Susan Nolen

University of Washington | UW · Learning Sciences & Human Development

This chapter explores how interest in writing develops in social contexts, and in particular, within the classroom community. I argue that the social context canalizes interest through constraints on the purposes of writing, on who comprises the audience, and on whose norms are used to judge the writing. I use the concept of "literate communities"...

Disciplinary activity in science is tool-mediated, and instructional designers often build in opportunities for students to use the conceptual and material tools of the discipline as they engage in activity. When this activity takes place in schools, students and teachers may modify or reject disciplinary tools to fit the goals of schooling. We rep...

Background Although open‐ended projects are common in the first and final years of US engineering programs, middle‐year courses tend to utilize simpler highly constrained problems. Such problems can elicit knowledge and social practices typical of school activity (“School World”), with limited applicability in real engineering work (“Engineering Wo...

In education, initiatives aimed at improving diversity, equity, inclusivity, and justice (DEIJ) are often conceptualized and implemented separately from those addressing students’ and faculty’s learning — and the reverse is also true. In this theoretical paper with an empirical illustration, we present a holistic framework based on our experience w...

Background In taking up educational technology tools and student‐centered instructional practice, there is consensus that instructors consider the unique aspects of their instructional context. However, tool adoption success is often framed narrowly by numerical uptake rates or by conformity with non‐negotiable components. Purpose We pursue an alt...

Background A better understanding of departmental climate and its relationship to engineering identity is needed to diversify engineering and improve marginalized students' experiences. Purpose/Hypothesis We investigated whether undergraduate engineering students from 16 social identity groups perceived departmental climate differently from one an...

In both K-12 and university settings, instructors and curriculum developers need to create learning experiences that provide students opportunities to engage in the disciplinary practices of science and engineering. However, instructional contexts pose challenges in developing such tasks. Using a framework focusing on conceptual and material episte...

In this commentary, I identify some common themes in the six articles in this special issue, including the importance of aligning research methods with research questions and embracing the complexity of educational phenomena. Then, I reflect on some differences in how authors responded to the request to discuss the role of their inquiry world view...

Download at https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1bRZ3_,qcWcrFF until 2020-09-09 In this commentary I take a situative turn in the theoretical conversation around the question, “Why do people do what they do?” The first section describes in broad strokes what a situative perspective on motivation or engagement entails. Next, I comment on aspects of the...

This chapter aims to seek insight into engagement in context, conceived through Productive Disciplinary Engagement (PDE), which can be perceived as a condition for sustained disciplinary and interdisciplinary interest and motivation. Despite ongoing trends in the design and implementation of enriched learning environments that are expected to boost...

The Cambridge Handbook of Motivation and Learning - by K. Ann Renninger February 2019

This paper describes a three-year, design-based research project to redesign a year-long, project-based advanced placement environmental science course to better support student engagement and the development of environmental citizen identities. In the initial implementation, students’ increased understanding of environmental problems paradoxically...

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” activat...

We describe progress on a comprehensive, programmatic change initiative whose goal is to create an inclusive culture that fosters diversity and a shift towards more meaningful, consequential work. While this initiative has several elements that target different aspects of unit practices and culture, we focus here on pedagogical change. Our design-b...

Abstract—Contribution: Student engagement and interest in engineering is compared between virtual and physical laboratory projects, designed to be realistic and replicate engineering practice. Reported motivation and engagement was greater in the virtual project than the physical projects. Results are interpreted in terms of the different affordanc...

This article describes a situative approach to studying motivation to learn in social contexts. We begin by contrasting this perspective to more prevalent psychological approaches to the study of motivation, describing epistemological and methodological differences that have constrained conversation between theoretical groups. We elaborate on issue...

Productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) occurs when learners use the discourses and practices of the discipline in authentic tasks in order to “get somewhere” (develop a product, improve a process) over time. Engle and her colleagues (2012) have shown that interactions characterized by PDE are more likely to result in deep learning of concepts and...

Laboratory courses are an important part of engineering curricula, allowing students to act as practicing engineers by engaging in a hands-on experiment on a physical reactor, working as a team and applying the theory and concepts they have gained in other classrooms. With the advent of technology, virtual laboratories have become a complement to p...

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-produc...

Productive engagement in meaningful activity is essential for learning and becoming in practice. However, learning systems that support such engagement are complex and usually studied in single contexts making findings difficult to transfer. We detail research among four universities who study these systems in different contexts. We illustrate how...

We report Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR) on a year-long project-based AP Environmental Science curriculum in 11 classrooms in two urban districts. We report its impact on students' engagement, practice-linked identities as environmental citizens and performance on a complex transfer task. Results from the initial design-redesign phase...

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 in...

Formative assessment has been widely promoted as a means to support student learning and motivation. This practice has potential for communicating to students the value of what they are learning, both in the classroom and beyond (Brophy, 20086. Brophy , J. 2008 . Developing students' appreciation for what is taught in school . Educational Psycholog...

In this article, our focus is on the methodological issues in taking a situative approach to studying the interconnected development of motivation, identity, and learning in multiple social contexts. We illustrate our description with data acquired from a cross-context, longitudinal, ethnographic study of novice teachers’ learning, motivation, and...

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 t...

In a 3-year longitudinal, mixed-method study, 67 children in two schools were observed during literacy activities in Grades 1–3. Children and their teachers were interviewed each year about the children's motivation to read and write. Taking a grounded theory approach, content analysis of the child interview protocols identified the motivations tha...

ABSTRACT Preservice teachers (interns) are motivated to learn and take up teaching practices that appear useful to them in becoming good teachers. In this paper, we argue that judgments about which practices to take up are made on the basis of motivational filters employed,in social contexts by interns as part of self-regulated learning. These filt...

Perry and Winne (2006) describe their computer program, ‘gStudy’, and argue that it facilitates valid measurement of self-regulated learning (SRL) over time. This commentary addresses the assumptions underlying this argument and raises additional validity questions regarding the use of this tool. These include issues related to the development of S...

Are variations in test-preparation practices from school to school undermining the meaningfulness of achievement test results? Is there pressure to raise achievement test scores by the use of educationally unsound practices? What uses of achievement test scores are most common? Do teachers and administrators have reasonably accurate views of test s...

This study examined the effects of the Second Step social–emotional learning program and addressed the relations between social cognitions and prosocial and antisocial behavior. Children (N = 1,253) in intervention and control groups were assessed by teacher ratings, self report, and observation in two conflict situations. Intervention children wer...

In a study of the relationship between high school students' perceptions of their science learning environments and their motivation, learning strategies, and achievement, 377 students in 22 introductory science classrooms completed surveys in the fall and spring of their ninth-grade year. Hierarchical linear regression was used to model the effect...

This ethnographic study explores kindergarten children's emergent motivation to read and write, its relation to their developing concepts of reading and writing (Guice & Johnston, 1994; Johnston, 1997; Turner, 1995), and to their teachers instructional goals and classroom norms. Teachers and students together constructed legitimate literate activit...

Several years ago the special education faculty of the University of Washington changed their focus to include more emphasis on participation in the preparation of general elementary and secondary educators in a newly designed masters level teacher preparation program, This change process, described in Affleck and Lowenbraun's (1995) article "Manag...

An approach to teaching assessment to prospective teachers that is congruent with current theories of learning as a process-in-context is described. The decontextualized nature of traditional assessment courses may contribute to the finding that teachers do not perceive the information learned in such courses to be relevant to their tasks as classr...

We question the utility of traditional conceptualizations of validity and reliability, developed in the context of large scale, external testing, and the psychology of individual differences, for the context of the classroom. We compare traditional views of validity and reliability to alternate frameworks that situate these constructs in teachers'...

We question the utility of traditional conceptualizations of validity and reliability, developed in the context of large scale, external testing, and the psychology of individual differences, for the context of the classroom. We compare traditional views of validity and reliability to alternate frameworks that situate these constructs in teachers&a...

Learners' use of strategies cannot be understood without understanding the nature of their motivation for learning. Using an intentional framework which emphasizes learners' purposes, research in the last 10 years has found that different goals, or different definitions of success and failure, have distinct implications for strategy selection and u...

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 chi...

The effects of a visible author (one who reveals aspects of him- or herself) on women’s experience reading statistical texts were examined among 47 female college students who read texts that differed in the extent to which the author revealed attitudes and personality. Data included "think-and-feel-aloud" protocols, measures of concentration, mood...

An assessment course for teachers is described that uses validity as the primary focus. Five dimensions of validity for classroom-based assessments are highlighted in a course that relies on the use of a process portfolio. The five dimensions are: (1) looking at the content of the assessment in relation to the content of the domain of reference; (2...

Children (aged 7–22 years) were interviewed about the fairness of selected practices for influencing motivation to learn. Children's 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 dut...

We report a questionaire study of teacher's beliefs about the effectiveness of different strategies for fostering student motivation. The questionaire covered a range of strategies, including those recommended by researchers, those rejected, and one on which recommendations have been in conflict. In general, teachers appeared to know what many rese...

Pupils in the second (N = 304) and fifth grades (N = 272) and their teachers (N = 35) rated the effectiveness of a variety of teacher strategies for motivating pupils to learn maths. Factor analysis indicated that older pupils made finer distinctions among types of strategy than did younger pupils. Second-graders endorsed most strategies, while fif...

In the current climate of dissatisfaction with public education, the standardized achievement test score has been the operational definition for educational-achievement, and raising test scores has been equated with educational improvement. The pressure to raise test scores has resulted in practices which pollute the inferences we make from these s...

This paper describes a model of the influence of personal and environmental factors on students' valuing of two deep-processing strategies for studying expository texts. In the model, task orientation (a form of intrinsic motivation in which learning and understanding are the major goals) interacts with perceptions of the teacher's goals to influen...

This study examines the construct validity of Goals and Strategies for Studying Science (GSSS), a questionnaire in two parts: the first part measuring students' beliefs in the value of various study strategies for learning in science, and the second part assessing their perceptions of the teacher's goals for student learning. Evidence supporting th...

Three groups of high school science students (college-bound and non-college-bound freshmen, college-bound juniors and seniors) completed surveys measuring their beliefs in the utility of four kinds of study strategies, three types of motivational orientation to science (task orientation, ego orientation, and work avoidance), their reported ability,...

This study explored the relationship among (a) individual differences in three motivational or goal orientations and (b) valuing and use of study strategies by eighth graders reading expository passages. Task orientation (the goal of learning or understanding for its own sake) was positively correlated with both perceived value and use of strategie...

The relationship between goal orientation and the use of learning strategies and their effects on learning outcomes were investigated. The three goal orientations considered were: (1) task orientation, which involves learning for its own sake; (2) ego orientation, which involves a desire to perform better than others; and (3) work avoidance, which...

A correlational study of 62 8th grade, 60 11th grade, and 58 college students investigated developmental differences in learning goals, study strategy beliefs and their inter-relationship for science classes. Questionnaires measured levels of task orientation, ego orientation, and work avoidance, as well as belief in the utility of two types of str...

Data are presented for the duration of syllables in American Sign Language and for movement and hold components of those syllables. Measurements from 3072 syllables taken from four different samples of signing resulted in a grand mean of 293.7 msec. The different signing samples reflected different degrees of naturalness, and the means for each sam...

315 9th graders and 272 12th graders from 2 schools were administered a questionnaire to investigate associations between views about the purposes of education and personal goals, between personal goals and perceived causes of success, and between purposes of education and perceived causes of success. Results show that Ss found a logically consiste...

Fifty severely to profoundly deaf students were given a forced-choice picture selection test to investigate the effects of context on their comprehension of difficult sentences. For half the items, students matched pictures to isolated active, passive, or relative-clause sentences; for the other half, students performed the same task, given similar...