Operationalizing and Detecting Disengagement Within Online Science Microworlds

In recent years, there has been increased interest in engagement during learning. This is of particular interest in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics domains, in which many students struggle and where the United States needs skilled workers. This article lays out some issues important for framing research on this topic and provides a review of some existing work with similar goals on engagement in science learning. Specifically, here we seek to help better concretize engagement, a fuzzy construct, by operationalizing and detecting (i.e., identifying using a computational method) disengaged behaviors that are antithetical to engagement. We, in turn, describe our real-time detector (i.e., machine learned model) of disengaged behavior and how it was developed. Last, we address our ongoing research on how our detector of disengaged behavior will be used to intervene in real time to better support students' science inquiry learning in Inq-ITS (Inquiry-Intelligent Tutoring System; Gobert, Sao Pedro, Baker, Toto, & Montalvo, 2012; Gobert, Sao Pedro, Raziuddin, & Baker, 2013).     

Current Developments in Community College Performance Funding

Since the initiation of performance funding in Tennessee in the late 1970s, approximately 30 states have, at some point, attempted a funding model that includes performance on a set of indicators. The purpose of the present study was to capture the current status of performance funding in public statewide community college systems and to assess which performance indicators were collected at the state level. Data were obtained through the 2012 Survey of Finance and Access Issues conducted by the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama. The survey was administered to the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges, and 50 responses were obtained from 49 states. Not every survey respondent answered each survey item. Findings showed that 19 states used performance funding for community colleges, with six of those states allocating at least 10% of state funds based on performance. An analysis of indicators captured at the state level (not exclusively for performance funding) showed a decline of emphasis on process indicators and greater emphasis on outputs. The performance-based distribution of base funding and the inclusion of output measures that capture intermediate indicators of success are consistent with the principles of Performance Funding 2.0, a new form of performance funding recently discussed in the literature. Future research should include tracking the current findings over time and expanding the existing literature on whether performance funding influences outcomes.     

Evaluating Emotional Literacy in Schools: The Development of the School Emotional Environment for Learning Survey

This paper describes the development of the School Emotional Environment for Learning Survey, an instrument for evaluating the perceived level of emotional literacy of the school as an organization. It elicits student and staff perceptions of their affective experience of being a part of the school community. It was designed to look at the extent to which a school enables members of its community to interact in a manner that builds an understanding of their own and others' emotions, which can then be used to shape their actions. Emotional literacy is seen here as a potential in everyone that is contingent on the interaction between a person and their social context, rather than a capacity that is either present or absent in the individual.
Qualitative data were collected from an ethnographic case study of two schools using closed- and open-ended questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, a draw-and-write exercise and participant observation. The data were used to generate grounded theory and to build a theoretical framework for organizational emotional literacy. This theoretical framework is described as the CORE framework, addressing the domains of communication, relationships, organization and emotional experience. These domains are then characterized by particular qualities and values that are described in the 'matrix of emotional literacy'. This framework and matrix were then used to develop a questionnaire, which was trialed as a tool to audit the level of emotional literacy in both primary and secondary schools.     

Students' and teachers' explanations of chemical equilibrium

Specializations: cognitive processes in science learning and teaching.     

The Tower in Red and Yellow: Using Children's Drawings in Formative Research for Alum Simsim, an Educational Television Series for Egyptian Children

Formative Research is an integral part of the development of Sesame Workshop's productions worldwide. It is used to bring children into the television production process and give producers insights into what children like and learn from material as it is being produced. Using examples from a study of six test segments of the television series Alam Simsim, the Egyptian Sesame Street, this paper illustrates how one non-conventional research method-systematic analysis of children's artwork-can be used, in conjunction with other research tools, to gain supplemental feedback from children during formative research of educational television.     

Model-Based Teaching and Learning with BioLogica™: What Do They Learn? How Do They Learn? How Do We Know?

This paper describes part of a project called Modeling Across the Curriculum which is a large-scale research study in 15 schools across the United States. The specific data presented and discussed here in this paper is based on BioLogica, a hypermodel, interactive environment for learning genetics, which was implemented in multiple classes in eight high schools. BioLogica activities, data logging, and assessments were refined across this series of implementations. All students took a genetics content knowledge pre- and posttests. Traces of students' actions and responses to computer-based tasks were electronically collected (via a log file function) and systematically analyzed. An intensive 3-day field test involving 24 middle school students served to refine methods and create narrative profiles of students' learning experiences, outcomes, and interactions with BioLogica. We report on one high school implementation and the field test as self-contained studies to document the changes and the outcomes at different phases of development. A discussion of design changes concludes this paper.