, and humidity. AIC model averaging was used to identify the best-fitting mixed GLM models. Neither location, nor pedagogic method, proved to be a significant predictor of the probability that a student would complete the most complex of the procedural learning tasks, and the percent of students completing this task was not significantly higher in outdoor groups than in indoor groups. Neither location nor pedagogic method was a significant predictor of retention of procedural knowledge or engagement with learning materials. The level of voluntary collaboration was higher in outdoor groups than in indoor groups. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Mentshlichkeit – Yiddish for the ‘art of being a good hu(man)’ - is offered as an invitation to participate in practices that may have the power to dispel the haunting of a ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell 1995). Inspired by ‘Action Research’, what Reason & Bradbury call inquiry into the ‘quality of our acting’, the author uses futuristic narrative, interwoven with discussion and dialogue, to see if it is possible to reflect and act generatively, as a man who is mindful of feminism’s challenge that ‘the personal is political’ (Reason and Bradbury 2001). Within a post-modern discourse, the author heads towards the irony and discomfort to be found in a text that explores goodness and masculinity in the same breath. But he is not alone, like some hero on a quest – rather he is inspired by the voices of challenge and support he hears in the course of his roles in diverse communities: as a Jew, a facilitator/consultant at Roffey Park Institute and a father. It is my intention to playfully invite you into this story; to see if it moves you, if it usefully meets your own experience and helps you consider your own action, within the paradoxes and dilemmas you face. Too often we can disappear within the words we write. It is my intention to ‘show up’, and as a man to meet the challenge of feminism, to live within this territory and act with some awareness of its contours. The characters in this story are inspired by the people I encounter, who remind me I am not ‘selfmade’, and that we men, in the words of Philip Corrigan, may usefully ‘re-member our bodies’ (Corrigan 1988). Ultimately this is a human-scale story, designed to provoke good conversations. I look forward to hearing what you would like to discuss.

No trabalho a seguir buscamos compreender o papel da matemática na construção dos argumentos dos estudantes em atividades de ensino investigativas. Para o encaminhamento dessa pesquisa, realizamos uma revisão sobre argumentação e argumentação matemática com o intuito de obter elementos para a construção de um instrumento de análise de situações de ensino e aprendizagem. A partir desse estudo emergiu também a necessidade da consideração das diferentes linguagens usadas na comunicação e de observar a qualidade do processo argumentativo em termos de sua forma e conteúdo. Com a estruturação desse quadro teórico, elaboramos uma sequência de ensino investigativa (SEI) sobre quantidade de movimento, sua conservação e as leis de Newton, que agrupa as características encontradas, tal como a abdução, isto é, o uso de uma regra ou lei como hipótese que auxilia na explicação de um fato novo. Para alcançar nossos objetivos, analisamos a gravação em vídeo da aplicação dessa sequência em uma turma do primeiro ano do ensino médio, de uma escola pública do estado de Santa Catarina, com o auxílio do software Videograph, que facilita visualizar a ocorrência das categorias propostas em um gráfico temporal. Verificamos a intensa frequência das propriedades da argumentação destacadas, com um grande movimento das diferentes linguagens na construção dos significados, em especial a algébrica no processo de estimativas. Por outro lado, ficou explícita a desconexão entre fenômenos e suas representações, à medida que os estudantes se distanciaram do problema experimental do início da SEI e se envolveram no processo de resolução de problemas isso demanda o planejamento de atividades específicas para estimular a reflexão sobre essas situações. / In the following work we seek to understand the role of mathematics in the construction of the arguments of students in inquiry teaching activities. For forwarding this research, we conducted a review about argumentation and mathematical argumentation with the purpose to provide elements for the construction of an analytical tool for teaching and learning situations. From this study also emerged the need for consideration of the different languages used for communication and observe the quality of the argumentative process in terms of its form and content. With the structuration of this theoretical framework, we developed an Inquiry-Based Teaching Sequence (IBTS) about momentum, its conservation and Newton\'s laws, which brings together the features found, such as abduction, i.e. the use of a rule or law as hypothesis that helps to explain a new fact. To achieve our goals, we analyze the video recording of the application of this sequence in a first year high school class in a public school in the state of Santa Catarina, with the help of Videograph software that makes easy to observe the occurrence of the categories proposed in a temporal graph. We verified the intense frequency of the argument properties highlighted, with a large movement of the different languages in the construction of the meanings, especially the algebraic one on the estimation process. On the other hand, was explicit the disconnection between phenomena and their representations, as students distanced themselves from the experimental problem of the beginning of IBTS and became involved in the problem-solving process - that demand the planning of specific activities to stimulate reflection about these situations.

The overall aim of the research was to understand the potential impact of sustained part-time working on women’s identities with regards to motherhood and work. Despite an implicit assumption in public discourse, policy and research that mothers will resume full-time careers once their children are ‘older’, half of working mothers with their youngest child at secondary school are working part-time (ONS, Q3, 2011). Often in the literature ‘good’ part-time working has been framed as short-term (see for example Tilly, 1996). The part-time ‘hidden brain drain’ (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2005) has been described as a waste of education and skills (Connolly and Gregory, 2010) and contributing to gender inequality (Walby, 2007). This PhD explored the life stories of twenty university educated, partnered mothers of older children (youngest at secondary school), who had mostly worked part-time since becoming mothers. Dialogic narrative analysis (Frank, 2010) was used to explore how these women made sense of where they had ended up through their story telling. A key finding is that for these women ‘becoming’ a part-time working mother was neither an informed ‘choice’, nor a fixed orientation, but was an ongoing process of negotiation, within a matrix of inter-related, constantly shifting and interacting tensions. Compromises to their jobs often became more extensive than expected and a continuing need to ‘be there’ for teenagers was unanticipated. Damage to ‘career’ is conceptualised as a ‘creeping trauma’. This is considered in light of the mothering stories indicating this was a price worth paying. The majority of women were engaging in a narrative of reorientation, using various strategies to reframe standards of ‘good’ working and the meaning of work within life. Success in reorientation differed according to individual experiences of constraints and opportunities.

In recent years, there has been increased interest and research on identifying the various ways that students can deviate from expected or desired patterns while using educational software. This includes research on gaming the system, player transformation, haphazard inquiry, and failure to use key features of the learning system. Detection of these sorts of behaviors has helped researchers to better understand these behaviors, thus allowing software designers to develop interventions that can remediate them and/or reduce their negative impacts on student learning. This work addresses two types of student disengagement: carelessness and a behavior we term WTF (“Without Thinking Fastidiously�) behavior. Carelessness is defined as not demonstrating a skill despite knowing it; we measured carelessness using a machine learned model. In WTF behavior, the student is interacting with the software, but their actions appear to have no relationship to the intended learning task. We discuss the detector development process, validate the detectors with human labels of the behavior, and discuss implications for understanding how and why students conduct inquiry without thinking fastidiously while learning in science inquiry microworlds. Following this work we explore the relationship between student learner characteristics and the aforementioned disengaged behaviors carelessness and WTF. Our goal was to develop a deeper understanding of which learner characteristics correlate to carelessness or WTF behavior. Our work examines three alternative methods for predicting carelessness and WTF behaviors from learner characteristics: simple correlations, k-means clustering, and decision tree rule learners.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T16:57:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alan de Carlo Antonio Silva.pdf: 723324 bytes, checksum: 0688e9dbbf5929a28053bd504f732479 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05-13 / Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo / Considering the importance "Problem Solving on the process of teaching and learning in mathematics," the reason of this study was to verify the theoretical approach and the differences in the way of understanding the term "problem solving" in the studies produced by postgraduate students in mathematics education at the Catholic University of São Paulo - period 1992 to 2009. Methodologically our research was characterized as a qualitative documentary study known as metanalysis in which we try to do a systematic review of a series of research, aiming to produce new results or synthesis. In order to transcend the obtained results of the investigations dissertation and thesis were used as they had focus on the subject problem solving or teaching methodology for problem solving. We based our research on Bridge (2004) and Dante (2009) comparing the different ways that problem solving has been addressed in the research, so after that we were able to verify that there are seven out of ten analyzed thesis that are characterized by teaching through problems solving . It is understood, therefore, that there are the presence of a growing rejection by the teaching method for problem solving nowadays. Therefore we conclude that the teaching through problem solving does not always provide a specific method to find solutions to the problems, the interaction of the person with the problem and also the teacher-student relationships are more intense than the teaching for problem solving and then it collaborates to find out possible alternatives and the effectiveness of the teachinglearning process / Considerando a importância do tema Resolução de Problemas no processo de Ensino e Aprendizagem em matemática , o objetivo desse estudo foi verificar qual a abordagem teórica e quais as diferenças na forma de entendimento do termo resolução de problemas nos estudos produzidos por alunos do Programa Pós-Graduados em Educação Matemática da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Estado de São Paulo, no período de 1992 a 2009. Metodologicamente nossa pesquisa se caracteriza como um estudo documental denominado metanálise qualitativa na qual se procura fazer uma revisão sistemática de um conjunto de pesquisas, visando à produção de novos resultados ou sínteses. Na intenção de transcender os resultados obtidos pelas investigações estudadas buscou-se dissertações e teses que possuíam o foco no objeto Resolução de Problemas ou na metodologia de ensino por Resolução de Problemas. Fundamentamos nossa pesquisa nos trabalhos de Ponte (2004) e Dante (2009) buscando confrontar as formas diferenciadas que Resolução de Problemas tem sido abordada nas pesquisas, assim pode-se verificar que existem sete dissertações de dez analisadas que caracterizam-se pelo ensino POR MEIO da Resolução de Problemas. Desta forma concluímos que no ensino POR MEIO de Resolução de Problemas nem sempre oferece um método específico para encontrar soluções dos problemas propostos, mas a interação da pessoa com o problema e a relação professor-aluno são mais intensas que no ensino PARA Resolução de Problemas assim colaboram com o encontro das possíveis alternativas e a efetivação do processo de ensino-aprendizado

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / F. Todd Goodson / Kay Ann Taylor / Library instruction in a university setting, in the primary manner it has been taught for decades, has a problem: the instruction is not teaching. Many library instruction sessions at universities are taught through a traditional lecture-style instruction session where students are allowed no voice in the classroom and there is no room for any evaluation of the information presented. Teaching without an engaged pedagogical framework without any active participation is problematic for teaching critical information literacy. This research focused on library instruction within higher education institutions and the choices made by instruction librarians to include (or not) critical pedagogy and critical information literacy within their teaching styles and classrooms. This study explored (a) the decisions of librarians to teach either in the traditional or critical library pedagogy manner and (b) barriers or encouragement in librarians’ choice to teach through a critical lens. With critical theory as the overarching framework and engaged pedagogy a central part to all these theories, critical engaged pedagogy combines critical race feminist theory, critical library pedagogy, and critical information literacy (the latter two frequently used interchangeably). The combined theoretical framework gives context for researching the reasons that instruction librarians choose (or do not) to implement these theoretical and pedagogical styles into their instruction of information literacy in classrooms. Using the qualitative methodology of narrative inquiry, specifically narrative analysis, this study analyzed and interpreted data from interviews, observational data, and field notes recorded in a reflexive journal through the lens of this theoretical framework. Findings showed that in their everyday experiences as academic instruction librarians, the participants faced both barriers and encouragement to their decisions regarding teaching methods and curriculum in addition to how they are impacting their students’ lives and learning. Four different themes emerged from the data. The first theme, sometimes a teacher, sometimes not, speaks to the struggle that the participants handled every day: though they were instruction librarians, they were not able to always feel as though they were real teachers or faculty on their campuses. The second theme, if only I had a choice, discusses how discipline faculty affect their teaching decisions and the participants’ goal to at least try to teach critical evaluation to the students. The third theme, teaching is a political act, focuses on participants’ teaching under a critical library instruction pedagogy, emphasizing their engagement with the students, the falsehood of neutrality, and teaching about marginalized groups, injustice, oppression, and similar political-minded concepts in their classes. The fourth theme, real world, lifelong skills, discusses how the participants view their impact on student learning and student lives in general, demonstrated through teaching students critical thinking and evaluation (of the real world) skills in addition to impacting students beyond the classroom.