Job Talks

Dr. Jennifer Schmidt

Associate Professor, Educational Psychology, Northern Illinois University

Understanding and Influencing Adolescents’ Motivation for Science: A Program of Research Focused on Gender and Teacher Effects in Diverse Educational Settings

Monday March 23, 2015 1:00 pm — 2:00 pm

133F Erickson Hall

In this talk, Dr. Schmidt will highlight findings from her NSF-funded program of research on adolescents’ engagement and interest in science. Using multiple methodologies, this research reveals systematic differences in the subjective experience of males and females in high school science classrooms, and identifies patterns of teacher beliefs and teacher-student interaction that may partially explain these subjective differences. Dr. Schmidt will share results from her recent and ongoing efforts to influence students’ motivation for science through targeted classroom intervention, teacher professional development, and summer STEM programming in urban areas.

Dr. Ting Dai

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Thinking about Online Sources: Exploring Students’ Epistemic Cognition in Internet-Based Chemistry Learning"

Wednesday January 28, 2015 10:00am - 11:00am

133F Erickson Hall

The present study investigated the relation between epistemic cognition—epistemic aims and source beliefs—and learning outcome in an Internet-based chemistry learning context. Based on a framework of epistemic cognition (Chinn, Buckland, & Samarapungavan, 2011), a context-specific epistemic aims and source beliefs questionnaire (CEASBQ) was developed and administered to 354 students from college-level introductory chemistry courses. A series of multitrait-multimethod model comparisons provided evidence for construct convergent and discriminant validity for three epistemic aims—true beliefs, justified beliefs, explanatory connections, which were all distinguished from, yet correlated with, mastery goals in such learning context. Students’ epistemic aims were specific to the chemistry topics that students learned in the online research. Multidimensional scaling results indicated that students’ source evaluation was based on two dimensions—professional expertise and first-hand knowledge, suggesting a multidimensional structure of source beliefs. Most importantly, online learning outcome was found to be significantly associated with two epistemic aims (i.e., justified beliefs and explanatory connections) and students’ beliefs about online sources. The influences of epistemic aims and source beliefs on learning outcome were found to be above and beyond the effects of several covariates, including an indicator of prior knowledge, major, and self-perceived ability with online sources. The findings provided implications for theory development and measurement of epistemic cognition, informed science education, and underscored the importance of contextualizing studies of complex psychological constructs.

Dr. DeLeon Gray

Assistant Professor, Educational Psychology, North Carolina State University

Making Scholastic Activities Worthwhile for Students: A Standing Out-Fitting In (SOFI) Perspective

Monday January 26, 2015 10:30 am — 11:30 am

133F Erickson Hall

Students’ concerns about identity are widely regarded by education researchers as a hallmark of adolescence and emerging adulthood. Identity formation processes serve as a driving force behind students’ achievement beliefs and behaviors in school. It is argued that unfulfillment of these identity needs can spur achievement motivation, when considered in terms of standing out and fitting in—two driving forces that contribute to students’ understanding of who they are, relative to others in a their social environments. A standing out and fitting in (SOFI) perspective is presented in which the unfulfillment of these needs can be harnessed in ways that help students view scholastic activities as worthwhile; fruitful areas of research using this perspective are discussed; and conclusions are drawn about the promise of this perspective for educational practice, for engaged scholarship, and for contributing to a fuller understanding of the manifestation of social identity processes in achievement contexts.

The Disciplined Mind: Self-Control and the Psychology of Achievement

Dr. Brian M. Galla

Friday January 23, 2015 11:00 am — 12:00 pm

507 Erickson Hall

Brian Galla is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Brian’s talk explores the nature of motivational conflict during academic work and how competencies (or lack thereof) in self-control play out in students. The talk also examines the relationship between self-control and traditional measures of achievement, the mechanisms through which self-control operates to promote positive outcomes, and mindfulness-based strategies that facilitate the expression of self-control in children and adolescents.

That's Correct! Feedback can Help or Hinder Mathematics Problem solving

Emily Fyfe, Vanderbilt University

Friday January 16, 2015, 12:00 - 1:00pm

133F Erickson Hall

Emily Fyfe is a faculty candidate for the EPET PhD program. She currently is completing her doctoral study in the Psychological Sciences program with a concentration in Developmental Sciences and minor in Quantitative Methods at Vanderbilt University. She describes her talk as:

"My research is motivated by a question facing psychologists, cognitive scientists, and education practitioners alike: How can we support children's learning so that it leads to the construction of robust and meaningful knowledge? To answer this question, I consider characteristics of the learner, the learning environment, and the learning outcome as well as the dynamic interactions among them. In this talk, I will focus on a specific series of studies in which I investigate the effects of feedback on mathematics problem solving for elementary-school children. I show that feedback can be a powerful learning tool, but its effects vary. Specifically, low-knowledge children benefit from feedback, but children with some prior knowledge learn more from problem solving without feedback. The result is robust across various feedback types and highlights the need to tailor the provision of feedback to children's knowledge levels. Overall, seemingly minor modifications to the level of instructional guidance can substantially alter the knowledge that learners construct."