This dissertation reports on a retrospective analysis of a design study conducted in partnership between researchers and the leaders of a large U.S. urban district to investigate and support the development of professional development (PD) facilitators. The intent of the study was to examine what PD facilitators need to know and be able to do in order to design and implement high-quality professional development (HQPD), and to test and improve a design for supporting the development of this expertise. HQPD refers to PD that has the potential to support teachers in significantly reorganizing their current practice in order to develop inquiry-oriented teaching practices that support all students engagement in rigorous disciplinary activity. This design study is a case of supporting the development of district capacity to provide HQPD for teachers by supporting the development of content specific PD facilitation practices. In reporting on this design study, I describe the work of developing, testing, and revising conjectures about both the PD facilitators learning process and effective means of supporting that learning. In reporting this work, I contribute to developing theories about how to support PD facilitators learning more generally. My analysis provides a rationale for proposed revisions to the design for PD facilitators learning that can be examined in future research.

This dissertation describes the design of an informal, a media-rich learning space for youth in a public library. It details how youth transformedor madethat space into a place for themselves. As such, this dissertation illustrates youth place-making for learning, or the ways in which youth negotiated and subsequently transformed this place of learning for their own enrichment. Youth place-making emerged withinand beyondan author-led program called Metro: Building Blocks (MBB). The program challenged teen participants to build authentic neighborhoods in the city of Metro within the familiar video game Minecraft. Data for this dissertationincluding audio, video, photographs, and fields noteswas collected throughout the duration of MBB, which ran from January through June of 2014.Thirteen teenaged participants took part in MBB activities, five of whom are featured in-depth. MBB was a deliberate attempt to both adopt and challenge the principles of connected learning guiding youth programming in informal learning settings, such as libraries and museums. Thus this dissertation is particularly concerned with the ways in which learning moves and circulates withinand beyonddiscrete settings. It asks questions about 1) interest, approaching interest-development less as a linear progression, and more as a fluid, emergent production. It also asks questions 2) about the topography of these settings, including the (socio-affective) rhythms coursing through them. Finally, it asks questions about 3) the forms of civic engagement that these settings can foster, following the spatiotemporal contours of participants engaged citizenship. This dissertation draws on theories of place, mobility, and affect to understand youth place-making. In doing so, this study challenges the imagined geographies of learning, or entrenched beliefs of whereand whenlearning takes place. Following the movement and circulation of experiences, ideas, and bodies necessitated a suite of mobile methods. Thus, this dissertation contributes mobile methods such as ethnographic community and temporal circling, while honing in analytically on refrains and felt focal moments Mobile analyses reveal 1) How youth interests move and circulate through passengering, mutability, and residue; 2) How learning topographies become amplified, and then propagate, including rhythmic oscillations; and 3) How civic engagement moves and circulates across space, time, and scale, or what this study refers to as civic geographies. These findings point toward implications for pedagogy and mentoring in informal, media-rich settings, as well as the design of those settings themselves, with an emphasis on place-making for learning.

Although a large body of research has examined the processes of writing, much less is known about how adolescents compose with multiple modes in digital environments. This qualitative study explores how students collaboratively composed across three different digital multimodal projectsa website, hypertext analysis, and podcastthat responded to and analyzed a work of literature. Multimodality and multiliteracies theoretical frameworks were integrated to better understand students use of modes (e.g., text, sound, images, video, animation) within the broader sociocultural context. Comparative case study methods were employed to glean a fine-grained and nuanced understanding of how three pairs of students composed during a scaffolded 7-week multimodal workshop in an urban 12th grade English classroom. Data sources included screen capture and video observations for each workshop session, student retrospective design interviews and written reflections for each project, as well as field notes, process work, and final multimodal products. Findings revealed that composing with multiple modes in response to literature was a complex, dynamic, and varied process mediated by the interaction of multiple factors, including students modal preferences and skills, composing tools, and multimodal assignments. There were three types of collaborative styles, with division of labor based on composers technical experience, content knowledge, and personal interests. Students exhibited modal preferences when working with open and flexible compositional toolsoften entering into each project in a similar way, spending a majority of workshop time working with that particular mode, and relying on it to carry the communicative weight of their projects. Multimodal composing timescapes revealed that students increasingly traversed across modes as they worked on their compositions. Students also expressed composing goals focused on affective response, entertaining their audience, and expressing themselves as composers. They also worked intentionally to create modally cohesive designs in response to literature. These findings contribute to the fields developing conception of multimodal composition processes within the context of a high school scaffolded digital writers workshop. The development of the multimodal composing timescape contributes to multimodal methods of data analysis and representation.

This research examines a teachers design of a classroom system of multimedia composition, in the form of collaborative video essays, and students responses to the teachers design. The teacher designed a project in which students in his 11th grade AP English Language and Composition classes composed both print essays and video essays based on novels they read for the class. One teacher and 49 students from a public high school near a major metropolitan city in the Midwestern United States participated in this study between October 2010 and February 2011. Qualitative analysis of the data allowed for description of the teachers design of this system and students responses to the teachers design. Salient elements of the teachers design of the system fell into three categories: design of time, design of the composition process, and design of publication and distribution practices. Student responses to each of these areas of design varied, with students at times adhering to the teachers design and at other times pushing back against his design and even redesigning aspects of the system themselves. The teachers expectations of the system, including his goals for the assignment and the ways that he valued the video essays, impacted his design of the system. Students own goals, as well as their understandings of the teachers goals, impacted the ways that they engaged in the system and their composition processes. Implications for classroom practice and future research were identified as part of the discussion of the data.

Learning theory and educational data analytics can be said to coevolve, that is, to refine and improve each other reciprocally, each aspect providing a necessary element for the growth and advancement of the other. In this three-paper dissertation, I explore this process of coevolution between learning theory and data analytics in the context of digital game-based learning. From the theoretical side, I describe a framework based on a general theory of cognition (the two-system or dual-system model) that can be applied to digital game environments. The main hypothesis in this framework is that certain patterns of action in the game-space indicate the use of certain epistemic stances that have analogues within the two-system model. The proposed Two Stance/Two Model Framework (2SM) provides (a) improved explanatory power regarding intrapersonal variation in learning from games, (b) more complete theory regarding individual needs, goals, and agency, (c) a more extensive account of collaboration and community, and (d) improved perspective on knowledge-rich interactions in online affinity spaces. From the methodological side, I applied techniques of statistical computing (affinity clustering and sequence mining) to detect the stances of the 2SM as they appear in a physics learning game. The 2SM theorized that slow modes of solution would correlate to higher learning gains; students who use mainly fast iterative solution strategies did achieve lower learning gains than students who preferred slow, elaborated solutions. A second finding was that, as play progresses, students generally improve their performance in game areas that highlight physics concepts, but that this improvement is strongly moderated by their prior knowledge of physics. This dissertation further contributes to the existing knowledge of digital game-based learning by demonstrating how an analysis of the collected actions of players can be applied in a reliable and comprehensive fashion to research questions that are otherwise challenging to investigate.

The three papers in this dissertation contribute to research that seeks to characterize the complex and multi-dimensional relation between the physical environment and human learning. The first paper outlines a new approach to describe, represent, and interpret peopleâs interaction as they move within and across physical environments. I call this approach interaction geography. It encompasses Mondrian Transcription, a method to map peopleâs movement and conversation over space and time, and the Interaction Geography Slicer (IGS), a dynamic visualization tool that supports new forms of interaction and multi-modal analysis. The second paper extends this work to provide a conceptual framework to expand interaction geography in studies of learning. I show how interaction geography offers resources to integrate four historically separate research perspectives in order to study how peopleâs interaction, movement, and responses to, and actions on, the physical environment lead people to learn. The third paper adapts and uses the IGS to visualize and discuss data about New York Cityâs Stop-And-Frisk Program. I show how the IGS provides new ways to view, interact with, and query large-scale data sets of stop-and-frisk and crime data over space and through time to support analyses of and public discussion about a controversial social and political issue.

Though researchers and policymakers have called for an increase in text complexity in reading instruction, little research exists on whether scaffolding can support students reading complex texts, and almost no research has evaluated reading interventions for late high school students. In addition, research has experimentally verified scaffoldingâs effectiveness in supporting comprehension and described possible mechanisms, but has not determined the effectiveness of different types of scaffolding. To address these gaps, the present study randomly assigned eleventh-grade students to either an eight-session intervention in which small groups of students (n=82) read complex texts with tutors or a comparison condition in which students (n=71) learned individually with computerized ACT preparation software. In addition, for intervention groups, tutorsâ interactional scaffolding adaptations to support their studentsâ comprehension was tracked, and multilevel regression analyses were used to investigate possible associations between types of scaffolding and student comprehension. Results showed that the intervention groupâs growth on a standardized measure of passage-based comprehension was statistically significant (p<0.03) and practically meaningful (d=0.17) for students who attended at least six sessions. Regression models examining links between types of scaffolding and outcomes found that scaffolds helping students determine the structure of the passage and scaffolds helping students unpack complex syntax were positively associated with comprehension outcomes, while scaffolds that involved rereading the text and understanding academic-register vocabulary words were negatively associated. The experimental results offer a causal argument to show that scaffolding can support readers of complex texts, and present a possible scaffolding-based model for comprehension interventions for late high school students. The correlational evidence linking scaffolds and outcomes suggests that the kinds of scaffolding matter for student outcomes, and that scaffolding which supports students in unraveling the syntactic and structural complexities of text may be helpful, while scaffolding that encourages rereading of text or prompting for knowledge of rare vocabulary commonly used in academic texts may be less helpful. Implications for research are presented. Overall, the study presents evidence for how scaffolding can support high school students reading complex texts.

Since the enactment of No Child Left Behind, U.S. education has been dominated by test-based accountability policies and subsequent calls for data-driven decision-making (DDDM). DDDM is often framed as a method for making instruction more rational and scientific. Yet there is little clarity or consensus around the DDDM process: What data do teachers use? How do they interpret data? Though data can be used for instructional improvement, the high pressure associated with test-based accountability often results in data use that has distortive effects on teaching and learning. In this dissertation, I build on the literature on educatorsâ data use in practice to investigate the tensions between test-based accountability policies and instructional improvement. In Paper 1, I examine the existing data use literature to identify distortive data use practices and offer recommendations for using evidence of student learning in more responsive ways. Paper 2 is an analysis of the ways that test-based accountability policy shapes the data use practices of a middle-school mathematics teacher workgroup. The logic of accountability policy constrains their data use practices in ways that reinforce systemic oppression and limit opportunities for more equitable instruction. In Paper 3, I analyze the epistemic underpinnings of teacherâs data use through a comparative case study of two middle-school mathematics teacher workgroups. The workgroups take different epistemic stances on data, which shape their data use practices, what they consider evidence of learning, and the instructional responses they design. The educators who use data as an indicator of learning are better positioned for instructional improvement than those who use data as a measurement of learning. These analyses inform the development of more productive data use practices. Despite the various calls for DDDM, there are few efforts to prepare teachers or instructional coaches to engage in nuanced discussions of data. By identifying potential pitfalls of data use and articulating ways to use data for instructional improvement, I provide recommendations that can support more ambitious and equitable instruction.

My research questions pertain to (1) how Black undergraduate studentsâwho were interested in STEM at college entranceâperceive influences on their choice of a STEM or non-STEM major and (2) to how studentsâ lived experiences in STEM appear to have challenged their success in their intended postsecondary STEM pathways. In exploring the answers to these questions, I focused on students in two different contextsâa historically Black college (HBCU) and a predominantly White institution (PWI). In addition, I traced out the racialized nature of studentsâ experiences and uncovered ways that STEM structures (e.g., instructional practices) seemed to be impacting their academic choice processes. Using qualitative interview methodology, I uncovered several findings. STEM structures formed barriers to the expression of certain studentsâ values that, in turn, dissuaded them from persisting in STEM. Introductory course expectations appeared to reify racialized inequalities in pre-college educational access. Some studentsâ lack of access to effective college STEM supports in the areas of instruction and academic advising was compounded by unequal access to compensatory, informal, STEM supports which were dispensed along racial lines. Microaggressions in STEM spaces were evident on both PWI and HBCU campuses, though HBCU students more frequently revealed how their STEM professors at times marginalized them because of their gender, nationality, and assumed class identities. Based on these findings, I offer a series of recommendations for how undergraduate STEM programs might be more supportive of equity and diversity with respect to Black undergraduate students.

The in-migration of relatively affluent households into disinvested central city neighborhoodsâcommonly referred to as gentrificationâis increasingly common across the United States. There is limited quantitative evidence, however, as to how gentrification relates to the structure and function of neighborhood schools. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide an introductory picture of how a shifting landscape of urban inequality brought about by patterns of gentrification relates to urban schooling in the contemporary U.S. city. In the first section, new statistics are presented on the incidence and distribution of gentrification occurring around public schools in the United States as a whole. Of the roughly 10 percent of urban schools that were located in neighborhoods categorized as disinvested in the year 2000, roughly one in four experienced gentrification in the subsequent decade. However, there exists considerable heterogeneity in the prevalence of gentrification across U.S. metropolitan areas. For example, the share of urban schools located in disinvested neighborhoods in 2000 that subsequently gentrified was over 40 percent in Washington, DC, but effectively zero in Memphis, TN. The second section explores factors correlated with whether gentrification occurs around public schools. Among the population of schools located in gentrifiable neighborhoods at baseline, gentrification was more likely to occur around schools with fewer non-white students, fewer students per teacher, and fewer students overall, controlling for observable differences. School neighborhoods were also more likely to gentrify if the neighborhoods themselves had fewer non-white residents and if schools were located in cities with less racial residential segregation. The third part of this dissertation estimates whether gentrification is associated with changes in disciplinary patterns at neighborhood schools. Evidence is found that gentrification is associated with increased rates of suspension for black students at local high schools, especially in schools wherein black students comprise a minority of the student population.