AERA Presentations
Every year faculty and graduate students from each of the academic departments at the Lynch School present their research at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting. AERA is the largest and most prominent interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning.
Representing topics seeking to answer the most pressing questions in the fields of education and human development, our scholars bring diverse perspectives to the Annual Meeting.
Lynch School News at AERA
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2023 AERA Legacy Award
Dr. A. Lin Goodwin, Thomas More Brennan Chair of Education, is the recipient of the 2023 Legacy Award from the AERA Division K. This award recognizes senior members of Division K who have made significant contributions through their research, teaching, engagement, and preofessional service.
Outstanding dissertation Awards
Jasmine Alvarado, Ph.D. '22 has been honored with two outstanding dissertation awards from the Latina/o/x Research Issues special interest group (SIG) and Family-Community-School Partnerships SIG.
AERA 2023 & NCME 2023* Annual Meeting
April 13 – April 16: In-person Meeting in Chicago, IL
May 4-5: Virtual Meeting hosted online
This year's presentations are listed by date. Select from the titles below to view presentation contributors and descriptions.
* In 2023, the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) will be hosting their annual meeting during the AERA conference.
Thursday, April 13
Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Scott Seider, Brianna Diaz, Kaila Daza
Description: Critical consciousness refers to the ability to understand, analyze, and challenge oppressive forces. The present study investigates how the association between critical consciousness and academic achievement varies for youth (n = 179) across different content areas in school as well as whether this association differs for youth from different racial-ethnic groups. OLS regression analyses revealed that different components of critical consciousness differentially predicted students’ academic achievement in different subject areas. Additionally, moderation analyses suggest that these associations between critical consciousness and academic achievement are stronger for BIPOC students than White students. These findings suggest youth critical consciousness development can play a role in eliminating racial opportunity gaps in K-12 education.
Department of Formative Education
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Tess Levinson & Marina Bers
Description: Although researchers have developed accessible and adaptive computer science and computational thinking programs for students with disabilities, less is known about what children with disabilities know about and how they perform on assessments of coding languages and computational thinking. This paper looked at pre-curriculum scores for children with and without disabilities on assessments of computational thinking and coding knowledge. The results show a significant but small difference in computational thinking scores but show no significant difference in coding knowledge scores. This suggests that computational thinking and coding knowledge are different domains, and that researchers and teachers should not assume deficits in one based on performance in the other skill or based on an outside factor such as disability status.
Educational Leadership and Higher Education
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Rebecca Lowenhaupt (with Paulette Andrade Gonzalez)
Description: This session features four case studies from diverse contexts across the U.S. highlighting the crucial role of school districts as immigrant-serving institutions. While prior research has explored schools as key sites of support, our work centers district leaders in this period of contested anti-immigrant sentiments. We examine leadership as distributed across roles and among both formal and informal leaders working to construct systems of support. Given the challenges facing immigrant communities, district-wide leadership approaches provide educators with strategies and systems to improve safety and belonging for immigrant-origin students. By bridging areas of focus for leaders, from academic programming to family engagement to welcoming newcomers to supporting undocumented students, our session helps further an understanding of relevant district leadership practices.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Earl J. Edwards
Description: This study explores how teacher education program (TEP) policies and practices may impact the well-being of teacher candidates of Color. Too little is known about the racialized experiences of teacher candidates. Interviews and focus groups with systemwide TEP leaders and TEP students of Color in California were conducted to understand if and how TEPs foster a healthy racial climate and how that climate impacts students of Color. Using the Kohli et al. (2022) healthy racial climate in TEPs model as a theoretical framework, six barriers to racial equity in TEPs were identified: 1) compositional diversity within TEPs; 2) financial burden; 3) capitalistic values of TEPs; 4) community & culture within TEPs; 5) TEP curriculum & pedagogy; and 6) testing requirements.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Heather Rowan-Kenyon, Stephanie Carroll
Description: Today, K-12 schools are expected to provide more than academic instruction, tasked with supporting students’ social emotional and postsecondary development. School counselors, the professionals trained and responsible for these non-instructional domains, often struggle to enact their roles due to a range of organizational constraints. State education agencies, or SEAs, are one external system positioned to support these professionals; however, we know very little about the state actors responsible for school counseling. Using organizational theory to analyze interviews with 30 state school counseling officials, this study examines what their role entails and how they carry out their work. Findings offer valuable lessons to state officials committed to supporting school counseling at a time when students depend on that support more than ever.
Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics and Assessment
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Katrina Borowiec & Angela Boatman
Description: Financial management skills are essential when financing postsecondary education. Using an experimental design (n=842), this study explores whether including a “don’t know” response option impacts students’ responses to new measures of general financial and financial aid knowledge. Offering the “don’t know” option is associated with fewer items answered correctly.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Mike Russell, Erin Winters
Description: Differential Item Functioning (DIF) is employed to examine potential item bias. Traditionally, DIF is examined separately for demographic characteristics such as gender, racialized identity, and economic status. Recently, intersectionality theory was applied to inform the design of DIF analysis. In the intersectional approach, group membership is defined through the intersection of identity, with White-Male-High-SES test-takers forming the reference group, and the remaining intersectional groups forming focal groups. The intersectional approach yielded a notable increase in the flagging of items for DIF. These findings sparked questions about why the intersectional approach captures DIF that is not detected through the traditional approach. This paper presents findings from a simulation study designed to deepen understanding of this phenomenon.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Kelsey Klein, Clara Shim, Laura O'Dwyer, Deborah Spencer, June Mark, Mary Beth Piecham, Julie Zeringue
Description: This paper uses a multi-site, quantitative case study to explore the measurement challenges faced by researchers exploring the effectiveness of an intervention designed for students underprepared in algebra. Challenges included assessment difficulty, formatting, and length and student attitudes towards the assessment. Data from two assessments are presented, with results indicating that assessments administered in shorter subtests, with items at an appropriate difficulty level, and formatted similar to classroom assessments may provide more reliable and valid evidence. This research highlights the need for further measurement to ensure researchers and evaluators can provide compelling evidence on the impact of promising interventions, particularly for underprepared students.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Lin Zhang, Zhushan Mandy Li, Jihang Chen
Description: Between 2020 and 2022, a series of studies and reviews reported adverse effects from the policy-suggested ways of engaging students in investigation activities and raised an urgent call for looking closely into the ‘integration’, particularly the ones suggested by NGSS. The present study compares high and low performing countries and examines how different they are in incorporating scientific investigation activities and science content knowledge in classroom teaching. The authors of this study will review these recently published controversial studies and share detailed concerns with teaching science through NGSS in hope of presenting a unique perspective to engage audience at the conference.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Larry Ludlow, Henry Braun, Ella Anghel, Olivia Szendey
Description: Higher education plays a critical role in helping students develop their capacity for making meaning of themselves and their worlds (Kegan, 1982; Baxter Magolda, 2009). Yet measuring such development is challenging. In this study, we present a final version of the Boston College-Living a Life of Meaning and Purpose, version C (BC-LAMP-C), a self-report instrument that captures changes in meaning-making capacity based on Kegan’s constructive-developmental framework. We will report on the latest stages of revision and piloting, and present data on the instrument’s psychometric quality. The instrument could be used by researchers of college students and young adults more generally.
Teaching, Curriculum, and Society
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Paulette Andrade González
Description: After a period of lower rates, immigration patterns have resumed due to a more liberal policy landscape and more people seeking asylum and relocating across the globe. In this study, we want to understand how school leaders in a highly diverse district in Illinois are adapting their culturally responsive practices to support newcomer students. We conducted interviews in the district in 2019 and 2022 using a semi-structured interview protocol. We used thematic analysis to identify emergent themes, which were later refined, systematized, and used to compare both rounds of interviews. We found that, in 2019, school leaders felt responsible for more than stated in their job descriptions. Teachers and administrators described assisting newcomers with basic needs, anticipating other newcomer families' needs, and providing academic and language support. In their efforts to support newcomer students, in 2022, the district was prepared to receive an influx of newcomer students by enhancing existing CR practices, such as the implementation of a newcomer program. We claim that culturally responsive school districts should anticipate the needs of their communities based on changing demographics.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Charlie Cownie, Friedman, A.,Rosen-Reynoso, M., Giunco, K., Moreno Vera, M. A., Andrew Miller,
Description: As individual urban schools have consistently struggled in pursuit of educational excellence and equity, urban education researchers have stressed the need to investigate how differently organized school systems pursue these goals. Given that Catholic (arch)diocesan networks are examplars of decentralized system organization, in this study we examine the perceptions of educational leaders pursuing these goals in urban Catholic schools embedded in loosely coupled (arch)diocesan systems. Through our analysis of interviews with principals and superintendents, we highlight organizational and political dynamics present in these urban Catholic systems that constrain the work of system-wide continuous improvement for excellence and equity.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Ali R. Blake
Description: Discourse around social and emotional learning (SEL) has swelled during the years of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we analyze how SEL and mental health were deployed in one local community education council meeting in New York City in February 2022. We investigate participants’ causal-relational theorizing across mental health, physical health, physical safety, and academic performance. We found that social emotional well-being was deployed as causes and consequences of a variety of educational issues, and narrow views of citizenry and justice were taken up as warrants for speakers’ arguments.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Patrick Proctor
Description: The purpose of this study was to examine teachers’ perspectives on implementation of a language-based small group intervention for multilingual learners called CLAVES (Cultivating Linguistic Awareness for Voice and Equity in Schools). Specific research questions were: (1) How did teachers perceive the effectiveness of the program at supporting students’ reading and writing? (2) What did teachers perceive as the strengths and challenges of the program? (3) How did teachers adapt the program and why did they make these adaptations? (4) What did teachers learn from implementing the intervention? (5) What will teachers continue to use from the intervention?
Friday, April 14
Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Soyoung Kim & David Miele
Description: This research aims to examine how teachers’ beliefs about the nature of motivation (i.e., their metamotivational beliefs) influence the strategies they use to motivate their students. One particularly relevant set of beliefs is teachers’ implicit theories about whether students’ motivation to engage in a task or domain can be changed (i.e., their growth mindsets regarding student motivation). To the extent that teachers believe that students' task-specific motivation is malleable, they should be more likely to use motivational strategies in the classroom, particularly when they perceive their students to be unmotivated.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): David Miele (with external collaborators)
Description: The “remembered success effect” (Finn, 2010) refers to the finding that adults and children as young as Grade 3 prefer challenging academic tasks that start or end with extra opportunities for success to challenging tasks that do not include these opportunities (Finn et al., 2022b). Remembered success experiences have also been shown to increase adults’ and children’s expectancies and values for math activities similar to the one they just completed (Finn et al., 2022a). In the current study, we replicated these findings with students in Grades 3, 6, and 9 and extended them by exploring the extent to which a single experience of remembered success also impacted students’ performance, confidence, and time spent on a subsequent math task.
Department of Formative Education
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Tess Levinson & Marina Bers
Description: This is a description of a partnership between Boston College and the Technion University in Israel to pilot the Coding as Another Language robotics curriculum in Israel. Twenty-eight children (age M =5.94; SD =0.52) and two teachers were recruited from an Israeli kindergarten. Students’ outcomes showed significant growth in coding knowledge over the course of the curriculum, with no gender effect. Teachers’ accounts suggested developmental, pedagogical, and cultural considerations for future international curriculum implementation. Findings from this work have implications for future researchers implementing STEM-related curricula internationally.
Educational Leadership and Higher Education
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Heather Rowan-Kenyon, Ryan Creps, Shadman Islem
Description: There is a shortage of bachelor’s degree recipients in Computer Science (CS) available to meet societal needs and there are gaps in who these degrees are awarded to. Work is needed to minimize attrition in computer science majors. In order to attempt to combat this attrition, and to promote student success in computer science, there is growth in the number of programs and interventions to assist undergraduates, but little is known as a whole about how these interventions support CS success. This systematic literature review aims to identify existing research and interventions focused on promoting success in CS, to be able to present scalable recommendations for the field of CS.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Lauri Johnson
Description: This paper examines the biographies of four White activists (Alice Citron, Algernon Black, Carey McWilliams, Alice McGrath) who worked in interracial organizations to defend the rights of African American and Mexican American youth, promote multiethnic literature and history, and fight racial discrimination in New York City and Los Angeles during the 1930s and 1940s. They went beyond the “colorblind perspective” common among intercultural educators and situated efforts to promote diversity in schools and neighborhoods as part of a larger struggle against fascism and racism. Their lives bridged the Popular Front era in the 1930s and early 1940s, the political persecution of progressives during the Cold War years, and civil rights organizing in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Shanee Washington, Lauri Johnson
Description: Indigenous research methodologies have been theorized by renowned Indigenous scholars over the past few decades and advocated for in research focused on Indigenous communities for its emancipatory power to reestablish Indigenous peoples self-determining and sovereignty rights over education and research (Brayboy et al., 2012, Smith, 2021). Indigenous research methodologies disrupt extractive, exploitative, and pathologizing research practices against and portrayals of Indigenous communities. This paper introduces an Indigenous Methodological Framework that we use to explore uses (and misuses) of Indigenous methodologies in a growing body of international research literature about Indigenous family and community engagement. Further, we critically review these studies to determine if they contribute to more culturally expansive and/or desire-based conceptualizations of Indigenous families and communities.
Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics and Assessment
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Audrey Friedman, Myra Rosen-Reynoso, Kierstin Giunco, Charles Cownie, and Cristina Hunter
Description: The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted all schools in the United States and the world, but in particular, urban schools. The nature of this crisis has brought new challenges to urban Catholic schools. This research employs a mixed-methods approach as quantitative (survey) data and qualitative (open-ended, narratives) data are used to identify and understand how 31 educators made and continue to make sense of the impact of COVID-19 on their instructional practice, self-efficacy, student learning, school mission, and their perceptions of educational inequity in the urban contexts where they teach. A key aim of this paper is to provide some examples of the current considerations and practices that have emerged from urban Catholic schools in response to the pandemic.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Ji Yoon (Jenny) Jung, Lillian Tyack, Matthias von Davier
Description: Although constructed response (CR) items have a strong potential to assess students’ higher-order cognitive skills, their wider use has been restricted in multilingual international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) due to the resource-intensive nature of human scoring. This study aims (a) to apply automated scoring to short CR items drawn from eTIMSS 2019 in a multilingual context using artificial neural networks (ANNs) and (b) to examine the cross-country comparability of automated scoring. Results not only showed that machine scores agreed well with human scores across the items but also that the performance of ANNs was consistent across multiple languages. This study suggests that automated scoring can be a promising alternative to human scoring in multilingual ILSAs by enhancing the efficiency and consistency of the scoring process.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Shaun M. Dougherty
Description: Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, college and career readiness has become the central focus of education policy in the United States. Career academies (CAs) are an increasingly popular way to support students in their postsecondary transitions, but little causal evidence exists about whether this model of schooling is effective in promoting learning and transition to adulthood outcomes. We capitalize on the adoption of the CA model in a large school district and employ a generalized difference-in-differences approach to test whether adopting the CA model caused improved graduation rates and test score outcomes. We find that the adoption of the CA model improved graduation rates and that schools that had the lowest graduate rates at baseline saw larger impacts.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Jihang Chen, Zhushan Mandy Li
Description: As multi-unidimensional tests are becoming increasingly popular in educational and psychological fields, it is important to gain content and construct validity evidence efficiently to develop high-quality multi-unidimensional instruments. However, traditional methods were challenged by small sample sizes. Analyzing response data without considering the ordinal nature is another challenge. To overcome these two challenges, we proposed a Bayesian method to integrate experts’ ratings and participants’ data to establish a unified model for validity evidence. Simulation studies were done to compare the performance of the Bayesian method to the traditional CFA under multiple situations. The results show that the Bayesian method outperforms the traditional CFA the most when the sample sizes of participants are small and the instruments are dichotomously scored.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Katrina Borowiec & Angela Boatman
Description: Financial wellness is an important component of students’ overall well-being. Indeed, financial stress can negatively impact students’ academic performance. This qualitative research study extends prior quantitative research on financial wellness by exploring the lived experiences of high school, college, and graduate students, while also integrating insights from financial wellness educators. This study provides insight on students’ comfort and familiarity with various financial concepts; how students think about their finances, financial aid, and student loans; and students’ perceptions of their financial behaviors. The findings also inform our understanding of how financial wellness educators perceive their students’ financial wellness.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Ella Anghel, Lale Khorramdel Ameri, Matthias von Davier
Description: As the use of process data in large-scale assessments is becoming more common, researchers might benefit from a thorough review of their current uses. This literature review used topic modeling to identify themes in 223 empirical studies using process data in large-scale assessments. We identified six recurring topics: Complex problem-solving, Digital writing, Digital reading, Aberrant test-taking behaviors, Response time models, and General. We also discuss the prominent theories used by studies in each category. Based on these findings we suggest directions for future research applying process data from large-scale assessments.
Teaching, Curriculum, and Society
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Michelle Ajisebo McElwaine Abimbola
Description: This interdisciplinary paper introduces the literary, divinatory, and religious tradition of Yorùbá Ifá and Òrìṣà as a paradigm to guide reparations for countless spiritual and physical murders that have been committed in service of the colonial project of ‘school.’ The curriculum of Ifá Heritage Institute—a tuition-free, postsecondary institution in Oyo, Nigeria—is rooted entirely in Indigenous Yorùbá ancestral values, and instruction is delivered entirely in the Yorùbá language. African and African Diaspora cultural memories, belief systems, historical experiences, rituals, and secularities are the texts where the ancient wisdom of Black Africa is centered as reasonable, rational, worth knowing and teaching. Aligned with the principles of Indigenous Africana education, learning brings the ancient past to bear on the present and future.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Marilyn Cochran-Smith & Emilie Mitescu Reagan
Description: The goal of this presentation is to elaborate and analyze efforts to transform teaching/teacher education evaluation by highlighting nine innovations, which are organized into four sites of policy and practice: individual teacher preparation programs that aim to center equity in program and candidate evaluation; efforts by teacher education leaders to enact equity-oriented evaluation frameworks in ongoing practice at the program, school of education, or school level; cross-institutional networks or organizations whose work revolves around the impact of evaluation policies on equity issues in teacher education or around how equity is integrated in programs seeking professional accreditation; and, state-level initiatives intended to transform teacher evaluation or teacher education program approval/licensing procedures and policies in order to center equity-related goals. This paper highlights key themes that cut across evaluation initiatives at multiple levels and also identifies cross-cutting barriers and supports to centering equity in evaluation.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Marilyn Cochran-Smith
Description: This Division K Vice Presidential symposium synthesizes multiple efforts to enact transformative equity and justice principles in teaching/teacher education evaluation. Across presentations, the symposium takes up a number of key questions: What conditions and factors constrain or support the enactment of equity-, justice-, and asset-centered evaluation? What are the material, ideological, and epistemological consequences of this work at multiple levels and in multiple contexts of teaching/teacher education? What is the impact of collaborating with individuals and groups who have not been authentically represented in deliberations about what is valued and valuable in teaching, teacher preparation, and evaluation? To what extent can equity-, justice-, and asset-centered evaluation contribute to disrupting the structures and systems of teaching/teacher education that perpetuate racism, center whiteness in the curriculum, and undermine the perspectives of the communities served by teacher education?
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Aashna Khurana
Description: The recently ratified 2021-2024 BPS-Boston Teachers Union (BTU) Contract establishes a historic shared vision for and commitment to reforming special education and ensuring district-wide inclusive practices in BPS. A critical piece of this vision is each school’s Inclusion Planning Team (IPT). They will advise the school leadership on gaps/needs in staffing and/or resources. The purpose of this study is bifold. First, it aims to improve school-wide educational practices at BPS for the city-wide rollout of inclusion of children with disabilities, multilingual, and racially diverse learners by involving action, evaluation, and reflection by IPTs. Second, it will focus on evaluating the work done by IPTs to make informed decisions on school improvement.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Drina Kei Yatsu, Deoksoon Kim, & Katrina Borowiec
Description: Many ELLs in US school districts were disproportionately disadvantaged during the COVID-19 pandemic and schools’ shifts to online schooling (Sugarman & Lazarin, 2020).The current study explores an online after-school writing program that was developed to support ELLs who were facing these unprecedented challenges. Findings demonstrate that the SFL-based writing curriculum supports students to develop an understanding of written genres, voice, and a sense of audience. We also discuss how the program impacted students’ confidence and engagement in writing. Pedagogical implications describe how SFL can be used online with new instructional approaches to support ELLs’ academic writing in engaging ways.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Kyunghoon Son and Lillie R. Albert
Description: South Korean researchers provide explanations for how students' emotional well-being at school could result in a decline in mathematics performance. Path analysis is used in this study to investigate the effect of students' sense of belonging on their mathematical performance. The model also took into account two mediating factors: how the students perceived their teachers and how they behaved in class. Data from the 2019 Trend of International Mathematics and Science Survey was used to create a recursive path model. As a result, students' sense of belonging has an impact on their mathematical performance both directly and indirectly. A notable finding is that a significant amount of students' mathematics performance is explained by their perceptions of the teacher, which mediate their sense of belonging.
Saturday, April 15
Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Linxi Lu, Marina Vasilyeva, & Elida Laski
Description: Parent-child interactions play a key role in early math learning (LeFevre et al., 2010; Ramani et al., 2015; Susperregy et al., 2016; Vasilyeva et al., 2018). The paper examines the short- and relatively long-term effects of play materials and game contexts on parental math input. Chinese parent-child dyads (N=75) were randomly assigned to three conditions that differed by the play materials they received, and each dyad was asked to play under two different contexts. The study suggests that small changes in the features of play materials, such as including sets of identical toys, may increase the quantity and quality of parental math talk in play interactions with preschoolers. It also shows that parental math talk is affected by the context of pretend play. These findings point to opportunities for increasing parental math talk without intensive training or explicit instructions.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Sinwoo Bae & David Miele
Description: Addictive social media use is a global concern. Relative to extant work on effects of addictive social media use on behavior and well-being, little research has examined the self-regulatory mechanisms that explain why some individuals are less likely than others to disengage from social media, even when they feel like doing so. This mixed-methods study examines the self-regulatory challenges that youth experience when using social media from a metamotivational perspective.
Department of Formative Education
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Stanton Wortham, Katrina Borowiec, & Deoksoon Kim
Description: The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of supporting students’ comprehensive well-being when teaching online. One approach is formative or whole-person education, which centers students’ development of wholeness, purpose, and community. This study introduces an IRT-based scale that measures the extent to which faculty members engage in formative education online. The construct validity of this measure is supported through its intensive development process, which included semi-structured interviews with 37 faculty members and a pilot test. The current paper presents psychometric results for the revised 25-item scale using a sample of 244 instructors.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Deoksoon Kim, Katrina Borowiec, & Stanton Wortham
Description: The global COVID-19 pandemic sparked a major transition in higher education. Many faculty members taught online for the first time, while supporting students’ needs during this tumultuous time. Formative or whole-person education is one comprehensive approach to supporting student well-being. Using latent profile analysis of 308 instructors, we identified four patterns of engagement in formative education online. Subsequent multinominal regression results indicated that women; those identifying as spiritual and religious; and those with online teaching experience prior to the pandemic were more likely to be in the “highest engagement” profile. Our findings provide insight regarding how faculty engage in supporting students’ holistic needs and have implications for faculty professional development and tenure and promotion policies.
Educational Leadership and Higher Education
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Earl J. Edwards
Description: Research states that school districts are over-reliant on individual homeless liaisons to support the holistic needs of students experiencing homelessness (SEH) (Bishop et al., 2020). While multi-tier systems of support could be used to support SEH (Eagle et al., 2015)—it has yet to become a normalized practice within schools and school districts. Furthermore, implementation research on strategies that support SEH have yet to consider how race and racism may impact school district’s service delivery. This paper explores (1) How do school districts leverage school personnel, district-level personnel, and community resources to serve and respond to the academic and social-emotional needs of students experiencing homelessness and promote college and career readiness? (2) To what extent (if any) does the racial composition of the homeless student population inform district strategies and interventions?
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Earl J. Edwards
Description: Housing instability and mobility negatively impact the educational trajectories and outcomes of students experiencing homelessness (Hallett & Skrla, 2016; Tobin, 2016). While much emphasis has been placed on student experiences and outcomes in school, less attention has been devoted to examining spaces and/or geographical locations that students traverse as they move between various residences and their primary school placement. In many large urban spaces, past housing segregation practices (e.g., redlining, blockbusting) continue to impact housing access. This paper highlights the spaces that Black youth experiencing homelessness negotiate to maintain educational access and consistency.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Melodie Wyttenbach, McMahon, M., O'Connor, M.T.
Description: To advance the conversation on how children are holistically educated by the U.S. Catholic schools, this conceptual paper summarizes the evolving literature on existing frameworks on whole child education, presents a whole child framework specific for Catholic schools, and articulates a research agenda for scholars, practitioners, and philanthropists to consider making an investment of their talent, time, and treasure.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Earl J. Edwards
Description: In the United States, a high school diploma, or its equivalent, is an important milestone for securing institutional access to higher education, housing options, and employment. In the 2018-19 academic year, one third of all high school 12th graders identified as experiencing homelessness did not receive their high school diploma in four years (National Center for Homeless Education, 2021). The inability of U.S. public institutions to adequately support youth impacted by homelessness in the public education system (and thereafter) means that many young people are excluded from fully contributing to and thriving in U.S. society. This inquiry employed community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) to analyze motivating factors that helped youth experiencing homelessness in high school stay in school and graduate. Examining high school persistence among youth experiencing homelessness with an anti-deficit approach, offers insight on effective practices for supporting their ability to navigate flawed institutions and graduate high school.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Melodie Wyttenbach, Warner, M.
Description: This paper is a response to Pope Francis’ invitation to dialogue on how we, as Catholic educators, can help shape the future of the planet by focusing on integral human development, or what we have termed education of the whole child. Specifically, this paper will offer a perspective on two foundational beliefs of whole child education - cura personalis and accompaniment. Drawing on the writings of Pope Francis who has offered a new vision for holistic education, it is our hope that we will make new connections among existing phenomena, provide new ways to contextualize existing theology and practice, and offer new perspectives on familiar relationships.
Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics and Assessment
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Larry Ludlow, Oksna Ilina, Sona Antonyan, Anna Mirny, Olga Lepsky, Jenya Brodskaia
Description: This study was conducted by five K-12 teachers to explore different modes of teaching at an after school mathematics program. We compared the performance of our fourth grade students in in-person classes in 2019-2020 against those students who studied online in 2020-2021. The students in regular classes had higher homework scores and spent less time on homework than students who studied during the COVID year online. This finding supports our personal experience that elementary grade students may benefit more from in-person instruction than from online teaching. In addition, we utilized our research as project-based learning for a group of our high school students who assisted in multiple ways. Our experiences have opened up many new lines of future research.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Emily Gates, Kiruba Murugaiah, Kathy Chau Rohn
Description: This paper provides a multidisciplinary methodological review and guidance for using a theory of change in education - an approach, process, and product focused on visually diagramming and narratively discussing how an initiative or set of activities works to generate change, for whom, and under what circumstances and assumptions. Drawing on a critical conceptual framework and established yet disparate research and guidance published in multiple disciplines, the review delineates foundational considerations for educational researchers, evaluators, and/or practitioners, from planning for the process to developing and using a theory of change. The review also discusses future directions for research on and applications of this approach for educational issues and contexts.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Jihang Chen, & Zhushan Mandy Li
Description: Identifying examinees’ test-taking strategies is of high interest in the educational measurement field. We apply a speed-accuracy-revisit model to TIMSS process data to understand the relationship between examinees’ speed, ability, and revisiting tendency. Results show a weak relationship between examinees’ revisiting tendency and ability, and different test-taking strategies across subgroups.
Teaching, Curriculum, and Society
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Patrick Proctor
Description: The purpose of this paper is to explore three teachers’ approaches to implementing a language-based reading curriculum for multilingual learners. We explored the degree to which a specific curriculum, infused with four principles of multilingual literacy instruction, could be reliably implemented to promote multilingual student engagement.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Kierstin Giunco, Friedman, A., Sparks, E., Moreno Vera, M. A., Michelle Brito, Rosen-Reynoso, M., Cownie, C., & Hunter, C.
Description: This qualitative study, led by a current K-12 educator, a principal, and former K-12 educators, explores the process of collaborative inquiry by a cohort of 31 novice teachers as they implement anti-bias pedagogy and reflect on their own racial identities. Through analysis of self-reflection journals and interview transcripts, findings document how participants translate their anti-bias training into classroom practice in a variety of schools located in urban settings. Co-investigating the successes and challenges with the process these educators undergo will ultimately further our understanding of how to develop K-12 educators’ abilities to implement approaches to continually examine biases and interrupt inequitable educational practices.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Jeremy Alexander
Description: The rise of Christian nationalism poses a concern and danger to democratic society. Using data collected as a larger ethno-case study (Parker-Jenkins, 2018), this paper explores the institutional logics of a Conservative Christian school in order to understand the civic education students are receiving and being formed by. The institutional logic of this Conservative Christian school is not primarily aimed at forming democratic citizens but forming alternative “gospel-oriented” citizens within society who are driven by a theo-political ideology. This theo-political ideology is codified in the language of a Christian worldview, maligns anything labeled as liberal, and presents to students a pragmatic approach to politics and citizenship.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): McQuillan, P. J., Filatov, K., Giunco, K.
Description: Often, researchers conceptualize organizational change in stages. Consider Goldstein, et al.’s (2010) framework for complex emergence: it progresses from initial conditions, to amplifying actions, to emergent order, to stabilizing feedback. In contrast, our research views emergent order as ongoing, intentional and multidimensional. While Goldstein’s (2010) framework can be illuminating, emergent order discerned through this lens may overlook complex processes unfolding at varied systems levels and contexts, all with implications for eliminating the opportunity gap, the focus of our research. Believing “the racial problem [in US schools] is the opportunity gap . . . not achievement gap” (Kendi, 2021, p.103), we embrace a critical realistic perspective. Our analyses interweave relevant contexts, active participants, and prevailing value systems—assessing how their interactions shape subsequent outcomes (George & Bennett, 2005)—allowing us to offer reasonable conjectures on matters of causality in educational leadership (Maxwell, 2012), precisely what research on professional development with school principals lacks (Darling-Hammond, et al., 2007).
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Cristina Hunter, Rosen-Reynoso, M., Friedman, A., Moreno Vera, M. A., Cownie, C., Batlle, C., & Chirivella, N
Description: Qualitative study of the experience of Latino parents that enrolled their children in urban Catholic schools in the Northeast.
The "Truth" About Teacher Preparation at New Graduate Schools of Education: Unpacking the Discourses
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Reid Jewett Smith, Chris Asante, Lin Goodwin
Description: Across presentations, this symposium takes up a number of key themes and questions about teachers, teaching, teacher education, and/or teaching materials that are closely related to the AERA 2023 program theme: (1) What is the role of print media discourses in shaping public “truths” about teacher preparation and teachers’ work? How do these discourses compare to those generated by empirical research? What impacts do they have? (2) How are “truths” represented in teaching materials about highly politicized and controversial scientific and socio-political topics? How do these vary across transnational boundaries? How are they shaped by politics and policies at both local and larger levels? (3) How do teachers negotiate multiple “truths” in the everyday decisions they make regarding how and what they teach in schools and classrooms? How are these decisions embedded in situation-specific contexts? How are they influenced by differential power relationships in schools and society? (4) How are “data,” “evidence,” and “truth(s)” constructed in public, policy, and research discourses about teachers and teacher preparation, teachers’ work in schools and classrooms, and the materials teachers use in multiple subject areas?
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Ali R. Blake
Description: Queer and trans social movements in the U.S. grew from multidimensional struggles addressing connected concerns rather than ‘single issue’ gay struggle. In this case study I look to archival records of the political work of the Lesbian Avengers in the 1990s to ask what queer and trans efforts against authoritarian movements today might learn from studying their work, in curricular battles and beyond. While multidimensional views guided some Avengers, the group ultimately dissolved partly due to members’ irreconcilable positions on fighting racism and classism, including within the group, highlighting the need to actively and continuously refuse invitations to shift to one-dimensional perspectives and direct energy toward fighting authoritarianism rather than each other.
Sunday, April 16
Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): David Miele (with external collaborator)
Description: For people to be motivated to oppose racial educational inequality, they must first be aware of its continued existence. In 3 correlational studies (total N = 829), we demonstrate that Americans overestimate the amount of progress that has been made towards reaching White-Black and White-Latinx equality in degree attainment over the last 35 years, incorrectly believing that Black and Latinx degree attainment rates have increased by more than twice as much as they actually have, and by more than White degree attainment rates have. In two follow-up experiments (total N = 577), we then demonstrate that correcting these misperceptions enhances support for affirmative action programs. Implications for educational policy and social advocacy are discussed.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Elianny Edwards
Description: Although well-being concerns were often a priority for P-20 sites of schooling and education, the Covid-19 pandemic illuminated just how (un)well Black students are in schools, and the complexity of prioritizing well-being and race in educational theory, research, and praxis. This symposium brings together researchers who study well-being and race within education, particularly for Black students. Presenters will first highlight contemporary well-being frameworks in education. Then, each presenter will share current research that expands the role of race within well-being research and the role of well-being in the educational examination of race in schooling, with a renewed call to action to repurpose education to prioritize well-being as a primary outcome of education, and a necessary component towards equity.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Brianna Diaz, Scott Seider
Description: Among some youth of color, high academic achievement is seen as a form of resistance to racism. Seeing “achievement as resistance” can help youth of color perform well in school and feel efficacious in the struggle against racism (Carter, 2008). However, one study found these beliefs were negatively related to how youth viewed other activism (May et al., 2022). This mixed-methods study utilized survey (n = 359) and interview data (n = 26) to consider youth’s achievement-as-resistance beliefs and how they may relate to youth’s commitment to activism. Achievement-as-resistance beliefs and commitment to activism were positively related for three (of six) schools in the sample. Qualitative analysis focused on examining the distinct school messaging around achievement, activism, and race.
Department of Formative Education
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Dean Stanton Wortham, Clara Shim, Deoksoon Skim, Dennis Shirley, Hailey Shin
Description: Korean students’ high academic performance and low attainment levels of whole person education constructs including wellbeing resulted in stronger demand for education change. Korea’s Hyukshin schools responded to such demands by integrating innovative methods to implement whole person education. We explored Hyukshin schools’ conceptualization and implementation of whole person education by drawing on qualitative data from administrators, teachers, students, and parents. Whole person education consists of developing student wellbeing, self-esteem, career development, meaning and purpose, positive contribution to society, democratic citizenship and academic achievement. Successful implementation was possible through diversification of defining successful students, establishing horizontal student-teacher relationships, and creating a democratic school environment. The study provides insight into how whole person education is interpreted and contextualized in Korea.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Sinwoo Bae & David Miele
Description: Addictive social media use is a global concern. Relative to extant work on effects of addictive social media use on behavior and well-being, little research has examined the self-regulatory mechanisms that explain why some individuals are less likely than others to disengage from social media, even when they feel like doing so. This mixed-methods study examines the self-regulatory challenges that youth experience when using social media from a metamotivational perspective.
Educational Leadership and Higher Education
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Rebecca Lowenhaupt, Betty Lai, Babatunde Alford
Description: This paper presents a case study of a cross-sector initiative to establish a Children’s Cabinet focused on supporting child wellbeing in response to upheaval caused by the global pandemic. Applying theory and tools from Design Based Research, research-practice partners documented the process via fieldnotes, artifacts, and interviews, engaged in collaborative analyses and authorship. The proposed paper shares key findings from our thematic analysis of design affordances and principles. We examine how the initiative elevated the voices of community leaders, aligned district and community priorities, and led to productive cross-sector partnership. Building on strong existing networks and embedded research expertise, the cabinet established processes for developing shared goals and engaging in evidence-based decisionmaking across district, government agencies, and community-based organizations.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Raquel Muñiz, Nate Hutcherson
Description: We examine amici’s use of research evidence in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 DACA case, building an empirical and theoretical understanding of critical research use in policy discourse. Through a multi-network analysis of amici’s use of research in DACA policy discourse, preliminary analyses show that knowledge brokers (amici) either do not use research evidence or use non-critical research evidence to develop arguments surrounding the rescission of the DACA immigration policy. This study presents implications for critically oriented research, policy, and practice, including the work of knowledge brokers and producers and the need to address patterns of exclusion.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Martin Scanlan
Description: Educational leaders - including department heads, principals, central-office administrators, and others with positional or reputational authority – face myriad challenges. Some are mundane, such as negotiating contracts with vendors. Others are extraordinary, such as helping the community recover from a tragic illness or death. The solutions to some challenges are relatively straightforward. This does not mean they are simple, but simply that the path is relatively unambiguous. By contrast, the most vexing challenges pose dilemmas. Dilemmas are complex, have no clear “right answer,'' and call for nuance, discernment, and compromise. Demanding judgment amongst competing goods, dilemmas present ethical challenges. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel project seeking to help novice educational leaders navigate ethical dilemmas.
Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics and Assessment
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Emily Gates, Haylea M. Hubacz, Jori N. Hall
Description: Integration within mixed methods inquiry provides a powerful way to generate multidimensional truths about complex phenomena. However, multidimensional truths may or may not advance equity and social justice. This paper argues for incorporating criticality about inclusion, exclusion, and marginalization within integration in mixed methods inquiry. We propose a framework that incorporates critical questions and practices within and across key domains for integration from inquiry purpose to design to analysis. We then apply the framework to a mixed-method evaluation of a school leadership initiative to provide examples. Contributions include an expanded theoretical rationale for integration and a practical framework to incorporate criticality that can be used or adapted by experienced and novice researchers.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Damian Bebell, Zhexun (Cinna) Xin, Gareth Cleveland, Mike Russell, and Jennifer Ellis
Description: In the aftermath of COVID-19 school closures, parents, educational technology, and other home factors have played an increasing role in student support and success. As part of a larger evaluation study on the equity and impacts of the nation’s largest community broadband initiative, this paper investigates the relationship between access, beliefs, and parents’ use of educational technology over two years. Surveying a random sample of over 400 households plus a series of in-depth longitudinal interviews with twelve families, results show most parents actively engaged and positively valued several aspects of technology applied to support their child’s learning. Moreover, initial results indicate provision of broadband access also had a statistically significant impact on parent uses of technology.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Mike Russell
Description: In recent years, issues of race, racism and social justice have garnered increased attention across the nation. Although some aspects of social justice, particularly cultural sensitivity and test bias, have received similar attention within the field of educational measurement, sharp focus of racism has alluded the field. This paper focuses narrowly on racism. Drawing on an expansive body of work in the field of sociology, several key theories of race and racism advanced over the past century are presented. Elements of these theories are then integrated into a model of systemic racism. This model is used to identify some of the ways in which educational measurement supports systemic racism as it operates in the United States. I then explore ways in which an anti-racist frame could be applied to combat the system of racism and reorient our work to support racial liberation.
Teaching, Curriculum, and Society
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Jon M. Wargo
Description: Although work in narrative writing is characterized as that which has the most potential for play in early literacy (see, for example, Dyson, 1993, 2003; Wohlwend, 2009; Yoon, 2021), young children’s right to remix texts in and across expository genres is equally important. Indeed, as this scholarship suggests (see, for example, Author, 2022; Ghiso, 2013; Lenters, 2016), early writers engage creative forms of composition to subvert traditional notions of non-fiction’s form and typifications of text. Taking these interests forward, this paper examines young children’s itineraries for writing as sites and signs of writer-ly remix and assemblage, or what Brownell (2018) names “play(giarism).” More specifically, it follows these two children’s textual trajectories in composing a “mimicked model” (the teacher’s words, not my own) and a remixed recipe to ask: How do young writers inquire into and remix facets of popular culture to assemble new authorial forms of “factual” information across genres?
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Alisha Nguyen & Zhongfeng Tian
Description: Pandemic-fueled racist, xenophobic attacks, and hate crimes targeting people of Asian descent have significantly escalated since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is not a newly emerging problem but an extension of a long history of anti-Asian racism. The invisibility of Asian American histories and misrepresentation of Asian American cultures and languages in curriculum and instruction contribute to anti-Asian racism and mis-education of Asian American children. Hence, this participatory design research project aims to encourage and support bilingual teachers to teach for racial and linguistic justice. Specifically, this study takes place at two dual language immersion preschools from the Greater Boston Area (language pairs: Mandarin Chinese-English and Vietnamese-English). Highlighting the intersection of race, immigration, and language, this project contributes to the knowledge base of anti-racist education in early bilingual programs.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Kierstin Giunco
Description: The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of elementary preservice teachers’ (PSTs’) problems of practice around literacy instruction. The study comprises qualitative analysis of data collected from focus group interviews with 21 PSTs from five teacher-education institutions across the United States. Analysis of the PSTs’ talk about problems of practice (or their framing of problems) in the focus groups yielded three themes about how they defined problems and discussed strategies or solutions to problems. PSTs expressed that: 1) the range of elementary students’ literacy abilities challenged their differentiation, 2) they missed opportunities they believed would make them better prepared to teach aspects of literacy, and 3) conflicting and constricting demands limited their literacy instruction.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Jon M. Wargo, Alex Katz
Description: Foregrounding how local actors serve as policymakers, this paper analyzes educators’ responses to non-system actors framing of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) inclusive policy. Braiding sensemaking theory with frame analysis, it demonstrates how the possibilities of practice and policy implementation depended, in part, on how teachers made sense of queer inclusion alongside their understanding of the broader purpose of public education and, specifically, the profession of teaching. Yielding insights that forward critical queer policy studies, this paper highlights how educators’ problem-solving was shaped by iterative processes of frame resonance and dissonance, processes mediated by contestation, and the sensemaking dynamics of policy (mis)interpretation itself.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Andrew Miller ,Giunco, Moreno Vera, M. A., Friedman, A., Rosen-Reynoso, M., Cownie, C., & Hunter, C.
Description: Mixed-methods study of successes and challenges in recruiting, retaining, and forming urban Catholic school educators.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): A. Lin Goodwin
Description: This paper highlights how education policymakers and school leaders can play a pivotal role in fulfilling the professional development (PD) needs of teachers so that they are continually equipped and supported to meet learners’ needs. Decisions that are consequential in the lives of teachers must rely on evidence—truths about their learning and development grounded in rigorous research. Our study examines teachers’ PD needs across career stages defined by Sammons et al. (2007) to understand how to nurture teachers’ career-long PD needs. Our findings revealed distinct and differentiated PD needs by gender and years in service. It is envisaged that this study can help policymakers customise teacher PD to help retain teachers and sustain their commitment to the profession career-long.
Thursday, May 4
Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics and Assessment
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Ella Anghel, Matthias von Davier
Description: Online professional development courses (PDs) allow for accessible, high-quality opportunities to enhance educators’ practice. To make sure that online PDs meet educators’ needs it is necessary to understand why educators take these courses. Existing studies apply general surveys for this purpose, but they may not capture some educator-specific motivations. This study used both traditional Likert-style items and open-ended responses analyzed using natural language processing (NLP) to identify 1,930 educators’ motivation to take one of four online PDs. We identified altruistic interests (helping students and community) as a salient motivation that was not included in the Likert-style items. We contend that using multiple data sources may help reveal unique motivations in other contexts, as well.
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Ella Anghel
Description: Researchers are interested in enhancing adults’ sense of meaning which consists of a sense of coherence, purpose, and significance. Self-authorship, a capacity to define one’s beliefs and identity, might be a necessary condition for developing a sense of meaning. The current study explored whether (n = 147) sense of meaning is related to the cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal dimensions of self-authorship. We found that among non-self-authoring people, only purpose was associated with cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal development. Among self-authoring people, coherence, purpose, and significance were all associated with these dimensions. We concluded that self-authorship may be important for the development of a sense of meaning; this may be useful for interventions designed to enhance adults’ sense of meaning in life.
Friday, May 5
Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics and Assessment
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): Ella Anghel
Description: Researchers are interested in enhancing adults’ sense of meaning which consists of a sense of coherence, purpose, and significance. Self-authorship, a capacity to define one’s beliefs and identity, might be a necessary condition for developing a sense of meaning. The current study explored whether (n = 147) sense of meaning is related to the cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal dimensions of self-authorship. We found that among non-self-authoring people, only purpose was associated with cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal development. Among self-authoring people, coherence, purpose, and significance were all associated with these dimensions. We concluded that self-authorship may be important for the development of a sense of meaning; this may be useful for interventions designed to enhance adults’ sense of meaning in life.
Teaching, Curriculum, and Society
Boston College Lynch School Contributor(s): A. Lin Goodwin
Description: Grounded in the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory traditions, this qualitative case study uses the concept of relational agency to explore how residents, mentor teachers, and supervisors in a clinically-rich urban teacher residency program in the US negotiate their relationship building in supporting one another’s learning and development. Data included 17 paired-interviews (residents and mentor teachers), 6 individual supervisor interviews, and 17 individual resident interviews. Findings from content analysis suggest that relational agency enacted by participants is manifested in two types of micro-negotiations: (1) co-reflecting on the lesson or class activity; (2) bridging the theory-practice gap. The study has implications for promoting consequential collaboration across residents, mentor teachers, and supervisors in terms of developing shared truths about quality teaching and meaningful learning.