Research Webography

Learning Motivation...

• Brush, T., & Saye, J. (2008).  The effects of multimedia-supported problem-based inquiry on student engagement, empathy, and assumptions about history. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 2(1), 21-56.
• Cordova, D., & Lepper, M. (1996).  Intrinsic motivation and the process of learning: Beneficial effects of contextualization, personalization, and choice. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88(4), 715–730. Contextualization, personalization, and choice all produced dramatic increases, not only in students' motivation but also in their depth of engagement in learning, the amount they learned in a fixed time period, and their perceived competence and levels of aspiration.
• Deci, E., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. (1999).  A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627–668.
• Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (2001). Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic
  
  Motivation in Education: Reconsidered Once Again. Review of Educational Research, 71(1), 1–27.
• Duckworth, A., Matthews, M., Kelly, D., & Peterson, C. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, (6), 1087–1101. Grit nonetheless demonstrated incremental predictive validity of success measures over and beyond IQ and conscientiousness. Collectively, these findings suggest that the achievement of difficult goals entails not only talent but also the sustained and focused application of talent over time.
• Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine Books
• Finn, J. & Zimmer, K. (2012). Student engagement: What is it? Why does it matter? In S.J. Christensen, A.L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement, 97-131.
• Gilbert, M., Musu-Gillette, L., Woolley, M., Karabenick, S., Strutchens, M., & Martin, W. (2014). Student perceptions of the classroom environment: Relations to motivation and achievement in mathematics. Learning Environments Research, 17, 287-304.
• Gottfried, M. (2010). Evaluating the Relationship Between Student Attendance and Achievement in Urban Elementary and Middle Schools: An Instrumental Variables Approach. American Educational Research Journal, 47(2), 434–465.
• Lee, J. (2014). The Relationship Between Student Engagement and Academic Performance: Is It a Myth or Reality? The Journal of Educational Research, 107(3), 177-185. Multi-level analysis showed that behavioral engagement (defined as effort and perseverance in learning) and emotional engagement (defined as sense of belonging) significantly predicted reading performance on the Program for International Student Assessment.
• Lynch, S., Kuipers, JU., Pyke, C., & Szesze, M. (2005). Examining the effects of a highly rated science curriculum unit on diverse students: Results from a planning grant. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 42, 921-946. 
• Paris, S., & Paris, A. (2001).  Classroom applications of research on self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 36(2), 89-101.
• Park, S., Holloway, S. D., Arendtsz, A., Bempechat, J., & Li, J. (2012). What makes students engaged in learning? A time-use study of within- and between-individual predictors of emotional engagement in low-performing high schools. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 41(3), 390–401. 
• Reeve, J. (2012). A self-determination theory perspective on student engagement. In S.J.
  
  Christensen, A.L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement, 149-172.
• Ryan, R. &, Deci, E. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions, Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 54-57. Intrinsic motivation remains an important construct, reflecting the natural human propensity to learn and assimilate. However, extrinsic motivation is argued to vary considerably in its relative autonomy and thus can either reflect external control or true self-regulation.
• Schlechty, P. (2011). Engaging Students: The Next Level of Working on the Work, Wiley, John & Sons, Inc.
• Schunk & Mullen (2012). Self-efficacy as an engaged learner. In S.J. Christensen, A.L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement, 219-236.
• Tarasawa, B. & Waggoner, J. (2015). Increasing parental involvement of English language learner families: What the research says, Journal of Children and Poverty, 21(1), 129-134. 
• Yazzie-Mintz, E. & McCormick, K. (2012). Finding the humanity in the data: Understanding, measuring, and strengthening student engagement. In S.J. Christensen, A.L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement, 743-761.
• Yeager, D. S., Henderson, M., D’Mello, S., Paunesku, D. Walton, G. M., Spitzer, B. J., & Duckworth, A. L. (in press). Boring but important: A self-transcendent purpose for learning fosters academic self-regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. This research proposed that promoting a self-transcendent purpose could improve academic self-regulation. This proposal was supported in 4 studies with over 2,000 adolescents and young adults.

Literacy...

• Beilock, S. & Willingham, D. (2014). Math anxiety: Can teachers help students reduce it? American Educator, 38(2) 28-32. 
• Bridge, L. (2014). The Joy and Power of Reading: A Summary of Research and Expert Opinion. New York: Scholastic. While recognizing that the scholarship around language acquisition and literacy is "vast, varied, and vital", Scholastic's compendium highlights the importance of reading volume, access and exposure to print materials and books, reader choice and variety, and reading aloud to learning readers.
• Cuevas, J., Irving, M., & Russell, L. (2014). Applied Cognition: Testing the Effects of Independent Silent Reading on Secondary Students' Achievement and Attribution. Reading Psychology, 35(2), 127-159. Independent reading, with simple accountability measures, could facilitate improved student achievement even after only a few interventions (14 hour long sessions over 5 months). While the control groups gained the equivalent of one grade level for one year in both total reading ability and reading comprehension, the experimental group made gains that were more than twice that of the control group.
• De Naeghel, J. & Van Keer, H. (2013). The Relation of Student and Class-level Characteristics to Primary School Student' Autonomous Reading Motivation: A Multi-level Approach. Journal of Research in Reading, 36(4), 351-370.
• Gouthro, P. (2014). Who gets to become a writer? Exploring identity and learning issues in becoming a fiction writer. Studies in Continuing Education, 36(2), 173-187. Drawing upon a research study on lifelong learning, citizenship, and fiction writing, this paper explores issues around identity and learning in becoming a fiction author. Five main thematic areas are discussed: (1) envisioning a writing career, (2) compelled to write, (3) learning the craft, (4) getting published, and (5) online identity. The challenges, hurdles, and motivational factors in pursuing a career in a field as tenuous as fiction writing are explored. 
• Guthrie, J., Wigfield, A., Metsala, J., & Cox, K. (1999). Motivational and Cognitive Predictors of Text Comprehension and Reading Amount. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3(3), 231-256. Reading amount significantly predicted text comprehension on 2 different indicators, even when the contributions of past reading achievement, prior topic knowledge, self-efficacy for reading, and reading motivation were controlled statistically. Study 1 also showed that reading motivation significantly predicted reading amount when past reading achievement, prior topic knowledge, and self-efficacy were controlled. In Study 2, we investigated the same variables among students in Grades 8 and 10 from a nationally representative data set. Similar to Study 1, the results showed that reading amount significantly predicted text comprehension with other variables controlled. Further, motivation predicted reading amount with other variables controlled and directly predicted text comprehension.
• Guthrie, J., Wigfield A., & You W. (2012). Instructional Contexts for Engagement and Achievement in Reading. In S.J. Christensen, A.L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement, 601-634.
• Hart, B. & Risley, T. (Spring 2003). The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap by age 3, American Educator, 4-9.
• Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2014). Studying New Literacies. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(2), 97–101.
• Krashen, S. (2004). The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research (2nd ed.), Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited
• Marzano, R. (2004). Building background knowledge for academic achievement: Research on what works in schools. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. For students in which SSR was used for more than a year the estimated effect size was .87. 
• Meece, J. & Miller, S. (1999). Changes in Elementary School Children's Achievement Goals for Reading and Writing: Results of a Longitudinal and an Intervention Study. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3(3), 207-229.
• Miller, D. (2014). Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
• Moore, K., Caal, S., Rojas, A., Lawner, E., & Walker, K. (2014). Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors Parenting Program: Summary Report of Program Implementation and Impacts, retrieved online.
• Palincsar, A., & Brown, A. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension monitoring activities. Cognitive and Instruction, 1(2), 117–175. Reciprocal teaching, with an adult model guiding the student to interact with the text in more sophisticated ways, led to a significant improvement in the quality of the summaries and questions. It also led to sizable gains on criterion tests of comprehension, reliable maintenance over time, generalization to classroom comprehension tests, transfer to novel tasks that tapped the trained skills of summarizing, questioning, and clarifying, and improvement in standardized comprehension scores. 
• Park, D., Ramirez, G. & Beilock, S. (2014) The role of expressive writing in math anxiety. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 20(2), 103-111.
• Piasta, S. B., Justice, L. M., McGinty, A. S., & Kaderavek, J. N. (2012). Increasing Young Children’s Contact With Print During Shared Reading: Longitudinal Effects on Literacy Achievement. Child Development, 83(3), 810-820. 
• Pugalee, D. (2004) A comparison of verbal and written descriptions of students' problem-solving processes. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 55(27-47).
• Rideout, V. (2014). Children, Teens, and Reading: A Common Sense Media Research Brief.
  Common Sense Media. 
• Taboada Barber, A., Buehl, M. M., Kidd, J. K., Sturtevant, E. G., Richey Nuland, L., & Beck, J. (2014). Reading Engagement in Social Studies: Exploring the Role of a Social Studies Literacy Intervention on Reading Comprehension, Reading Self-Efficacy, and Engagement in Middle School Students with Different Language Backgrounds. Reading Psychology, 36(1), 31–85.
• Thompson, K. (2015). English learners' time to reclassification: An analysis, Educational Policy, published online Aug. 2015, 1-34.
• Tompkins, V., Guo, Y., & Justice, L. M. (2012). Inference generation, story comprehension, and language skills in the preschool years. Reading and Writing, 26(3), 403-429.

Inquiry...

• Dewey, J. (1938). Experience & Education. New York, NY: Kappa Delta Pi
• Gallagher, S. & Gallagher, J. (2013). Using problem-based learning to explore unseen academic potential. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 7(1), 111-131. Results of comparisons support the teacher’s identification of the advanced academic potential students as a group distinct from both from the traditionally identified students and general education students. Findings suggest that a well-designed, engaging curriculum such as PBL can create learning context that encourages more students to reveal academic potential. 
• Gallagher, S. A., & Stepien, W. J. (1996). Content acquisition in problem-based learning:
  
  Depth versus breadth in American studies (Abstract). Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 19(3), 257-275. Secondary students using PBL in American studies did as well on multiple-choice tests as students who received a traditional model of instruction and showed a deeper understanding of content.
• Geier, R., Blumenfeld, P.C., Marx, R.W., Krajcik, J.S., Fishman, B., Soloway, E., & Clay-Chambers, J. (2008). Standardized test outcomes for students engaged in inquiry-based science curricula in the context of urban reform. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 45(8), 922-939. These findings demonstrate that standards-based, inquiry science curriculum can lead to standardized achievement test gains in historically under-served urban students, when the curriculum is highly specified, developed, and aligned with professional development and administrative support. Examination of results by gender reveals that the curriculum effort succeeds in reducing the gender gap in achievement experienced by urban African-American boys.
• Kaldi, S., Filippatou, D., & Govaris, C. (2011). Project-based learning in primary schools: Effects on pupils’ learning and attitudes. Education 3-13, 39(1), 35–47.
• Kim, K. H. (2011). The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Creativity Research Journal, 23(4), 285–295. Analysis of the normative data showed that creative thinking scores remained static or decreased, starting at sixth grade. Results also indicated that since 1990, even as IQ scores have risen, creative thinking scores have significantly decreased. The decrease for kindergartners through third graders was the most significant.
• Mergendoller, J. R., Maxwell, N. L., & Bellisimo, Y. (2006). The effectiveness of problem-based instruction: A comparative study of instructional methods and student characteristics. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 1, (2). Five veteran teachers at four high schools taught macroeconomics using PBL with one or more classes and traditional lecture format in another class. Results from 246 students in 11 classes who completed a pre- and post-test showed that PBL was more effective than traditional instruction in teaching macroeconomics concepts.
• Parker, W., Mosberg, S., Bransford, J., Vye, N., Wilderson, J., & Abbott, R. (2011). Rethinking advanced high school coursework: Tackling the depth/breadth tension in the AP U.S. Government and Politics course. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43(4), 533-559. Researchers from the University of Washington, the Bellevue Schools Foundation, and The George Lucas Educational Foundation conducted a multi-year study to test a rigorous project-based learning approach to teaching Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. Government and Politics. Three hundred fourteen students from Washington's Bellevue School District were randomly assigned to a traditional course or project-based learning course on AP U.S. Government and Politics (AP+). The PBL students performed as well as or better than traditionally taught students on the AP test and better on a complex scenario test, which measures strategies for realistically monitoring and influencing public policy. 
• Strobel, J. (2009). When is PBL More Effective ? A Meta-synthesis of Meta-analyses Comparing PBL to Conventional Classrooms, Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem Based Learning, 3(1), 44-58. Findings indicated that PBL was superior when it comes to long-term retention, skill development and satisfaction of students and teachers, while traditional approaches were more effective for short-term retention as measured by standardized board exams.
• Summers, E., & Dickinson, G. (2012). A longitudinal investigation of project-based instruction and student achievement in high school social studies, Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 6(1), 82-103. In one diverse, rural Texas school district in which the scores on the state's standardized social studies assessment of students in a PBL learning environment were compared to those of students in a traditional environment, students working in a PBL setting performed significantly better than students working in a traditional setting. A
  
  higher percentage of PBL students scored at the pass and commended levels for all three years studied than their counterparts in traditional settings. Furthermore, the PBL setting had more positive achievement growth on the state assessment for all sub-populations of students as categorized by the state, including those coded as socioeconomically disadvantaged. 
• Wirkala, C., & Kuhn, D. (2011). Problem-Based Learning in K-12 Education: Is it Effective and How Does it Achieve its Effects? American Educational Research Journal (Vol. 48, pp. 1157-1186).

Effective Practices...

• Bloom, B. (1984). The 2 sigma problem: The search for methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring.  Educational Researcher, 13(6), 4-16. Bloom found that the average student tutored one-to-one using mastery learning techniques performed two standard deviations better than students who learn via conventional instructional methods.
• Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (Eds). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind,
  
  experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. The revolution in the study of the mind that has occurred in the last three or four decades has important implications for education.
• Cohen, P. a., Kulik, J. a., & Kulik, C.-L. C. (1982). Educational Outcomes of Tutoring: A Meta-Analysis of Findings. American Educational Research Journal, 19(2), 237. The meta-analysis also showed that tutoring programs have positive effects on children who serve as tutors. Like the children they helped, the tutors gained a better understanding of and developed more positive attitudes toward the subject matter covered in the tutorial program.
• Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge.
• Roscoe, R. D., & Chi, M. T. H. (2007). Understanding Tutor Learning: Knowledge-Building and Knowledge-Telling in Peer Tutors’ Explanations and Questions. Review of Educational Research, 77(4), 534–574.
• Stigler, J., & Hiebert, J. (1999). The teaching gap. New York: Free Press.

Communications

• Kraft MA, Rogers T. The underutilized potential of teacher-to-parent communication: Evidence from a field experiment. Economics of Education Review. Forthcoming.

Professional Learning...

• Aguirre, J., & Speer, N. (2000). Examining the relationship between beliefs and goals in teacher practice. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 18(3), 327-356.
• Bakker, A., & Schaufeli, W. (2008). Positive organizational behavior: Engaged employees in flourishing organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 147-154.
• Cuban, L. (2014). Inside the black box of classroom practice: Change without reform in American education. Boston: Harvard Education Press
• Ertmer, P, Simons, K., & Simons, K. (2006). Jumping the pbl implementation hurdle: Supporting the efforts of k-12 teachers. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 1(1), 40-54. Implementation challenges relate to 1) creating a culture of collaboration and interdependence, 2) adjusting to changing roles, and 3) scaffolding student learning and performance.
• Garet, M., Porter, A., Desimone, L., Birman, B., & Yoon, K. (2001). What makes professional development effective? Results from a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 915–945.
• Hargreaves, A. & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional capital: Transforming teaching in every school. New York: Teachers College Press
• Kim, W., Kolb, J., & Kim, T. (2012). The relationship between work engagement and performance: A review of empirical literature and a proposed research agenda. Human Resource Development Review, 12(3), 248–276.
• Klassen, R., Frenzle, A., & Perry, N. (2012). Teachers' relatedness with students: An underemphasized component of teacher' basic psychological needs. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(1), 150-165.
• Leana, C. & Pil, F. (2006). Social capital and organizational performance: Evidence from urban public schools. Organization Science, 17, 1-14.
• Luft, J. (2001). Changing inquiry practices and beliefs: The impact of an inquiry-based professional development program on beginning and experienced secondary science teachers. International Journal of Science Education, 23(5), 517-534.
• Olsen, B., & Kirtman, L. (2002). Teacher as mediator of school reform: An examination of teacher practice in 36 California restructuring schools. Teachers College Record, 104(2), 301-324.
• Opfer, V. & Pedder, D. (2011). Conceptualizing teacher professional learning. Review of Educational Research, 81(3) 376-407.
• Penuel, W., Fishman, B., Yamaguchi, R., & Gallagher, L. (2007). What Makes professional development effective? Strategies that foster curriculum implementation.  American Educational Research Journal, 44(4), 921-958.
  
• Pil, F. & Leana, C. (2009). Applying organizational research to public school reform: The effects of teacher human and social capital on student performance. Academy of Management Journal, 52(6), 1101-1124.
• Shuck, B., & Wollard, K. (2010). Employee engagement and HRD: A seminal review of the foundations.  Human Resource Development Review, 9, 89-110.