Jennifer Schmidt

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Michigan State University

Student engagement is widely considered to be a multidimensional construct consisting of behavioral, cognitive, and affective components. Recent research has examined student engagement in science learning contexts using holistic approaches that account for multidimensionality through the identification of engagement profiles. However, it is not ye...

Background Situational engagement in science is often described as context-sensitive and varying over time due to the impact of situational factors. But this type of engagement is often studied using data that are collected and analyzed in ways that do not readily permit an understanding of the situational nature of engagement. The purpose of this...

Research on cost beliefs has surged over the past several years. Though many dimensions of cost have been identified, researchers have often conflated these dimensions with one another. Moreover, some dimensions of cost may actually refer to already established constructs. In the current study, we explore the potential jangle fallacy between emotio...

A mixed methods approach was used to examine how two middle school science teachers implement theoretically-based competence-supportive principles while teaching the same curriculum and how teachers’ use of these principles are related to students’ perceptions of their teachers’ competence support and their own competence in science. Analysis of tw...

How teacher-student interactions develop from moment-to-moment during classes remains understudied. This study uses a mixed-methods explanatory design with insights from “Flow” theory, sociocultural theory, and complex dynamic systems theory to investigate how elementary student situational engagement ¬occurs in project-based science learning throu...

Students’ perceptions of cost are important predictors of academic and motivational outcomes. Though cost has been described as the anticipated effort one must put forth on an activity and what an individual sacrifices to complete a task, no known work has examined the extent to which anticipated cost beliefs predict experienced cost or whether ant...

Control-value theory suggests that students’ control and value appraisals mediate the relation between contextual supports and student emotions in formal learning settings; however, this theory has not been tested in informal learning contexts. Understanding mechanisms for instructional support in informal learning contexts can inform the design of...

This study examined the effects of a utility value (UV) intervention on students' situational interest and boredom in science using hierarchical linear growth modeling. Data were collected in a diverse sample of 339 students in 13 seventh and ninth grade science classrooms using surveys and end-of-class reports collected on 11 occasions. Results sh...

This paper examined relations among classroom activities, students' momentary control-and value-related appraisals, and students' state emotions in high school science classrooms. Throughout 10 days of instruction, high school students (N = 244) reported their state emotions and task-specific control-and value-related appraisals during science clas...

Out‐of‐school‐time programs for youth that are focused on STEM content are often seen as affording opportunities to increase youth engagement, interest, and knowledge in STEM domains, yet we know relatively little about how youth actually experience such programs. In this article, we explore how experiences and activities employed in the delivery o...

In the present study, latent profile analysis was used to identify profiles of momentary emotions for high school students in science classes (N = 244). Profiles were characterized by unique patterns of four emotions reported during high school science activities: happiness, excitement, boredom, and frustration. Momentary appraisals of control and...

We investigated how four middle school science teachers perceived and communicated the relevance of science content in their seventh-grade classrooms (n = 14), and examined their students’ (N = 306) perceptions regarding the utility of daily course content and the domain of science more generally. Teacher interviews and repeated classroom observati...

Latinos/as experience underachievement and underrepresentation in science. Mindset beliefs contribute to positive academic outcomes among students generally, but are understudied among Latinos/as in science. In this quasi-experimental study, Latino/a students expressed initial mindset-related beliefs shown to be less generative of success in scienc...

Out-of-school time programs focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have proliferated recently because they are seen as having potential to appeal to youth and enhance STEM interest. Although such programs are not mandatory, youth are not always involved in making the choice about their participation and it is unclear whe...

Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY

This study tested the effects on interest and achievement of a classroom intervention in which students wrote about the utility of science. Participants were predominantly Black and Hispanic students in 7th and 9th grade (N = 268). The results suggest that the self-generated utility intervention may be fairly robust to differences in students' back...

Science education reform efforts in the Unites States call for a dramatic shift in the way students are expected to engage with scientific concepts, core ideas, and practices in the classroom. This new vision of science learning demands a more complex conceptual understanding of student engagement and research models that capture both the multidime...

One’s beliefs about whether ability is fixed or malleable—also known as fixed or growth mindset—can impact academic outcomes. This quasi-experimental study investigated effects of a six-week classroom intervention targeting growth mindset on students’ daily quality of experience in science classrooms. Seventh grade (N = 370) and 9th grade (N = 356)...

This study explored associations between students’ perceptions of challenge, teacher-provided support and obstruction, and students’ momentary academic engagement in high school science classrooms. Instrumental and emotional dimensions of support and obstruction were examined separately, and analyses tested whether the relationship between challeng...

This study examines the impact of different types of parent involvement on the postsecondary educational plans and future educational aspirations of 298 students in seventh or ninth grade. Parent involvement in school, parent involvement at home, and mothers' and fathers' expectations for their children were measured to assess how parent involvemen...

Researchers examined teacher-related variation in the effects of a classroom intervention designed to impact seventh graders' beliefs about the nature of ability in science as fixed or malleable. Analyses of quantitative data from 7 science classrooms across 2 teachers revealed significant teacher effects in the extent to which students' beliefs ab...

Why and under what conditions might students value their science learning? To find out, the authors observed approximately 400 science classes. They found that although several teachers were amazingly adept at regularly promoting the value of science, many others missed out on important opportunities to promote the value of science. The authors dis...

Framed by self-determination and identity development theories, this study examined the process through which participating in a community-based service-learning project supported high school students’ feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness, and how these feelings were related to students’ intentions for doing more service in the future....

A fundamental issue pursued by researchers in positive psychology involves defining what constitutes a good life and understanding how individuals can create one. From the perspective of flow theory, a good life is one that is characterized by complete absorption in what one does (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi in Handbook of positive psychology. Ox...

Through secondary analysis of data collected in middle school science classrooms, this study (a) compared gifted and regular students' beliefs about the malleability of intelligence in science; (b) investigated whether teaching gifted and talented middle-school students about malleability of the brain and study skills helped them to develop a growt...

By high school, parent engagement is likely to differ not only by grade, but by subject. This study surveyed students enrolled in high school science classes and found that parents of freshmen (9 th graders) are more involved at home, less involved at school, and equally involved in educational planning compared to parents of high school students i...

This study compared the academic performance, perceived competence, attitudes, and perceived level of momentary skill of 244 (n =129 male, n = 115 female) high school students in science. While males and females did not differ from one another in their science grades, there were significant gender differences in factors that promote motivation and...

We present three studies pertaining to learning, engagement and motivation during laboratory lessons in three high school biology classrooms. In the first, quantitative methods are used to compare students' in-the-moment reports of learning, engagement, and motivation during laboratory with other classroom activities. Data were collected with the E...

Using a combination of coded video-recorded observations and the Experience Sampling Method, this study examines the interaction of teacher discourse and students’ lived experiences in three physics classes in a diverse high school. Results indicate prevalence of teacher-initiated content-focused discourse over the discourse that engages students i...

This chapter compares change in the self-efficacy of male and female high school science students within 11 classrooms (n=2, general science; n=3, biology, chemistry, and physics respectively) during a school year. In some classrooms, there was little change in how difficult both male and female students thought it was for them to learn science. In...

Youth who participate in service activities differ from those who do not on a number of key demographic characteristics like socio-economic status and other indicators of risk; and most studies demonstrating positive outcomes among service participants employ small non-representative samples. Thus, there is little evidence as to whether the outcome...

Extant data collected through the Experience Sampling Method were analyzed to describe adolescents' subjective experiences of homework. Analyses explored age and gender differences in the time adolescents spend doing homework, and the situational variations (location and companions) in adolescents' reported concentration, effort, interest, positive...

Demographic and psychological predictors of parent involvement with their children's science education both at home and at school were examined during high school. Associations between both types of parent involvement and numerous academic outcomes were tested. Data were collected from 244 high school students in 12 different science classrooms usi...

This study described and compared the reading of sixth and eighth grade students both in and out of school using a unique data set collected with the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). On average, students read forty minutes a day out of class and seventeen minutes a day in class indicating that reading is a common leisure practice for adolescents a...

Achievement, engagement, and students’ quality of experience were compared by racial and ethnic group in a sample of students (N=586) drawn from 13 high schools with diverse ethnic and socioeconomic student populations. Using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), 3,529 samples of classroom experiences were analyzed along with self-reported grades....

The National Household Education Survey, a nationally representative data set (N=4,306 high school students and one parent of each), was analyzed to describe characteristics of adolescents, the nature of their service activities, and academic, behavioral and civic outcomes associated with service (voluntary compared to school-required and by type o...

In the short time since the publication of the Handbook of Positive Psychology, research results on the psychology of human strengths have proliferated. However, no major volume has documented the methods and theory used to achieve these results. Oxford Handbook of Methods in Positive Psychology fills this need, providing a broad overview of divers...

This study examines the association between engagement in daily challenges and school misconduct in a sample of adolescents. Engagement is assessed by the amount of time spent in challenging activities and in terms of subjective ratings of success in daily challenges. Analyses employ data from a study in which adolescents provided self-reports of t...

This study uses longitudinal data on a sample of 10th graders to investigate the associations between self-esteem, family challenge, and 2 indicators of adolescent achievement: high school grades and extracurricular involvement. Research on self-esteem and on family challenge has linked both of these factors to achievement in adolescents, but studi...

This chapter explores factors that predict adolescent participation in cooperative activities, which may indicate a predisposition to become involved in community activities later in life. It specifically examines the idea that middle schoolers' subjective experience of challenge may be linked to cooperative behavior later in adolescence.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Psychology ; Committee on Human Development, December 1998. Includes bibliographical references.