Assessing an Online Student Orientation: Impacts on Retention,Satisfaction, and Student Learning

To help prepare students for the rigors of an online master’s degree in technical and professional communication, I created a course-embedded online student orientation (OSO) structured by the community of inquiry theory of online learning. The study researched the effect of the OSO on student satisfaction, student perceptions of online learning, and students’ program retention. The OSO was effective in helping students to reflect on their learning and demonstrated students’ interest in peer collaboration.     

Next generation crosscutting themes: Factors that contribute to students' understandings of size and scale

This study examined the degree to which individual differences in students' (N = 232) concepts of size and scale are explained by factors such as students' innate sense of number, out‐of‐school science experiences, exposure to size and scale instruction, gender identities, and racial/ethnic identities. There is increasing emphasis being placed on the use of crosscutting concepts to promote deep learning in science. A multiple linear regression indicated students' racial/ethnic identities, experiences with scale outside of school, and exposure to size and scale instruction significantly added to the prediction model. Results from this study can both inform the movement toward incorporating crosscutting concepts into pedagogy as well as inform educators, administrators, and other stakeholders of the factors that may shape students' understanding of the cross‐cutting concept of scale, proportion, and quantity.     

Fair Educational Opportunity and the Distribution of Natural Ability: Toward a Prioritarian Principle of Educational Justice

In this article, I develop and defend a prioritarian principle of justice for the distribution of educational resources. I argue that this principle should be conceptualized as directing educators to confer a general benefit, where that benefit need not be mediated by improved academic outcomes. I go on to argue that it should employ a metric of all‐things‐considered flourishing over the course of the student's lifetime. Finally, I discuss the relationship between my proposed prioritarian principle and the meritocratic principle that it is presumed to supplement.     

Online Political Discourse: Exploring Differences in Effects of Civil and Uncivil Disagreement in News Website Comments

An experiment (N = 272) demonstrated that disagreement—either civil or uncivil—may have a chilling effect on the public discourse vital to a deliberative democracy. Both forms of disagreement—in comments posted on a news story about abortion—caused negative emotion and aggressive intentions. However, only uncivil disagreement led people to respond back uncivilly and indirectly led to greater intention to participate politically, if it aroused aggressive feelings. Findings support extending face and politeness theories to the computer-mediated space of online commenting. Results are discussed in relation to the impact on the public discourse.     

Construct Validation of the Self-Efficacy Teaching and Knowledge Instrument for Science Teachers-Revised (SETAKIST-R): Lessons Learned

Described herein is the academic lineage and independent validation of the Self-Efficacy Teaching and Knowledge Instrument for Science Teachers-Revised (SETAKIST-R). Data from 334 K-12 science teachers were analyzed using Partial Credit Rasch models. Principal components analysis on the person-item residuals suggest two latent dimensions: Knowledge and Teaching Self-Efficacies. Item-fit statistics were used to select items for each subscale. Person and item separation (reliability) indices were quite low, and we noted disordered response patterns on the person-item maps that revealed problems with item content and/or scaling for both subscales. These issues include the presence of: verbal negatives, ambiguous modifiers, counter-intuitive scaling, and an “undecided/uncertain” option. The SETAKIST-R, in its current form, cannot be recommended as a measure of science teacher self-efficacy.     

Language, social behavior, and the quality of friendships in adolescents with and without a history of specific language impairment

Language is drawn on extensively in friendships but has received scant attention in the developmental literature. This study compared friendship quality in 16-year-old adolescents with and without specific language impairment (SLI), testing the extent it is predicted by individual differences in social behaviors and language ability. Participants were 120 adolescents with SLI and 118 typically developing (TD) adolescents. After considering the effects of nonverbal IQ and prosocial and difficult behavior, language measures were found to be associated with friendship quality. The TD participants enjoyed normal friendships, whereas the participants with SLI were more likely to exhibit poorer quality (although 60% experienced good quality of friendships). Longitudinal analyses identified early language difficulties as predictive of poorer friendship quality in adolescence.