LRDC Newsletter
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Alumni NewsKudos to Isabel Beck (BS ’53, MEd ’64, PhD ’73), Senior Scientist and Professor Emerita, named a 2021 Distinguished Alumna from the School of Education. The 2021 Distinguished Alumni Awards take place March 25, 5:30-7:30 pm. All are invited to attend the awards ceremony. Meet the award recipients Register for Distinguished Awards here. Anne Britt (PhD, 1990), Northern Illinois University, and Jean-François Rouet, University of Poitiers, France, are co-recipients of the 2021 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, from the Society for Text & Discourse. Honored for their contributions the scientific understanding of discourse processing and text analysis; the mentorship of students; and to the advancement of the field through leadership. Information on award recipients here. Michelene Chi (former faculty) currently Regents Professor, Dorothy Bray Endowed Professor of Science and Teaching, Arizona State University, who received the APS (Association for Psychological Science) William James Fellow Award. LRDC KudosKole Norberg and Nabila Jamal-Orzoco are the recipients of the Fall 2020 LRDC Graduate Student Council Award. The award supports the development of new, innovative, and interdisciplinary research conducted by graduate students within the LRDC. Ming-Te Wang, Professor, Psychology; Professor, Education, is the recipient of both the "Distinguished Research Award for Human Development & Learning" from (AERA) and the 2021 Society for Social Work and Research "Excellence in Research Award" for his series of three meta-analytic articles on parental ethnic-racial socialization. Dr. Wang's publications. Recent LRDC alum Eben B. Witherspoon (PhD 2019, Education), received the NARST 2021 Outstanding Doctoral Research Award (ODRA) for his dissertation. Read the PittWire accolade here. In the NewsThe Institute for Learning (IFL) was featured in a CBS segment “Dallas Independent School District Working with Students for More Comfortable Learning Environment.” Link here. Lindsay Page was named a national scholar of influence 11th annual 2021 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings. Pittwire accolade here. Jennifer Iriti, Lindsay Page, and Danielle Lowry were featured for their Pittsburgh Promise grant to conduct an evaluation of the Promise Coaching Initiative. Pittwire accolade here. Jennifer Russell, Professor, Education, and Melissa Libertus, Associate Professor, Psychology were quoted in “Why Kindergarten? Pandemic Disruption Forces Big Questions About U.S. Education System.” Full NPR article here. Kevin Ashley and Diane Litman were awarded FAI: Using AI to Increase Fairness by Improving Access to Justice. Pittwire accolade here. In MemoriamJames Frederick Voss James F. Voss, a distinguished scholar in the field of cognitive psychology, passed away on March 14, 2021, in Seattle, Washington. Voss was a Professor Emeritus and former chair in the Department of Psychology and a Senior Scientist at Pitt's Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC). |
Student Belonging Exercise Erases Achievement GapsThe first year of college often comes with nerves and uncertainty for new students. Will I make friends? How hard will my classes be? Am I good enough to pass an intro class? A few years ago, a group of Pitt science instructors who teach first-year students wondered: What would happen if we acknowledged that struggling is a normal part of the college experience? The Ecological-Belonging Intervention-an exercise designed to minimize differences between first-year students taking introductory science courses and normalize the challenges that come with the transition to college-is proving that a mere recognition of the problems that students face can help to dismantle racial and gender achievement gaps. So much so that the exercise is now mandatory for every student that takes an introductory biology or physics course. The intervention, which began as an experiment in a 2015 biology lecture, is now being adopted in universities across the nation and yielding similar results. The paper, “Changing Social Contexts to Foster Equity in College Science Courses: An Ecological-Belonging Intervention,” outlines findings related to the experiment and was published in the Association for Psychological Science last year. “You can clearly tell there’s a difference in culture after an intervention,” said Chandralekha Singh, a professor in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Physics and Astronomy and director of the Discipline-Based Science Education Research Center (dB-SERC). “Students from racially ethnic minority groups and women are more likely to feel engaged in group conversation and problem solving, and those students now feel like it’s a safe environment. They’re willing to actively participate without feeling judged.” The intervention came about after Erica McGreevy, a lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences, began seeking ways to minimize the sense of isolation first-year students might feel when taking Foundations of Biology 1-a course that usually sees 300 students per lecture class and 75 to 80 during weekly recitations. She knew that 30% of students weren’t learning enough in the course to move on to Biology 2 and that there was a disproportionate impact on female and nonwhite students. She began researching social psychology in classrooms and learned that students who are underrepresented in large groups can lack a sense of belonging and fall victim to perceptions that they are not meant to succeed in the discipline. How the intervention works During the exercise, which is conducted during recitations, students are separated into groups of four that will remain together throughout the semester. The instructor begins by discussing challenges such as navigating a new campus, adjusting to to new classroom experiences and developing a sense of belonging as students enter their first year. Students then spend 10 minutes writing about the transition from high school to college. Immediately after, students hear quotes from graduating seniors from a variety of backgrounds who had similar concerns as they start college but were able to push past them to succeed. The next step is for the team of four to share what they’ve written with each other. McGreevy said the quotes highlighted by graduating seniors-such as one by a white male biology major saying he was afraid he wouldn’t do well in the course and a quote from a Black female neuroscience major saying the process gets better-were designed to challenge stereotypes and show that students from all backgrounds enter the course with similar concerns. Breaking down those silos has increased self-efficacy among students in ways that have significantly diminished disparities between white and nonwhite students taking Foundations of Biology and female and male students taking Basic Physics for Engineers. Students of all backgrounds who participated in the intervention also saw higher cumulative grade point averages than those who didn’t two to four years after the initial study. Since the initial study, the intervention has been expanded to all required introductory courses. Jeremy Levy, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has also applied it to Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, which is required in all the department’s majors and serves as a capstone course. In addition to applying the intervention to an advanced course, he has also created a video that shows instructors how to adopt the technology in their own classrooms. He and Binning received funding through dB-SERC’s Course Transformation Grant program to create the videos. Students of all backgrounds who participated in the intervention also saw higher cumulative grade point averages than those who didn’t two to four years after the initial study. One critical tool of adoption, said Singh, is for instructors to believe that every student is capable of passing their class. “If I as an instructor don’t feel all of my students can excel in physics, they will not. If I say it’s my job as an instructor to make all students really go through the roof and do well, they will,” she said. “In order to do the intervention you have to inculcate a growth mindset among instructors.” Since the study went public in April 2020, its results have been duplicated at the University of Minnesota, which closed achievement gaps among underrepresented minorities taking introductory chemistry courses. Binning said Princeton University and University of Cincinnati have found similar results. McGreevy admitted, at first, that discussing emotions during a science course seemed counterintuitive. “I felt a little silly doing it. It’s a classroom of 18- and 19-year-olds and we’re going to talk about feelings now. As scientists, that’s not what we do, but I was shocked by the participation and student feedback,” she said. Singh said any reservations one might have about the intervention will be eliminated after instructors see results for themselves. “It doesn’t hurt anybody, but it acts as water on parched land for those wondering whether they belong or if they have what it takes to succeed,” she said. Reprinted from Deborah Todd, January 11, 2021, PittWire |
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Recent PublicationsBetancur, L., Maldonado-Carreño, C., Votruba-Drzal, E. & Bernal, R. (2021). Measuring preschool quality in low- and middle-income countries: Validity of the ECERS-R in Colombia. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 54(1), 86-98. Abstract here. Morett, L. M., Fraundorf, S. H., & McPartland, J. C. (2021). Eye see what you're saying: Contrastive use of beat gesture and pitch accent affects online interpretation of spoken discourse. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Abstract here. Palacios-Barrios, E. E., Hanson, J. L., Barry, K. R., Albert, D., White, S. F., Skinner, A. T., & Lansford, J. E. (2021). Lower neural value signaling in the prefrontal cortex is related to childhood family income and depressive symptomatology during adolescence. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 48. Abstract here. Leyva, D., Weiland, C., Shapiro, A., Yeomans-Maldonado, G., & Febles, A. (2021). A Strengths-Based, Culturally Responsive Family Intervention Improves Latino Kindergarteners’ Vocabulary and Approaches to Learning. Abstract here. Von Suchodoletz, A., Leyva, D., Shroff, D. M., Hinojo, A., & Kärtner, J. (2021). Maternal book-sharing styles and goals and children’s verbal contributions in three communities. Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Abstract here. Coley, R.L., Spielvogel, B., Kruzik, C., Miller, P., Betancur, L., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2021). Explaining income disparities in young children’s development: The role of community contexts and family processes. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 55, 295 - 311. Abstract here. Xiong, Y. & Schunn, C.D. (2021). Reviewer, essay, and review process characteristics that predict errors in web-based peer review. Computers & Education. Abstract here. Apedoe, X.S., Ellefson, M.R., & Schunn, C.D. (2021). In I. Henze & M.J. de Vries (Eds.). Design-Based Concept Learning in Science and Technology Education, (vol. 17, pp. 49-74). Brill | Sense. Link to chapter abstract here. Wang, M.T., Binning, K.R., Toro, J.D., Qin, X., & Zepeda, C.D. (2021). Skill, thrill, and will: The role of metacognition, interest, and self-control in predicting student engagement in mathematics learning over time. Child Development, 92 (1). Abstract here. |