Public library makerspaces intend to contribute to the development of children from marginalized communities through the education of digital technology and creativity and by stimulating young people to experience new social roles and develop their identity. Learning in these informal settings puts demands on the organization of the makerspace,…

This dissertation consists of two chapters on topics in economics of education. In the first chapter, I develop and estimate an equilibrium model of endogenous instruction and student effort in order to empirically investigate the relationship between instructional choices, classroom composition, and student achievement in elementary school. The…

Prior research has shown negative relations between math anxiety and math performance. We posit that one potential pathway through which math anxiety influences performance of math equivalencies is through help seeking behavior during learning. Here, we examine whether middle school students' behavior, specifically the frequency of hint requests,…

The problem explored in this study was the low achievement of third grade students on the English Language Arts (ELA) Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers Assessment (PARCC). The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore teacher perceptions about third grade students in one charter school who were…

The concept of reflection is central to theories of experiential learning common in the field of adult education. In this article, we expand upon the work of Michelson on the dualistic split between experience and knowing inherent in the field's most common conceptualizations of reflection. We develop alternative approaches to reflection drawing…

A concern about students' conceptual difficulties in organic chemistry prompted this study. It was found that prior knowledge from general chemistry was critical in organic chemistry, but what were some of the concepts that comprised that prior knowledge? Therefore an analysis of four years of organic chemistry quiz data was undertaken. Multiple…

Purpose: The aim of this study is to find in which conditions animation based teaching style for example teaching through 2D or 3D animations or animated diagrams leads to the better learning outcome. To achieve this purpose, we compared these two conditions (i) animation based teaching style is effective when offered to high spatial ability…

Previous research has found multiplex (MPX) children have an advantage in cognition compared to simplex (SPX) children. However, MPX parent's previous experience with older diagnosed siblings has not been considered. We used a large database sample to investigate the MPX advantage and contribution of birth order. Children from the Autism Genetic…

This chapter will define and illustrate the sustainable cycle of Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) benefits for both employees and employers in the U.S. workforce. Employer and student benefits of PLA will be reviewed, and program completion outcomes will be examined.

Social studies teachers often have a love-hate relationship with inquiry. The possibilities of a dynamic and engaging approach to learning labor against time constraints imposed by a content-heavy curriculum. In that scenario, how can professional development (PD) on inquiry inform educators and encourage skeptical teachers to implement this…

One of the golden rules in instructional design methods is to optimize the use of working memory capacity and avoid cognitive overload. The study of cognitive load has historically relied on one's introspection. However, it is difficult to capture changes in cognitive load levels during learning sensitively. This paper suggests an approach to…

Visualizations are useful tools for helping students to understand chemistry concepts at the particulate level. A classroom activity was developed based on learning theory and evidence-based practices, combining protein visualization with thermodynamic parameters from differential scanning fluorimetry (DSF) data analysis. Coding of student…

Courses: Introduction to Communication Behavior, Health Communication, Public Communication Campaigns, Persuasion, Public Relations. Objectives: Students gain practice determining various components of a health communication campaign (e.g. selecting appropriate target population(s), media channels), while noting the need for synergy across key…

Emerging evidence suggests that executive function plays an important role in adult readers' understanding of text. This study examined the contribution of executive function to comprehension of expository science text among adult readers, as well as the role of vocabulary ability in the relation between executive function and text comprehension.…

The study presented here is a follow-up to a previous report in which we investigated how general-chemistry students in a transformed curriculum reason about simple acid-base reactions. In the present study, we use and adapt the previously developed coding scheme for a longitudinal study in which we follow students from general chemistry through…