David I. Hanauer

Assessment of Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences: A Meeting Report

This report presents a summary of a meeting on assessment of course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), including an operational definition of a CURE, a summary of research on CUREs, relevant findings from studies of undergraduate research internships, and recommendations for future research on and evaluation of CUREs.

Meaningful literacy: Writing poetry in the language classroom

This paper develops the concept of meaningful literacy and offers a classroom methodology – poetry writing – that manifests this approach to ESL/EFL literacy instruction. The paper is divided into three sections. The first deals with the concept of meaningful literacy learning in second and foreign language pedagogy; the second summarizes empirical evidence that characterizes second language (L2) poetry writing; and the third describes the practical aspects of teaching poetry writing. This approach is presented as a way of humanizing the second and foreign language classroom by refocusing on the individual language learner as the center of the learning process.

The genre-specific hypothesis of reading" Reading poetry and encyclopedic items

The experiment reported in this paper investigates the genre-specific hypothesis of reading in relation to the reading of poetry and encyclopedic items. Based on previous empirical research and theoretical positions, three hypotheses which differentiate between the reading of poetry and encyclopedic items in relation to surface information recall, reading time and self evaluations of levels of comprehension were proposed and tested. Using a within subjects design, 38 participants read and recalled four encyclopedic items and four poems. Random sampling methods were employed to choose the authentic texts used in this study. The results support all three of the genre-specific hypotheses and demonstrate the following processing differences between poetry and encyclopedic texts: (1) Reading poetry involves higher levels of surface information recall than encyclopedic texts; (2) Encyclopedic items are read at a faster rate than poems; (3) Poems are considered to be more difficult to understand than encyclopedic items. Accordingly, this study offers some empirical support to the genre-specific hypothesis of reading.

Quantifying the Burden of Writing Research Articles in a Second Language Data From Mexican Scientists

This article provides quantitative data to establish the relative, perceived burden of writing research articles in English as a second language. Previous qualitative research has shown that scientists writing English in a second language face difficulties but has not established parameters for the degree of this difficulty. A total of 141 Mexican, Spanish-speaking scientists from a range of scientific disciplines participated in a survey which directly compared writing scientific research articles in Spanish and English as a second language. The survey questions defined burden in relation to perceived difficulty, dissatisfaction, and anxiety. The results revealed that the experience of writing a scientific research article in English as a second language is significantly different than the experience writing in a first language and that this writing process was perceived as 24% more difficult and generated 11% more dissatisfaction and 21% more anxiety. The findings suggest that the use of English as a second language is the cause of this increased burden.

Integration of phonetic and graphic features in poetic text categorization judgements

The experiments reported in this paper deal with the relationship between specific formal textual features, i.e. graphic and phonetic information, and the readers literary educational background in the categorization of poetic texts. In two experiments, the research method of Information Integration Theory was employed in order to test two hypotheses relating to the radical conventionalist and traditional positions on the role of specific formal textual features in the categorization of poetic texts. Twenty subjects from expert or novice literary reading experience backgrounds were, in two experiments, required to rate two parallel sets of graphically and phonetically manipulated poems. The results reveal that subjects are sensitive to the manipulations of graphic and phonetic information and use the same additive information integration rule in making poetic text categorization judgements. The expert literary readers were found to assign significantly higher ratings to all versions of the manipulated poems than the novice readers.

Linguistic Analysis of Project Ownership for Undergraduate Research Experiences

We used computational linguistic and content analyses to explore the concept of project ownership for undergraduate research. We used linguistic analysis of student interview data to develop a quantitative methodology for assessing project ownership and applied this method to measure degrees of project ownership expressed by students in relation to different types of educational research experiences. The results of the study suggest that the design of a research experience significantly influences the degree of project ownership expressed by students when they describe those experiences. The analysis identified both positive and negative aspects of project ownership and provided a working definition for how a student experiences his or her research opportunity. These elements suggest several features that could be incorporated into an undergraduate research experience to foster a students sense of project ownership.

The Project Ownership Survey: Measuring Differences in Scientific Inquiry Experiences

This study evaluates the reliability and validity of an instrument for quantitatively assessing project ownership in undergraduate laboratory learning experiences.

The Interaction Between Task and Meaning Construction in EFL Reading Comprehension Tests

This study investigates the interrelationship between meaning construction and testing tasks. The studys basic hypothesis is that a readers mental model continues to develop throughout the testtaking process. Thus, testing tasks are information sources which affect the ongoing construction of the test takers mental model. Within the framework of this study, the ability to comprehend a text is considered to be the ability to construct a mental model of the text. Current thinking in the field of language testing emphasizes the need for taking into account the processing involved in the testtaking situation and not solely the product. Thus, in order to study the test-taking process in greater depth and, specifically, to examine the interrelationship between testing tasks in different formats and the test takers on-line meaning construction, an exploratory study was carried out. Think-aloud data were obtained as subjects responded to both multiple choice and open ended comprehension test questions written in both Hebrew and English on an EFL reading test. The subjects were 28 10th-grade high school students studying EFL. The analysis of the verbal protocols revealed that testing tasks function as an additional information source which interacts in one of four ways with the continuing development of the test takers mental model: (a) integrating new information into an existing information structure; (b) constructing a new information structure; (c) confirming an existing information structure; and (d) newly integrating existing information structures. The results are discussed in relation to the validity of reading comprehension tests and implications for instruction and evaluation.

Attention and Literary Education: A Model of Literary Knowledge Development

The aim of this current paper is to describe the workings of one cognitive model for the development of literary knowledge. The model derives from current discussions of the role of conscious processes in language learning. The central aspect of this model is the role of the systems of awareness and attention in developing the individuals ability to detect and internalise specific information from literary texts. The paper starts by defining literary education within the theoretical framework of the cognitive processes of control and analysis. This is followed by a model of the development of literary knowledge based on the central role of awareness and attention. Empirical evidence which is relevant to the assumptions and predictions of the model is then discussed. Finally, the implications of this model on literary education and recommendations for future research are presented.

Student Buy-In to Active Learning in a College Science Course

Student buy-in as a key mechanism for student engagement and performance in an active-learning context is explored. This paper provides the first operational definition of student buy-in to in-class activities, in this case characterizing the complex nature of students’ responses in an active-learning classroom.