Susan Bobbitt Nolen

Integrating Low- and High-Level Skills in Instructional Protocols for Writing Disabilities.

Twenty-four children with writing problems were given instruction in handwriting automaticity, spelling strategies, and the composing process (plan, write, review, revise) in 14 one-hour individual tutorials during the summer between third and fourth grade. Half the children (8 boys, 4 girls) received extra practice in composing, while half the children (8 boys, 4 girls) received special training in orthographic and phonological coding. Hierarchical linear modeling of growth curves was used to compare the treatment groups to a non-contact control group (10 boys, 5 girls) on a standard battery at pretest, midtest, posttest, and the two treatment groups with each other on probe measures of handwriting, spelling, and composition in each tutorial session. The treatment groups improved at a faster rate than the control group on some measures of handwriting, spelling, and composition (fluency and quality) in the standard battery, but Verbal IQ did not predict rate of improvement. Differences were found between the two treatment groups in some probe measures of writing and a motivation variable (work avoidance). Repeated-measures ANOVA was used to compare treatment groups to a non-contact control group at pretest, midtest, posttest, and follow-up. Differences between the treatment and control groups favoring the treatment groups were maintained at 6-month follow-up on some handwriting, spelling, and composition (quality) measures. Individual differences were found in learner characteristics prior to treatment and in response to the same treatment. The importance of affect and motivation as well as cognitive variables is emphasized.

What Is Fair? Children's Critiques of Practices that Influence Motivation.

Children (aged 7-12 years) were interviewed about the fairness of selected practices for influencing motivation to learn. Childrens responses reflected their purposes for learning and definitions of the learning situation. Group 1 valued meaningful learning and favored practices that promote the desire to understand new ideas. Group 2 valued a dutiful commitment to education and favored practices that promote effort. Group 3 valued extrinsic rewards: Some children said fair practices should involve rewarding effort, and others said fair practices should involve rewarding superior performance. Groups 1 and 2 chose the practice of encouraging a task focus as most fair. Group 3 chose extrinsic rewards

Beyond Breadth-Speed-Test: Toward Deeper Knowing and Engagement in an Advanced Placement Course

We report a mixed-methods design experiment that aims to achieve deeper learning in a breadth-oriented, college-preparatory course—AP U.S. Government and Politics. The study was conducted with 289 students in 12 classrooms across four schools and in an “excellence for all” context of expanding enrollments in AP courses. Contributions include its investigation of a model of deeper learning, development of a test to assess it, and fusion of project-based learning with a traditional curriculum. Findings suggest that a course of quasi-repetitive projects can lead to higher scores on the AP test but a floor effect on the assessment of deeper learning. Implications are drawn for assessing deeper learning and helping students adapt to shifts in the grammar of schooling.

Novice Teacher Learning and Motivation Across Contexts: Assessment Tools as Boundary Objects

We present a longitudinal study of novice teachers’ appropriation, negotiation, and recontextualization of assessment tools and practices. During the four years of the study, we observed and interviewed beginning mathematics and social studies teachers, along with their colleagues, mentors, and supervisors, from their time in a graduate secondary teacher education program through their second year of professional teaching. Analysis of fieldnotes, interview transcripts, and artifacts suggests that assessment tools function as boundary objects in negotiations within and between the social worlds in which novices learn to teach. Boundary objects serve as reifications or representations of values, goals, and meanings (Bowker & Star, 1999; Star & Griesemer, 1989; Wenger, 1998). Assessment tools and artifacts, as boundary objects, facilitate engagement of teachers, administrators, students, and their families in coordinating activity across social boundaries and are central to the function of educational organizations. Novice teachers’ motivation to learn promoted assessment tools and their affiliated practices changed as they crossed boundaries between university and school and changed positions from student teacher to newcomer to experienced novice. Implications of this analysis for understanding novice teacher learning and motivation, and for assessment policy more broadly, are discussed.

Productively engaging student teams in engineering: The interplay between doing and thinking

A comparative case study examined two teams for instances of Productive Disciplinary Engagement (PDE) as they completed a complex, virtual process development project. Discourse from team meetings was analyzed to interpret how engagement unfolds, specifically classifying engagement in two dimensions: School vs. Engineering World, and task co-production vs. knowledge co-construction. Teams were found to move back and forth between School World and Engineering World as different aspects of the learning system become salient and instances of PDE were triggered when teams experienced productive frictions from interlocking components of the learning system.

Engaging Teacher Identities in Teacher Education: Shifting Notions of the “Good Teacher” to Broaden Teachers’ Learning

It is widely accepted that how teachers identify with the profession influences how they think about teaching. In this chapter, we synthesize two sets of interpretive case studies to theorize the relationship between teacher identity and teacher learning. First, we examine how pre-service and novice teachers’ conceptions of a “good teacher” activate particular motivational filters through which they weigh whether to learn instructional practices in constructing their emerging teacher identities. Second, we explore how interactions with actors playing a standardized parent in a simulation cycle influence pre-service teachers’ understanding of their social positioning in relation to other people. Foregrounding teachers’ positional identities in this way can lead teachers to revise the way they filter instructional practices and thus, what they choose to learn as they aspire to become “good teachers.”