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Student Learning Dispositions: Multidimensional Profiles Highlight Important Differences among Undergraduate STEM Honors Thesis Writers

Various personal dimensions of students—particularly motivation, self-efficacy beliefs, and epistemic beliefs—can change in response to teaching, affect student learning, and be conceptualized as learning dispositions. We propose that these learning dispositions serve as learning outcomes in their o...

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Autores principales: Dowd, Jason E., Thompson, Robert J., Schiff, Leslie, Haas, Kelaine, Hohmann, Christine, Roy, Chris, Meck, Warren, Bruno, John, Reynolds, Julie A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Society for Cell Biology 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6755226/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31150321
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-07-0141
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author Dowd, Jason E.
Thompson, Robert J.
Schiff, Leslie
Haas, Kelaine
Hohmann, Christine
Roy, Chris
Meck, Warren
Bruno, John
Reynolds, Julie A.
author_facet Dowd, Jason E.
Thompson, Robert J.
Schiff, Leslie
Haas, Kelaine
Hohmann, Christine
Roy, Chris
Meck, Warren
Bruno, John
Reynolds, Julie A.
author_sort Dowd, Jason E.
collection PubMed
description Various personal dimensions of students—particularly motivation, self-efficacy beliefs, and epistemic beliefs—can change in response to teaching, affect student learning, and be conceptualized as learning dispositions. We propose that these learning dispositions serve as learning outcomes in their own right; that patterns of interrelationships among these specific learning dispositions are likely; and that differing constellations (or learning disposition profiles) may have meaningful implications for instructional practices. In this observational study, we examine changes in these learning dispositions in the context of six courses at four institutions designed to scaffold undergraduate thesis writing and promote students’ scientific reasoning in writing in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We explore the utility of cluster analysis for generating meaningful learning disposition profiles and building a more sophisticated understanding of students as complex, multidimensional learners. For example, while students’ self-efficacy beliefs about writing and science increased across capstone writing courses on average, there was considerable variability at the level of individual students. When responses on all of the personal dimensions were analyzed jointly using cluster analysis, several distinct and meaningful learning disposition profiles emerged. We explore these profiles in this work and discuss the implications of this framework for describing developmental trajectories of students’ scientific identities.
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spelling pubmed-67552262019-10-15 Student Learning Dispositions: Multidimensional Profiles Highlight Important Differences among Undergraduate STEM Honors Thesis Writers Dowd, Jason E. Thompson, Robert J. Schiff, Leslie Haas, Kelaine Hohmann, Christine Roy, Chris Meck, Warren Bruno, John Reynolds, Julie A. CBE Life Sci Educ Article Various personal dimensions of students—particularly motivation, self-efficacy beliefs, and epistemic beliefs—can change in response to teaching, affect student learning, and be conceptualized as learning dispositions. We propose that these learning dispositions serve as learning outcomes in their own right; that patterns of interrelationships among these specific learning dispositions are likely; and that differing constellations (or learning disposition profiles) may have meaningful implications for instructional practices. In this observational study, we examine changes in these learning dispositions in the context of six courses at four institutions designed to scaffold undergraduate thesis writing and promote students’ scientific reasoning in writing in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We explore the utility of cluster analysis for generating meaningful learning disposition profiles and building a more sophisticated understanding of students as complex, multidimensional learners. For example, while students’ self-efficacy beliefs about writing and science increased across capstone writing courses on average, there was considerable variability at the level of individual students. When responses on all of the personal dimensions were analyzed jointly using cluster analysis, several distinct and meaningful learning disposition profiles emerged. We explore these profiles in this work and discuss the implications of this framework for describing developmental trajectories of students’ scientific identities. American Society for Cell Biology 2019 /pmc/articles/PMC6755226/ /pubmed/31150321 http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-07-0141 Text en © 2019 J. E. Dowd et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2019 The American Society for Cell Biology. “ASCB®” and “The American Society for Cell Biology®” are registered trademarks of The American Society for Cell Biology. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License.
spellingShingle Article
Dowd, Jason E.
Thompson, Robert J.
Schiff, Leslie
Haas, Kelaine
Hohmann, Christine
Roy, Chris
Meck, Warren
Bruno, John
Reynolds, Julie A.
Student Learning Dispositions: Multidimensional Profiles Highlight Important Differences among Undergraduate STEM Honors Thesis Writers
title Student Learning Dispositions: Multidimensional Profiles Highlight Important Differences among Undergraduate STEM Honors Thesis Writers
title_full Student Learning Dispositions: Multidimensional Profiles Highlight Important Differences among Undergraduate STEM Honors Thesis Writers
title_fullStr Student Learning Dispositions: Multidimensional Profiles Highlight Important Differences among Undergraduate STEM Honors Thesis Writers
title_full_unstemmed Student Learning Dispositions: Multidimensional Profiles Highlight Important Differences among Undergraduate STEM Honors Thesis Writers
title_short Student Learning Dispositions: Multidimensional Profiles Highlight Important Differences among Undergraduate STEM Honors Thesis Writers
title_sort student learning dispositions: multidimensional profiles highlight important differences among undergraduate stem honors thesis writers
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6755226/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31150321
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-07-0141
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