Helena Dedic | Concordia University (Canada) (original) (raw)
Papers by Helena Dedic
The value N=980 represents the number of students whose responses were used in analyses. Outliers... more The value N=980 represents the number of students whose responses were used in analyses. Outliers and students whose responses were incomplete were excluded from analyses.
Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 19 mai 2010
Dawson College, 2011
Current thinking about pedagogical reform is strongly influenced by constructivist (e.g., Piaget,... more Current thinking about pedagogical reform is strongly influenced by constructivist (e.g., Piaget, 1975) and social-constructivist (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978) theories of learning. A major assumption is that new knowledge is constructed by the learner from prior knowledge and is mediated by social contexts. Instruction should therefore be student-centered and provide opportunities to engage both with content and people. This is often called student-centered active learning. Recent trends in rethinking learning have begun to focus on physical environments and how they can help to support active pedagogies. An example of such work is the construction of sociotechnological classroom environments is the Massachussetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Technology Enabled Active Learning (TEAL) project. While evidence from research shows that student-centered active pedagogies improve learning little is known about the interaction of these new classroom settings and pedagogy. The current study set out to investigate several of these relationships. This research project was divided into two studies that examined the impact of pedagogy and classroom setting on students as well as the impact of classroom setting on teacher's adoption of a student-centered active pedagogy. Study 1 focused on the students and was divided into two parts: (1) a quasi-experimental design comparing 2 forms of classroom settings (Conventional and Socio-technological) with two types of pedagogy (student-centered Active-Learning and Traditional Instruction); (2) a qualitative case-study designed to investigate how students instructed with different pedagogies perceived learning in socio-technological environments. We assessed students' physics conceptual knowledge with the widely used Force Concept Inventory (FCI), and conducted classroom observations and targeted interviews. Study 2 had 3 parts that focused on teachers: (1) a case study narrative documenting the professional development of a student-centered active pedagogy teacher; (2) a case study involving six teachers use of the socio-technological environment; (3) a qualitative analysis comparing and contrasting differences between self-reported perceptions with our in-the-field observations of their classroom teaching. Data collected include classroom observations, teacher interviews and the Approaches to Teaching (ATI) questionnaire which has two scales: (1) measurement of teacher-centeredness and (2) and measurement of student-centeredness. These two study yielded several interesting results. Study 1 (part 1) showed that students have better conceptual gains when taught with an active learning pedagogy. However, the socio-How Do
Vanier College : Concordia University,, 2008
Page 6 achievement in Calculus. It seems that both students and instructors compensated for the g... more Page 6 achievement in Calculus. It seems that both students and instructors compensated for the gaps in initial knowledge. 2. Which of the three tested experimental conditions (instructional designs) is most likely to reverse the trend of continually increasing failure rates? We determined that there were no differences in achievement and perseverance between students who submitted paper assignments and those who did the same assignments online. Simply adding computer technology to a traditional instructional design would not reverse the current downward trend. However, we should point out that providing feedback in the form of weekly assignments, corrected and returned, is no longer the standard practice of CEGEP Calculus instructors due to prohibitive workload demand of such a practice. In that sense, the addition of online homework assignments is an improvement over the current practice of assigning but not collecting and correcting homework. A more important conclusion is that students who had online homework assignments, combined with instructional support in class for those assignments, outperformed students in the other two conditions. In addition, students in this learning environment put more effort into their studies and were also likely to persist more. Consequently, this instructional design could be used to alleviate the high failure rates in social science Calculus classes. We also discovered a worrisome trend in the course of this study: one method that instructors use to compensate for initial weaknesses of students is to "boost" grades at the end of the term. The average grade "boost" was significantly higher in the group of students that had the lowest scores as assessed by independent coders. Consequently, we may say that the teacher assigned final grades in the course did not accurately reflect students' mastery of Calculus concepts. If this result is indicative of general trends in grading, then high school and college administrators, as well as MELS administrators, who monitor students' success via such grades, should be concerned. We recommend that further research into causes and possible remedies of grade boosting should have a high priority.
The focus of this research program was to study and develop classroom teaching strategies that pr... more The focus of this research program was to study and develop classroom teaching strategies that promote integrating knowledge and to develop an instrument that measures conceptual change. Our work was conducted in the domain of physics, particularly in Mechanics courses, and is founded on the theoretical perspectives of learning and knowledge structures posited by conceptual change theorists. The objectives of Our research can be outlined as follows: to design a classroom intervention promoting conceptual change; to develop an instrument to measure conceptual change within the classroom context; to examine factors that confound the measurement of conceptual change, in particular when using the Force Concept lnventory (FCI); and to study how students think (differently) about qualitative versus quantitative physics problems. The methodology of Our research varied with the objectives and was a blend of qualitative (semi-structured interviews) and quantitative (quasi-experimental resear...
This study addresses issues of stagnating/declining enrollment in science, technology, engineerin... more This study addresses issues of stagnating/declining enrollment in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) studies. Achievement, perseverance, academic emotions and motivation data were collected from students headed towards STEM studies (1654 Canadian Junior College students, 534 Swedes graduating from High School), and analysed using Latent Class Analysis. We identified three Emotional Involvement (EI) profiles: Low (LEI); Positive (PEI); Negative (NEI). EI is a more influential source of self-efficacy than previous research has demonstrated, explaining as much as 11 % of variance in self-efficacy. PEI students are likely to succeed and persevere in science studies, provided that they successfully adapt to the college environment. College instructors need to attend to the emotional well-being of their students.
Model of how cognitive style impacts differentially by gender on achievement and perseverance in ... more Model of how cognitive style impacts differentially by gender on achievement and perseverance in SMET studies
![Research paper thumbnail of Modèle de l'impact différentiel du style cognitif des hommes et des femmes sur la réussite et la persévérance dans les programmes de STIM [article de vulgarisation] /](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/99202163/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](de l'étude Il y a un décalage entre hommes et femmes et un déclin des inscriptions aux programmes... more de l'étude Il y a un décalage entre hommes et femmes et un déclin des inscriptions aux programmes de STIM (science/technologie/ingénierie/mathématiques) dans la plupart des pays occidentaux. Pour mieux comprendre ce phénomène, nous nous sommes penchés sur les relations entre le style cognitif, l'anxiété d'apprendre, la motivation intrinsèque et la connaissance de ses propres capacités et la réussite et la persévérance dans les programmes de mathématiques et de sciences. La recherche démontre que la systémisation est l'un des deux principaux styles cognitifs que les gens utilisent dans leur raisonnement. La systémisation se définit comme étant l'aspiration profonde à analyser les systèmes. Des étudiantes et étudiants québécois et suédois (980) ont pris part à cette étude. À l'aide du programme EQS, nous avons utilisé la modélisation par équations structurelles pour éprouver le modèle hypothétique. Notre modèle démontre que les étudiantes et étudiants qui ont un bas niveau de réussite en systémisation-majoritairement des femmes-sont plus enclins à une anxiété plus élevée et une motivation intrinsèque moins élevée et, par le fait même, à une persévérance moins élevée que leurs camarades dont le niveau de systémisation est plus élevé. Pour renverser le décalage entre hommes et femmes et le déclin général des inscriptions aux programmes de STIM, il faudra une pédagogie de l'apprentissage des sciences expressément conçue pour aider les étudiantes et étudiants qui ont un bas niveau de systémisation.
![Research paper thumbnail of L’écart entre les sexes dans les études en sciences : Une question de style cognitif et non d’aptitude cognitive [The gender gap in science studies: A question of cognitive style, not cognitive ability]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/99202112/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Selon une hypothese controversee, le nombre inferieurde femmes par rapport a celui des hommes qui... more Selon une hypothese controversee, le nombre inferieurde femmes par rapport a celui des hommes qui decidentde poursuivre des etudes en sciences, en technologie,en genie et en mathematiques (STGM) se ...
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Jul 1, 1973
The evolution of small but finite-amplitude disturbances in a self- gravitating fluid layer of fi... more The evolution of small but finite-amplitude disturbances in a self- gravitating fluid layer of finite thickness is considered. Contrary to the prediction of the linearized theory, the critical wavelength beyond which no small-amplitude motion exists now depends on the initial amplitude of the fluctuations. Nonlinearity slightly enlarges the range of unstable disturbances within the fluid slab. Typical nonlinear features in the flow patterns are observed. (auth)
To address continually decreasing enrollment and rising attrition in post-secondary STEM degree (... more To address continually decreasing enrollment and rising attrition in post-secondary STEM degree (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs, particularly for women, the present study examines the utility of motivation and emotion variables to account for persistence and achievement in science in male and female students transitioning from high school to junior college. Consistent with self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2012) and achievement-goal theory (Senko, Hulleman, & Harackiewicz, 2011), structural equation modelling based on data from 1,309 students from four English-language CEGEPs showed students' achievement goals, self-efficacy, and perceived autonomy support to impact intrinsic motivation, emotions, and achievement that, in turn, predicted persistence in the science domain.
Technology-rich student-centered classrooms such as SCALE-UP and TEAL are designed to actively en... more Technology-rich student-centered classrooms such as SCALE-UP and TEAL are designed to actively engage students. We examine what happens when instructors adopt the classroom but not the pedagogy that goes with it. We measure the effect of using socio-technological spaces on students' conceptual change and compare learning gains made in groups using different pedagogies (active learning vs. conventional instruction). We also correlate instructors' self-reported instructional approach (teacher-centered, student-centered) with their classes' normalized FCI gains. We find that technology-rich spaces are only effective when implemented with studentcentered active pedagogies. In their absence, the technology-rich classroom is not significantly different from conventional teacher-centered classrooms. We also find that instructors' self-reported perception of studentcenteredness accounts for a large fraction of the variance (r 2 =0.83) in their class' average normalized gain. Adopting student-centered pedagogies appears to be a necessary condition for the effective use of technology-rich spaces. However, adopting a new pedagogy seems more difficult than adopting new technology.
American Journal of Physics, 2012
Journal of Information Technology Education: Innovations in Practice, 2016
The pilot research presented here explores the classroom use of Emerging Literacy in Mathematics ... more The pilot research presented here explores the classroom use of Emerging Literacy in Mathematics (ELM) software, a research-based bilingual interactive multimedia instructional tool, and its potential to develop emerging numeracy skills. At the time of the study, a central theme of early mathematics curricula, Number Concept, was fully developed. It was broken down into five mathematical concepts including counting, comparing, adding, subtracting and decomposing. Each of these was further subdivided yielding 22 online activities, each building in a level of complexity and abstraction. In total, 234 grade one students from 12 classes participated in the two-group post-test study that lasted about seven weeks and for which students in the experimental group used ELM for about 30 minutes weekly. The results for the final sample of 186 students showed that ELM students scored higher on the standardized math test (Canadian Achievement Test, 2008) and reported less boredom and lower anxie...
This research addresses an issue raised in recent reports that demonstrate that Quebec andSweden ... more This research addresses an issue raised in recent reports that demonstrate that Quebec andSweden lag behind countries with emerging economies in the number of science graduates, asmeasured by the p ...
The value N=980 represents the number of students whose responses were used in analyses. Outliers... more The value N=980 represents the number of students whose responses were used in analyses. Outliers and students whose responses were incomplete were excluded from analyses.
Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 19 mai 2010
Dawson College, 2011
Current thinking about pedagogical reform is strongly influenced by constructivist (e.g., Piaget,... more Current thinking about pedagogical reform is strongly influenced by constructivist (e.g., Piaget, 1975) and social-constructivist (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978) theories of learning. A major assumption is that new knowledge is constructed by the learner from prior knowledge and is mediated by social contexts. Instruction should therefore be student-centered and provide opportunities to engage both with content and people. This is often called student-centered active learning. Recent trends in rethinking learning have begun to focus on physical environments and how they can help to support active pedagogies. An example of such work is the construction of sociotechnological classroom environments is the Massachussetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Technology Enabled Active Learning (TEAL) project. While evidence from research shows that student-centered active pedagogies improve learning little is known about the interaction of these new classroom settings and pedagogy. The current study set out to investigate several of these relationships. This research project was divided into two studies that examined the impact of pedagogy and classroom setting on students as well as the impact of classroom setting on teacher's adoption of a student-centered active pedagogy. Study 1 focused on the students and was divided into two parts: (1) a quasi-experimental design comparing 2 forms of classroom settings (Conventional and Socio-technological) with two types of pedagogy (student-centered Active-Learning and Traditional Instruction); (2) a qualitative case-study designed to investigate how students instructed with different pedagogies perceived learning in socio-technological environments. We assessed students' physics conceptual knowledge with the widely used Force Concept Inventory (FCI), and conducted classroom observations and targeted interviews. Study 2 had 3 parts that focused on teachers: (1) a case study narrative documenting the professional development of a student-centered active pedagogy teacher; (2) a case study involving six teachers use of the socio-technological environment; (3) a qualitative analysis comparing and contrasting differences between self-reported perceptions with our in-the-field observations of their classroom teaching. Data collected include classroom observations, teacher interviews and the Approaches to Teaching (ATI) questionnaire which has two scales: (1) measurement of teacher-centeredness and (2) and measurement of student-centeredness. These two study yielded several interesting results. Study 1 (part 1) showed that students have better conceptual gains when taught with an active learning pedagogy. However, the socio-How Do
Vanier College : Concordia University,, 2008
Page 6 achievement in Calculus. It seems that both students and instructors compensated for the g... more Page 6 achievement in Calculus. It seems that both students and instructors compensated for the gaps in initial knowledge. 2. Which of the three tested experimental conditions (instructional designs) is most likely to reverse the trend of continually increasing failure rates? We determined that there were no differences in achievement and perseverance between students who submitted paper assignments and those who did the same assignments online. Simply adding computer technology to a traditional instructional design would not reverse the current downward trend. However, we should point out that providing feedback in the form of weekly assignments, corrected and returned, is no longer the standard practice of CEGEP Calculus instructors due to prohibitive workload demand of such a practice. In that sense, the addition of online homework assignments is an improvement over the current practice of assigning but not collecting and correcting homework. A more important conclusion is that students who had online homework assignments, combined with instructional support in class for those assignments, outperformed students in the other two conditions. In addition, students in this learning environment put more effort into their studies and were also likely to persist more. Consequently, this instructional design could be used to alleviate the high failure rates in social science Calculus classes. We also discovered a worrisome trend in the course of this study: one method that instructors use to compensate for initial weaknesses of students is to "boost" grades at the end of the term. The average grade "boost" was significantly higher in the group of students that had the lowest scores as assessed by independent coders. Consequently, we may say that the teacher assigned final grades in the course did not accurately reflect students' mastery of Calculus concepts. If this result is indicative of general trends in grading, then high school and college administrators, as well as MELS administrators, who monitor students' success via such grades, should be concerned. We recommend that further research into causes and possible remedies of grade boosting should have a high priority.
The focus of this research program was to study and develop classroom teaching strategies that pr... more The focus of this research program was to study and develop classroom teaching strategies that promote integrating knowledge and to develop an instrument that measures conceptual change. Our work was conducted in the domain of physics, particularly in Mechanics courses, and is founded on the theoretical perspectives of learning and knowledge structures posited by conceptual change theorists. The objectives of Our research can be outlined as follows: to design a classroom intervention promoting conceptual change; to develop an instrument to measure conceptual change within the classroom context; to examine factors that confound the measurement of conceptual change, in particular when using the Force Concept lnventory (FCI); and to study how students think (differently) about qualitative versus quantitative physics problems. The methodology of Our research varied with the objectives and was a blend of qualitative (semi-structured interviews) and quantitative (quasi-experimental resear...
This study addresses issues of stagnating/declining enrollment in science, technology, engineerin... more This study addresses issues of stagnating/declining enrollment in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) studies. Achievement, perseverance, academic emotions and motivation data were collected from students headed towards STEM studies (1654 Canadian Junior College students, 534 Swedes graduating from High School), and analysed using Latent Class Analysis. We identified three Emotional Involvement (EI) profiles: Low (LEI); Positive (PEI); Negative (NEI). EI is a more influential source of self-efficacy than previous research has demonstrated, explaining as much as 11 % of variance in self-efficacy. PEI students are likely to succeed and persevere in science studies, provided that they successfully adapt to the college environment. College instructors need to attend to the emotional well-being of their students.
Model of how cognitive style impacts differentially by gender on achievement and perseverance in ... more Model of how cognitive style impacts differentially by gender on achievement and perseverance in SMET studies
de l'étude Il y a un décalage entre hommes et femmes et un déclin des inscriptions aux programmes... more de l'étude Il y a un décalage entre hommes et femmes et un déclin des inscriptions aux programmes de STIM (science/technologie/ingénierie/mathématiques) dans la plupart des pays occidentaux. Pour mieux comprendre ce phénomène, nous nous sommes penchés sur les relations entre le style cognitif, l'anxiété d'apprendre, la motivation intrinsèque et la connaissance de ses propres capacités et la réussite et la persévérance dans les programmes de mathématiques et de sciences. La recherche démontre que la systémisation est l'un des deux principaux styles cognitifs que les gens utilisent dans leur raisonnement. La systémisation se définit comme étant l'aspiration profonde à analyser les systèmes. Des étudiantes et étudiants québécois et suédois (980) ont pris part à cette étude. À l'aide du programme EQS, nous avons utilisé la modélisation par équations structurelles pour éprouver le modèle hypothétique. Notre modèle démontre que les étudiantes et étudiants qui ont un bas niveau de réussite en systémisation-majoritairement des femmes-sont plus enclins à une anxiété plus élevée et une motivation intrinsèque moins élevée et, par le fait même, à une persévérance moins élevée que leurs camarades dont le niveau de systémisation est plus élevé. Pour renverser le décalage entre hommes et femmes et le déclin général des inscriptions aux programmes de STIM, il faudra une pédagogie de l'apprentissage des sciences expressément conçue pour aider les étudiantes et étudiants qui ont un bas niveau de systémisation.
Selon une hypothese controversee, le nombre inferieurde femmes par rapport a celui des hommes qui... more Selon une hypothese controversee, le nombre inferieurde femmes par rapport a celui des hommes qui decidentde poursuivre des etudes en sciences, en technologie,en genie et en mathematiques (STGM) se ...
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Jul 1, 1973
The evolution of small but finite-amplitude disturbances in a self- gravitating fluid layer of fi... more The evolution of small but finite-amplitude disturbances in a self- gravitating fluid layer of finite thickness is considered. Contrary to the prediction of the linearized theory, the critical wavelength beyond which no small-amplitude motion exists now depends on the initial amplitude of the fluctuations. Nonlinearity slightly enlarges the range of unstable disturbances within the fluid slab. Typical nonlinear features in the flow patterns are observed. (auth)
To address continually decreasing enrollment and rising attrition in post-secondary STEM degree (... more To address continually decreasing enrollment and rising attrition in post-secondary STEM degree (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs, particularly for women, the present study examines the utility of motivation and emotion variables to account for persistence and achievement in science in male and female students transitioning from high school to junior college. Consistent with self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2012) and achievement-goal theory (Senko, Hulleman, & Harackiewicz, 2011), structural equation modelling based on data from 1,309 students from four English-language CEGEPs showed students' achievement goals, self-efficacy, and perceived autonomy support to impact intrinsic motivation, emotions, and achievement that, in turn, predicted persistence in the science domain.
Technology-rich student-centered classrooms such as SCALE-UP and TEAL are designed to actively en... more Technology-rich student-centered classrooms such as SCALE-UP and TEAL are designed to actively engage students. We examine what happens when instructors adopt the classroom but not the pedagogy that goes with it. We measure the effect of using socio-technological spaces on students' conceptual change and compare learning gains made in groups using different pedagogies (active learning vs. conventional instruction). We also correlate instructors' self-reported instructional approach (teacher-centered, student-centered) with their classes' normalized FCI gains. We find that technology-rich spaces are only effective when implemented with studentcentered active pedagogies. In their absence, the technology-rich classroom is not significantly different from conventional teacher-centered classrooms. We also find that instructors' self-reported perception of studentcenteredness accounts for a large fraction of the variance (r 2 =0.83) in their class' average normalized gain. Adopting student-centered pedagogies appears to be a necessary condition for the effective use of technology-rich spaces. However, adopting a new pedagogy seems more difficult than adopting new technology.
American Journal of Physics, 2012
Journal of Information Technology Education: Innovations in Practice, 2016
The pilot research presented here explores the classroom use of Emerging Literacy in Mathematics ... more The pilot research presented here explores the classroom use of Emerging Literacy in Mathematics (ELM) software, a research-based bilingual interactive multimedia instructional tool, and its potential to develop emerging numeracy skills. At the time of the study, a central theme of early mathematics curricula, Number Concept, was fully developed. It was broken down into five mathematical concepts including counting, comparing, adding, subtracting and decomposing. Each of these was further subdivided yielding 22 online activities, each building in a level of complexity and abstraction. In total, 234 grade one students from 12 classes participated in the two-group post-test study that lasted about seven weeks and for which students in the experimental group used ELM for about 30 minutes weekly. The results for the final sample of 186 students showed that ELM students scored higher on the standardized math test (Canadian Achievement Test, 2008) and reported less boredom and lower anxie...
This research addresses an issue raised in recent reports that demonstrate that Quebec andSweden ... more This research addresses an issue raised in recent reports that demonstrate that Quebec andSweden lag behind countries with emerging economies in the number of science graduates, asmeasured by the p ...