Mark W. Aulls

Contributions of Classroom Discourse to What Content Students Learn during Curriculum Enactment.

This case study investigates how classroom discourse contributed to what content students learned during a Grade 8 social studies unit taught in two different classrooms. It used a purposive sample and entailed 8 weeks of nonparticipant observation of each teacher-class enactment of a unit about ancient Egyptian society. Field notes and lesson transcripts were coded to inductively identify kinds of messages, forms of discourse, patterning of forms of discourse associated with curriculum events, and system of discourse for each enactment of the unit. There were significant quantitative differences between and within classrooms in the content recalled from curriculum events. These content-learning differences were associated with the forms of discourse used within curriculum events and the system of classroom discourse that evolved during a unit.

Students' Experiences With Good and Poor University Courses

This collective case study describes preservice teacher descriptions of good and poor university instruction. A criterion-based sample of 60 education students was selected. They describe and compare the teacher, teaching, and the context of instruction in a 3-part essay. Essay responses were read holistically and then fractured into clauses and submitted to open coding to inductively generate concepts, and organize related concepts into categories and their dimensions. Good and poor instruction was markedly different on all major categories and dimensions. Student conceptions of good and poor instruction emphasized emotions more frequently than academic learning outcomes or personal enjoyment.

The Interactive Nature of Reading Acquisition.

Recent theories of reading have provided only partial explanations of reading acquisition. A comprehensive theory should stress the interaction of the properties of the text with the acquisition of reading skills and strategies, the development of cognitive and linguistic skills, the influence of instruction, and the effects of cultural, motivational, and language variables. The present paper discusses how these interactions may occur, illustrates the complex nature of the interactions by describing three stages of acquisition, and suggests how the study of certain individual differences can help to disclose the essential characteristics of reading acquisition.

THE INFLUENCE OF A READING AND WRITING CURRICULUM ON TRANSFER LEARNING ACROSS SUBJECTS AND GRADES

This study examined the influence of an innovative reading and writing curriculum on the expository writing and content learning of middle grade students. In Study One, students of teachers who were highly knowledgeable of the curriculum design wrote significantly better essays than students of less knowledgeable teachers. In Study Two, students transferred knowledge and strategies learned in the innovative curriculum to the writing of geography essays throughout the school year. Study Three found that 21% of the variance in the text-based content of Grade 8 social studies essays could be accounted for by text structure knowledge acquired in Grade 7.

Development, validation, and factorial comparison of the McGill Self-Efficacy of Learners For Inquiry Engagement (McSELFIE) survey in natural science disciplines

ABSTRACT Sociocognitive theory [Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall; Bandura, A. (1989). Human agency in social cognitive theory. American Psychologist, 44, 1175–1184. doi:10.1037/0003-066x.44.9.1175; Bandura, A. (1991). Social cognitive theory of self-regulation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 248–287. doi:10.1016/0749-5978(91)90022-L] accords high importance to the mechanisms of human agency and how they are exercised through self-efficacy. In this paper, we developed and validated the McGill Self-Efficacy For Inquiry Engagement (McSELFIE) instrument with undergraduate students in natural science disciplines. We defined inquiry engagement as carrying out the practices of science (POS) that are supported by students’ personality characteristics (SPCs) and that result in achieving inquiry-learning outcomes (ILOs). Based on these theoretical perspectives, the McSELFIE is a 60-item, learner-focused survey that addresses three components that are theoretically important for engaging in scientific inquiry: (a) SPCs, (b) ILOs, and (c) POS. Evidence for construct and content validity were obtained by using experts’ judgments and confirmatory factor analysis with a sample of 110 undergraduate students enrolled in science disciplines. Internal consistency of the factors and instrument was also examined. The McSELFIE instrument is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring science undergraduate students’ self-efficacy for inquiry engagement. Matched pairs analyses were conducted among the instruments’ factors. Students reported the highest self-efficacy for openness, applying knowledge, and carrying out investigations. Students reported the lowest self-efficacy for extraversion, understanding metacognitive knowledge, and planning investigations. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

What Makes Inquiry Stick? The Quality of Preservice Teachers’ Understanding of Inquiry

This nonexperimental, exploratory, mixed-design study used questionnaires with 167 preservice secondary teachers to identify prior educational experiences associated with student-teachers’ inquiry understanding. Understanding was determined through content analysis then open coding of definitions of inquiry and descriptions of best-experienced inquiry instruction, in terms of 23 potential learner-inquiry outcomes. Only two of seven educational-context variables related to understanding: prior experience doing a thesis or research—especially to definition quality and having taken a research-methods course—especially to description quality. How definitions and descriptions of inquiry are different and similar was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Implications for methodology, theory, and practice were presented, for example, research opportunities and research-methods training during teacher education.