Zha Blong Xiong (family social science) as an undergraduate. Find out more about their photovoice project involving Hmong youth and their concepts of home and family in “Early Investigations.”
Continue reading “Undergrad research in family social science”
Thom Swiss, professor of culture and teaching (CI), was co-organizer of the Materialities and Imaginaries of the Mobile Internet Conference held Feb 11-13 at Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. The objective of the conference was to bring together an international group of scholars to develop a set of theoretical and methodological approaches to the interdisciplinary concept of “mobilities.” Swiss’s article on the topic of highly mobile students and the homeless, “Zombies. Children of Zombies!,” is the lead article in the current issue of the Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies.
In the Winter 2011 Connect, two licensure students look back on their experiences as members of the first DirecTrack cohort. This program gives undergraduates the chance to be immersed in educational settings and to learn from education leaders even before they enter the licensure program .
Read more about hands-on experiences and DirecTrack in “Field Vision.”
Sixty-two Minnesota elementary schools were honored recently for their achievement in reading by the Minnesota Center for Reading Research with a presentation and ceremony at the University of Minnesota. Schools chosen for the honor are those elementary schools that made adequate yearly progress in reading during school years 2008-09 and 2009-10 after failing to make adequate yearly progress in the previous year. See the list of schools honored.
Michael Goh, educational psychology associate professor, has been awarded a University of Minnesota IDEA Multicultural Research Award for his proposal: “Decoding and Encoding Culturally Competent Mental Health Practices: A Community-based Participatory Action Research Project.” The project involves multiple agencies, including the Center for Excellence in Children’s Mental Health, Minnesota Cultural Providers Network, Minnesota Department of Human Services, as well as clinicians from various disciplines — counseling and clinical psychology, school psychology, school counseling, social work, and marriage and family therapy.
Associate Professor Murray Jensen and Senior Teaching Specialist Gary Peter, from the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, presented at the 30th Annual First-Year Experience Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Their first session, titled “Evaluating Group Video Projects in Relation to University of Minnesota Student Learning Outcomes,” described a group capstone assignment involving the production of a short video on healthy eating and provided evidence on the effectiveness of that assignment in relation to student learning outcomes. Jensen also delivered a second presentation, titled “iPads for All: Innovation and Application in a Learning Community,” which provided a preliminary report on the use of iPads and students’ responses to them in a learning community featuring a public speaking class and a general biology course.
Be sure to save the date! The Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare will hold its annual spring conference on April 21, 2011. The conference will be at the McNamara Alumni Center on the University’s East Bank Campus. This year’s conference topic will be the intersection of child welfare practice with new technology. As always, the conference will be free and will be accessible in-person or via web streaming. More information and registration for the conference will soon be available on the CASCW Web pages at .
Educational psychology professor Jim Ysseldyke presented a distinguished lecture at the Meadows Center for Prevention of Educational Risk at the University of Texas, Austin last month. The lecture was titled “Politics Trumps Science: Generalizations from a Career of Research on Assessment, Decision Making, and Public Policy.”
Kenneth Koedinger, professor of Human Computer Interaction and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, will present “The Science of Learning goes to School” at Minnesota Interdisciplinary Training and Educational Research (MITER) program’s annual lecture on Friday, February 11, 2011 at 4:30 pm in the Johnson Great Room, MacNamara Alumni Center. A reception will follow the lecture.
Abstract: Collaborations of cognitive psychologists, artificial intelligence researchers, and mathematics educators led to the creation of the Cognitive Tutor math courses in the early 1990s. Today these courses are providing over 500,000 math students per year with computer-based personalized tutoring. A number of large-scale field trials have provided evidence on the benefits of the Cognitive Tutor courses for enhancing student achievement. The underlying research goal has been to understand student learning, and to link general learning principles from cognitive research to specific curricular content so as to provide a diversity of students with more effective, efficient, and enjoyable learning experiences. Thus, the “goes to school” element in my title refers not only to scaling-up of the science of learning for improving educational practice, but also to the idea that we can improve the science by bringing it to school. To this end, starting in 2004, the National Science Foundation provided ten years of funding for the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center (PSLC). In this talk, I will describe the PSLC’s use of a research method called “in vivo experimentation” as a stepping stone between laboratory experiments and randomized field trials. The PSLC also supports cumulative development of theories of domain-general learning and domain-specific knowledge.
Please register to attend by e-mailing or calling Peggy Ferdinand: mlif@umn.edu, or 612-626-8269.
Professor Koedinger will also be presenting a colloquium entitled “Psychometrics and Technology-Enhanced Education Research” on Friday, February 11, 9:00 a.m., in 325 Education Sciences Building.
Kenneth Koedinger, professor of Human Computer Interaction and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, will present “Psychometrics and Technology-enhanced Education” at Minnesota Interdisciplinary Training and Educational Research (MITER) program’s annual colloquium on Friday, February 11, 9:00 a.m., in Room 325 Education Sciences Building.
Abstract: Educational technologies are being increasingly used in schools and colleges. Well-designed systems go beyond the support provided by teachers and textbooks to assess students as they work, adapt instruction to their individual needs, and provide stakeholders with detailed reports on students’ strengths and weaknesses. Further, these systems provide a powerful research platform for data collection and experimentation to advance theories of learning, instruction, and assessment. This talk will focus on opportunities for transforming the way academic assessment is done. Dr. Koedinger will discuss work from a team of psychologists, computer scientists, and statisticians exploring whether an online math tutoring system can accurately predict state test scores, while at the same time enhancing student learning and helping teachers improve their teaching. He will also discuss the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to go beyond cognitive assessment to create assessment models of student learning skills, like help-seeking or self-explanation, and their motivational states, like disengagement or flow. A key theme is how the timing data available from online student interactions provide research opportunities to develop new models of psychological states and processes, individual differences, and longitudinal change.
Please register to attend by e-mailing or calling Peggy Ferdinand at mlif@umn.edu, or 612-626-8269.
Professor Koedinger will also be presenting a lecture on “The Science of Learning Goes to School” at the 2011 MITER Colloquium on Friday, February 11, 4:30 p.m., Johnson Great Room, MacNamara Alumni Center. A reception will follow.
Maureen Weiss, professor in the School of Kinesiology and co-director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, along with former doctoral student Melissa Price, currently head women’s soccer coach at University of Nevada, published a research paper exploring peer leadership in female high school soccer teams. The study asked: What qualities and attributes do players identify as effective leadership among their team members? And what types of leader behaviors are associated with team cohesiveness and efficacy?
Effective peer leaders were rated high in perceived soccer competence, social acceptance, behavioral conduct, and intrinsic motivation. In addition, peer leaders who exhibited greater instrumental and prosocial behaviors were associated with teammates who reported greater task and social cohesion within their teams and a higher degree of confidence in their team’s ability, unity, effort, and preparation.
Continue reading “Peer leadership associated with cohesion, confidence in girls’ teams”
Jessica Salvatore, doctoral candidate at the Institute of Child Development, and her ICD co-authors Sally Kuo and Andrew Collins recently published findings in Psychological Science that show that having a romantic partner who is especially good at recovering (or rebounding) from conflict predicts increased relationship stability for those who were insecurely attached in infancy. This research provides some of the first prospective evidence that romantic partners may act as turning points for development. See the article online.
Dr. Mary Jo Kane, professor and director of the School of Kinesiology, has been asked to write an article for a special edition of The Nation magazine. Dave Zirin, author of several books and sports editor for the magazine, contacted Dr. Kane last month about writing an article on the sexualization of female athletes.
Zirin is a frequent guest on MSNBC, ESPN, and Democracy Now. He also hosts his own weekly Sirius XM show, Edge of Sports Radio. He was named one of the UTNE Reader‘s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World.”
Research by Arthur Reynolds, professor in the Institute of Child Development, indicates that for every $1 invested in a Chicago early childhood education program, nearly $11 is projected to return to society over the children’s lifetimes — equivalent to an 18 percent annual return on program investment.
For the analysis, Reynolds and other researchers evaluated the effectiveness of the Chicago Public Schools’ federally funded Child Parent Centers established in 1967. Their work represents the first long-term economic analysis of an existing, large-scale early education program. Researchers surveyed study participants and their parents, and analyzed education, employment, public aid, criminal justice, substance use and child welfare records for the participants through to age 26.
Congratulations to David Arendale, associate professor in the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, who received the Hunter R. Boylan Outstanding Research/Publication Award for 2011 from the National Association for Developmental Education. The award from NADE was for his recent book, Access at the Crossroads: Learning Assistance in Higher Education, published by Jossey-Bass. The award will be received at the NADE national conference in Washington, DC, later in February.
Tickets for the film festival are sold out, however we will release additional tickets at the door ($10) if tickets become available.
The Tucker Center is pleased to announce its first annual Film Festival, taking place on February 1, 2011 at 7:00-9:00pm, in the DQ Club Room at TCF Bank Stadium.The event, presented by the University of Minnesota Athletic Department, kicks off the 25th annual celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day (NGWSD) and will feature the Minnesota sneak preview of Sony’s The Mighty Macs.
Set against the backdrop of the 1972 feminist movement, The Mighty Macs tells the inspiring true story of Immaculata College’s women’s basketball team and their road to winning the first national championship in women’s college basketball.
Directions and Parking Info for TCF Bank Stadium are available here.
Please park in the Maroon or Gopher parking lots, they are the closest to the event entrance. You will need to pay for parking ($3.75) upon leaving.
Please enter the “Event Entrance” under Benton, next to Goldy’s Locker Room store.
Doors open at 6:15pm
For more information, check out the Tucker Center Film Festival website.
Dr. Juergen Konczak, Kinesiology professor, recently gave an invited presentation to the U of M Wellstone Center for Muscular Dystrophy entitled “Altered Proprioception in Focal Dystonia: A Window for Understanding the Disease?”
Dr. Konczak also wrote an invited book chapter on “The Evolution and Development of Human Hand Function” which will appear in a German clinical physiology textbook entitled Brain and Hand: Clinical Diagnosis and Rehabilitation of Hand Dysfunctions published by Springer Verlag.
Dr. Connie Magnuson, lecturer and coordinator of the Recreation, Park, and Leisure Studies program, spent the winter break in Costa Rica with RPLS undergraduates on a Study Abroad experience. You can see Costa Rica through their eyes in the video link below: (For best effect, select full screen!)
http://animoto.com/play/4UqLfMT7DvVQ8Z1CD1UIbw
Professor Tom Stoffregen has been researching motion sickness and body sway in his Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory for many years, and on location on ships in various oceans and waterways most recently. His latest article, published with Professor Michael Wade and Ph.D. student Tony Mayo, which appeared in the journal Psychological Science this month, has been attracting a lot of attention around the world.
Dr. Mary Jo Kane, Kinesiology professor and director, and advisee Dr. Heather Maxwell (PhD Kinesiology, 2009), have published an article related to their ongoing research on gender and sport media in the Journal of Sport Management. The article, “Expanding the boundaries of sport media research: Using critical theory to explore consumer responses to representations of women’s sports” can be previewed now at JSM In Press:
http://journals.humankinetics.com/jsm-in-press/jsm-in-press/expanding-the-boundaries-of-sport-media-research-using-critical-theory-to-explore-consumer-responses-to-representations-of-womens-sports
