Ronald W. Marx

• Ph.D.
• Head of Faculty at University of Arizona

This study examined the role of parenting practices on preschoolers’ secure exploratory behaviors; specifically, the extent to which parenting practices mediate the relationship between socio-economic status, perceived neighborhood support, parental depression and children’s exploratory behaviors. The participants (n = 3268) were parents of young c...

Children attending rural schools start kindergarten with lower mathematics achievement than their peers in urban schools and the gap increases during the later academic years. A valid theory and research-based measure is needed to identify the weakness of kindergarteners attending rural schools, so early interventions in mathematics can be designed...

Along the way I have learned a lesson or two. Some were the result of reaching too far and efforts that resulted in failure. Learning from failure is frequently not so pleasant, although you doubly fail if you do not learn from those failures. Yet other lessons resulted from wonderful collisions of opportunity and the presence of colleagues who, wo...

This study reports the dimensionality and measurement invariance of a modified version of the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening for Preschoolers (PALS PreK). Practical constraints of conducting child assessments created an opportunity to develop a modified PALS PreK. The sample consisted of 1,168 children tested in a Southwestern state in t...

For two decades, it has been recommended that assessment of literacy for preschool children be conducted in a child’s primary language. However, only a few literacy assessments have been validated with a preschool, Spanish-speaking population. The purpose of the present study was to test the latent structure of the Phonological Awareness Literacy S...

This study examines the psychometric properties of two assessments of children’s approaches to learning: the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) and a 13-item approaches to learning rating scale (AtL) derived from the Arizona Early Learning Standards (AELS). First, we administered questionnaires to 1,145 randomly selected parents/guardians o...

Teacher preparation programs have both a desire and a responsibility to demonstrate with affirmative evidence that teacher education makes a difference in PreK-12 student learning. Program faculty need good data to make decisions about the progress of students, whom to recommend for state licensure, and how to improve teacher education. This articl...

This study examined a 13-item instrument measuring approaches to learning (AtL) as a component of school readiness in the context of early childhood socio-emotional development. Few instruments, limited to preschool teacher ratings, measure AtL among kindergarteners with short easy-to-use questionnaires. We investigated psychometric properties of t...

The Arizona legislature passed HB 2281, which eliminated Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD’s) Mexican American Studies (MAS) program, arguing the curriculum was too political. This program has been at the center of contentious debates, but a central question has not been thoroughly examined: Do the classes raise student achievement? The curren...

The economic status of families and their children's learning outcomes are closely related. For example, children living in poverty tend to score worse on measures of reading and math performance than their more affluent peers, and this achievement gap is present by kindergarten. In this study, we identified protective factors associated with schoo...

Background Educational reform responds to local and national pressures to improve educational outcomes, and reform efforts cycle as similar pressures recur. Currently, reform efforts focus on teachers, even though confidence in a host of American social institutions is dropping. One of the most widespread reforms regarding teachers is the creation...

This study examined reliability and validity of the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA), based on samples of parents and teachers' ratings of 1,145 entering kindergartners in the Southwest. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that DECA presented good reliability and validity for manifest variables, corroborating previous findings. Three late...

This article provides commentary on the five articles in this issue on large-scale interventions in science education for diverse student groups in varied educational settings. Using these articles as a point of departure, I discuss three challenges to science education research and practice. The first concerns the changed meaning of science educat...

Describes project-based learning as a comprehensive approach to classroom teaching and learning that is designed to engage students in investigation of authentic problems. Students are responsible for both the questions and the answers to such problems. Some of the advantages of project-based learning are that it promotes links among different disc...

This article describes work by a research group bringing a middle-school inquiry and technology science innovation to scale in a systemic urban school reform setting. We distinguish between scaling and scaling within systemic reform. We pose a framework for use by developers of instructional interventions to gauge their "fit" with existing school c...

Considerable effort has been made over the past decade to address the needs of learners in large urban districts through scaleable reform initiatives. We examine the effects of a multifaceted scaling reform that focuses on supporting standards based science teaching in urban middle schools. The effort was one component of a systemic reform effort i...

Science education standards advanced by the American Association for the

Interest in the development and study of learning environments has increased as theory considers how contexts influence individual learning. Descriptions of school-based environments illustrate the range, similarities, and differences in emphases and instantiation of features, as well as their interdependence based on a scheme for characterizing le...

This article examines the opportunities, challenges, and risks that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) poses for science education in elementary and middle schools. Four areas of science education-standards, instruction, teachers, and curriculum-are discussed in the present context of NCLB accountability Attention is given to how the current policy agenda...

The purpose of this study was to determine whether providing students with continuous written instructional support or fading written instructional support (scaffolds) better prepares students to construct scientific explanations when they are no longer provided with support. This article investigated the influence of scaffolding on 331 seventh-gra...

Design-based science (DBS) is a science pedagogy in which new scientific knowledge and prob-lem-solving skills are constructed in the context of designing artifacts. This paper examines whether the enactment of a DBS unit supported students' efforts to construct and transfer new science knowledge and 'designerly' problem-solving skills to the solut...

Recent reform movements within the United States have called for science for all and educational reforms to support this goal. In light of these reform movements and concerns regarding learning within urban schools, science educators and policy makers have pushed for the incorporation of learning technologies within schools as a way of creating equ...

Design-Based Science (DBS) is a pedagogy in which the goal of designing an artifact contextualizes all curricular activities. Design is viewed as a vehicle through which scientific knowledge and real-world problem-solving skills can be constructed. Following Anderson and Hogan's (1999) call to document the design of new science pedagogies, this goa...

Science education standards established by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Research Council (NRC) urge less emphasis on memorizing scientific facts and more emphasis on students investigating the everyday world and developing deep understanding from their inquiries. These approaches to instruction challen...

This study had two purposes. The first was to explore teacher knowledge of educational technology through the lens of three components of Shulman's model of teachers' knowledge-content, pedagogical, and pedagogical content knowledge. A second purpose was to investigate the ways in which teacher knowledge was acquired, shared, and used by student te...

Considerable effort has been made over the past decade to address the needs of learners in large urban districts through scaleable reform initiatives. We examine the effects of a multifaceted scaling reform which focuses on supporting standards based science teaching in urban middle schools. The effort was one component of systemic reform efforts i...

This paper describes two professional development institutes in project-based science. We collected data from these institutes in the form of structured questionnaires, individual written reflections by the teachers, and focus-group interviews. An analysis of the data revealed three factors that had been underrepresented in previous research: comfo...

This paper describes two professional development institutes in project-based science. We collected data from these institutes in the form of structured questionnaires, individual written reflections by the teachers, and focus-group interviews. An analysis of the data revealed three factors that had been underrepresented in previous research: comfo...

This article examines why cognitively oriented technology innovations, designed to foster deep thinking and learning, have not become widespread in K−12 schools. We argue a key reason is that most design-based research does not explicitly address systemic issues of usability, scalability and sustainability. This limitation must be overcome if resea...

This paper is about a program of empirical research to examine the needs, expectations, and experiences that teachers who are engaged in systemic reform have for online PD. The goal of this research is to understand how to design online PD environments that are useful for and usable by broad populations of teachers, as part of the design of Knowled...

this paper we use variations of our design approach for professional development as a template to examine professional development and the resulting learning, examining its usefulness both as an evaluative as well as a diagnostic tool in professional development design. We evaluate professional development through analyzing the workshop enactments...

This paper presents a case study of the process by which one school district adopts and implements a curriculum and technology innovation developed in another. Fundamentally, the effort described in this work focus on the challenges of "scaling-up" innovation, the act of taking innovation from one or few initial development locations to other imple...

This paper reports on the first in a series of studies aimed at describing the process through which innovations developed as part of a district-university partnership are taken over by the district in order to be sustained and scaled to an increasing number of classrooms. This study looks at the transition process by which the district is assuming...

Professional development is key to standards-based reform, yet there is little empirical evidence upon which to base decisions of design or implementation. This paper presents a model of teacher learning and an analytic framework linking professional development to student and teacher learning. Our approach begins with an analysis of relevant conte...

Reform efforts in science education emphasize the importance of supporting students' construction of knowledge through inquiry. Project-based science (PBS) is an ambitious approach to science instruction that addresses concerns of reformers. A sample of 142 10th- and 11th-grade students enrolled in a PBS program completed the 12th-grade 1996 Nation...

This study had two purposes. The first was to explore the construct of teacher knowledge of educational technology through the lens of three components of Shulman's model of teachers' knowledge-content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge. A second purpose was to investigate the ways in which teacher knowledge is acqu...

Like its predecessors - the pencil, paper, and calculator - computers must be within arm's reach, mobile, and palm-accessible in order to make a difference in the classroom.

The past decade has seen great strides in the design of new learning technologies that support learning aligned with standards-based constructivist and inquiry teaching practices. Though there is considerable evidence that these technologies can help students learn when used appropriately, they are rarely employed beyond the small-scale settings in...

Recent curriculum design projects have attempted to engage students in authentic science learning experiences in which students engage in inquiry-based research projects about questions of interest to them. Such a pedagogical and curricular approach seems an ideal space in which to construct what Lee and Fradd referred to as instructional congruenc...

Professional development for science teachers is widely recognized as a key element for successful standards-based systemic reform, yet there is little empirical evidence to justify design decisions for professional development. This paper presents both a theoretical model of teacher learning and an analytical framework that employs the model to li...

We describe a set of design principles that, when used to create standards-based curriculum materials, could engage students in inquiry, make use of new learning technologies, and promote student learning. These design principles are derived from 4 salient features fundamental to social constructivism: active construction, situated cognition, commu...

rk over a period of time. Describing problems students encounter as they engage in inquiry and finding ways to ameliorate those problems has received considerable attention recently (Hmelo & Williams, [Special Issue, JLS], 1998; McGilly, 1994, Blumenfeld et al, 1998). In this paper, we describe inquiry in more detail, discuss ways to aid students v...

rchers and professional educators need to create a research and development program to support reform (Marx, 1998). Such an agenda needs to address the full range of issues associated with reform: curriculum and pedagogy, management and policy, teacher professional 3 development, new learning technologies, and community engagement. By studying the...

The Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS) is implementing a professional development program for science teachers to enact science curricula in a systemic reform initiative. This paper proposes a design approach for professional development in science education as a valuable way to re-conceptualize the process of fostering teach...

The article focuses on the role of Internet in learning The article focuses on the role of Internet in learning. Learning is promoted when information resources and discourse around artifacts and ideas are readily and routinely available to teachers and students. While there is considerable debate over the value of Internet in the U.S. elementary e...

The idea of a learning community has gained attention as a desirable environment that could provide opportunities for students to engage in solving problems in collaboration with peers. However, definitions of a community of learners are varied, vague, and not well-developed. The goal of the research described in this study is to examine the nature...

The idea of a learning community has gained attention as a desirable environment that could provide opportunities for students to engage in solving problems in collaboration with peers. However, definitions of a community of learners are varied, vague, and not well‐developed. The goal of the research described in this study is to examine the nature...

Although inquiry is an essential component of science learning, we know little about students' experience with inquiry in regular science classrooms. Our goal is to describe realistically what middle school students do and where they have difficulties in their first encounters with inquiry learning. We report findings from case studies of 8 student...

This article describes the potential of new technologies for teacher professional development. The article examines literature on teacher knowledge and professional development and discusses how this literature can inform the design of three types of technology to support teacher learning: multimedia, productivity tools, and telecommunication infor...

Recommendations for reform in science education place a premium on students' understanding of scientific concepts and their ability to identify problems, conduct inquiry, and use information flexibly. They call for an appreciation for how ideas evolve and are validated. In this article we discuss changes in ideas about learning that underpin the re...

Recommendations for reform in science education place a premium on students' understanding of scientific concepts and their ability to identify problems, conduct inquiry, and use information flexibly. They call for an appreciation for how ideas evolve and are validated. In this article we discuss changes in ideas about learning that underpin the re...

This chapter examines current views of teaching for understanding. First we provide background information, describing the influence of both theory and research on changes in approaches that have led to the recent stress on students as active constructors of their understanding. Then we summarize and compare a variety of programs that incorporate e...

Inquiry is an essential component of science learning (Lunetta, in press; Roth, 1995). New constructivist and social constructivist approaches to science instruction feature inquiry as essential for student learning. These approaches assume that students need opportunities to find solutions to real questions by asking and refining questions, design...

The Educational Psychology Division (Division 15) of the American Psychological Association created a committee to examine the: teaching of educational psychology in the broader context of teacher education reform. The committee recommends that educational psychologists who participate in teacher education should help prospective teachers develop c...

The cognitive discrepancy model of loneliness postulates that people experience loneliness when they perceive a discrepancy between their actual and desired levels of interpersonal contact. In contrast, a social needs model proposes that loneliness arises from actual deficits in social contact. The incremental value of the cognitive discrepancy mod...

We describe our collaborative work on project-based instruction with middle school teachers. Grounded in constructivist theory, project-based instruction affords many possibilities for transforming classrooms into active learning environments. To make the theory concrete and accessible to teachers, we delineate features. Students' investigations ar...

We draw conclusions regarding how 5 teachers learned to enact an instructional program based on constructivist theory in their classrooms, project-based science. We describe how the teacher-researcher collaborative activities unfolded, based on a model of teacher change that focused on cycles of collaboration, enactment, and reflection and how thes...

The case studies in this article demonstrate how 4 middle grade teachers addressed the challenges and dilemmas of enacting project-based science in their classrooms. The teachers attempted to enact several common features of project-based science, including student collaboration and ownership and the use of technology. The 4 teachers faced dilemmas...

Conceptual change models of student learning are useful for explicating the role of prior knowledge in students’ learning and are very popular in the research on learning in the subject areas. This article presents an analysis of a conceptual change model for describing student learning by applying research on student motivation to the process of c...

The development of a measure for identifying therapists' and counselors' intentions for their clients, the Counselor's Intentions List (CIL), is presented. Results of 3 investigations are discussed in terms of the CIL's validity and utility. The 1st study used video-assisted recall to analyze complete short-term treatments of 2 male and 2 female cl...

The development of a measure for identifying therapists' and counselors' intentions for their clients, the Counselor's Intentions List (CIL), is presented. Results of 3 investigations are discussed in terms of the CIL's validity and utility. The 1st study used video-assisted recall to analyze complete short-term treatments of 2 male and 2 female cl...

Two therapists each provided 2 clients time-limited (10 sessions each) therapies. These were examined to discover relations between (a) clients' understanding of therapists' intentions and episode level outcome, (b) similarities and differences between the participants' valuing of different intentions, and (c) shifts in intentions valued from the b...

Examined time limited (10 sessions) counseling treatments to explore the history of the working alliance over time. Measures used were a working alliance inventory and a session evaluation questionnaire. Similar patterns of working alliance development were reported by 2 counselors across 4 clients (aged 28–49 yrs). The initial development phase of...

Two therapists each provided 2 clients time-limited (10 sessions each) therapies. These were examined to discover relations between (a) clients' understanding of therapists' intentions and episode level outcome, (b) similarities and differences between the participant's valuing of different intentions, and (c) shifts in intentions valued from the b...

An emerging body of contemporary instructional research has focused on classroom work as an intricate system of tasks. In this article, we offer a descriptive theory of the nature of classroom tasks. Our major aim is to describe the interplay among 3 elements of classroom work: the conditions under which tasks are set, the cognitive plans students...

One purpose of this study was to explore relations of field dependence/independence and locus of control with students' perceptions of a teacher's use of instructional cues and the cognitive responses the teacher intends students to make to these cues. Another purpose was to examine how cognitive style and students' ability to perceive instructiona...

Instructional psychology has been a field of study at least since William James (1907) based his Talks to Teachers on Psychology on the current theories of his time. Carried forward by researchers such as Cattell, Hall, Thorndike, Skinner, Gagne, and others, the field has blossomed in the last two decades. In concert with the cognitive revolution c...

A self-instructed relaxation program was compared with therapist-instructed relaxation and waiting list controls. Self-report anxiety measures ( IPAT and STAI ) and a psychophysiological stress profile (frontal EMG, GSR, heart rate, finger temperature monitored under relaxation and stressor conditions) were utilized pre- and posttreatment to determ...

In 2 studies, 7 WISC-R Information subtest items were altered as recommended by P. E. Vernon (1977) to make them more appropriate for Canadian children. For 210 normal 4th–10th graders and 52 students (mean age 12 yrs 5 mo) referred for assessment, responses to the modified items were compared to responses to the original manual items. Data were al...

Human perception is discussed from an information processing framework and the components of this framework are related to instructional phenomena. Research on student perceptions about different features of classroom life is reviewed. Two predominant features are task demands, including instructional activities and teacher behavior, and classroom...

This paper reports on two experiments which examined the linguistic and metacognitive aspects of the communication process in normally achieving and learning disabled children. In the first experiment, 15 normally achieving and 30 learning disabled children were individually taught a board game. Results showed that in communicating with a partner,...

A. S. Kaufman (1979) suggested that factor score patterns may yield information about achievement that is additional to information contained in WISC-R composite scores. The present study examined the relation between factor score patterns and achievement beyond the well-established relationship between WISC-R composite scores and achievement. The...

Examined the cognitive responses students make to teaching events and the cognitive processes students' teachers intend them to use in typical classroom lessons. Five 4th-, 5th-, and 7th-grade teachers from British Columbia and 113 of their students participated in the study. 50 25–45 min classroom lessons (10 for each teacher) were videotaped, var...

30 10th-grade, test anxious (Achievement Anxiety Test) students were randomly assigned in equal numbers to either a cognitive modification, systematic desensitization, or waiting-list control group. The Raven Standard Progressive Matrices (RSPM), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory—State form (STAI-S), and the Anxiety Differential were administered as pr...

18 psychiatric nursing staff members (mean age 32 yrs) participated in an experimental training study to test the effectiveness of a brief microtraining instructional format against a traditional discussion training format. Results indicate that both microtraining and discussion treatments produced improved in-vivo performance of verbal and nonverb...

This article presents a model for the supervision of counselor training practica. The theoretical basis for the model is an instructional analysis of counseling effectiveness that borrows heavily from the discipline of instructional psychology, particularly in the areas of instructional theory and design, and the analysis of instructional skills an...

Proposes a model of learning from instruction in which students perceive and cognitively respond to instructional stimuli before engaging learning processes per se. 302 university students were trained to recognize only (structural schema) or to recognize and cognitively respond to (functional schema) discrete teacher skills in lectures. Exp I prod...

Univariate statistical treatments in studies of complex personality constructs like self-concept can seriously mislead both practitioners and personality researchers. In Study 1, 349 students in grades 4 through 6 responded to the Sears Self-Concept Inventory and the STEP Science Achievement scale in January and in April. Multiple regression analys...