Scholarship & Research
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/1
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Growing academic resilience in students of science through mimicry of forest resilience(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Rapone, Marcia G.; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Walter WoolbaughFor this education-based classroom research project, inspiration was drawn from the mechanisms used to transmit nutrients and information between individual organisms in a forest through the mycorrhizal network. Whereas forest resilience is based on speed of recovery and ability to regenerate biomass, academic resilience is based on the student's ability to recover from a setback and remain engaged in the learning process. The goal of the project was to mimic the communication network observed in forest mycelium and thus transmit information and receive feedback from students continuously in an effort to support the growth of academic resilience. The hypothesis of this project was that in fostering communication between students and creating opportunities for communication between individual students in the classroom, overall student academic resilience, grit, and content understanding would increase. During the 9-week study, students communicated their level of confidence in understanding content, provided insight into misconceptions they may have been developing, and gave advice to other students to enhance understanding of the material being taught. A culminating whole-class inquiry project was used to require students to work together on finding the solution to a problem. While not statistically significant, positive growth in resilience was observed in 57% of project participants, (N=83), but honors-level students reported higher levels of resilience at the start of the project than those of their general-level counterparts. A statistically significant growth in grit and content understanding was observed in honors-level students. Growth by at least 20% in content understanding over the course of the project was observed in 91% of all student participants. No singular data point was determined to be a predictor of student capacity for resilience, but development and use of a regular survey process provided insight into student mindset and opinion. Due to student inability or unwillingness to give themselves credit, development of a resilience recognition program is recommended as part of the next phase of research to foster awareness in the classroom of actions that exemplify resilience.Item Iteration and failure : how does an inquiry-based design lab course impact the resilience learning of middle school students?(Montana State University - Bozeman, Graduate School, 2015) Klavon, Tim; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Peggy Taylor.A student's ability to face academic adversity is identified as resilience. It is described as being able to "bounce back" in the face of challenges. The question posed by this project is how does an inquiry-based design lab course impact the resilience learning of middle school students? The 55 middle school students at the Perkiomen School, in Pennsburg, PA, participated in such a course, where they were asked to use creativity to solve challenging problems in the classroom. The students completed pre- and post-treatment 8-Question Grit Scale surveys. They also described their experiences in the course using reflective assignments. They also participated in group interviews, and selected students participated in individual interviews. The pre-treatment student grit scores ranged between 1.88 and 4.50 with a mean of 3.44, while the post-treatment survey showed a range of 1.75 to 4.50 with a mean of 3.38. The teacher-completed surveys regarding how they perceived each student's grit showed a similar range, 1.92 to 4.56 with a mean of 3.25. The overall success of the treatment during the study was inconclusive. The overall student grit score dropped by a score of 0.06. The day student subgroup showed a decrease in grit score over the study of 0.03, though the boarding student subgroup also showed a decrease of 0.13. The findings of this study are encouraging, while though the mean grit score of all participants remained relatively unchanged, a majority of students did not show a negative change (33 of 54, 61%). While the idea of iteration and failure was always present in each activity, the students appeared to focus more on group dynamics when evaluating their progress. This leads to several interesting questions when planning future iterations of this course. Would the students benefit from a larger workspace which would allow for small workgroups and more independence? Would the course benefit from more time in the weekly class schedule, offering the students more opportunity to test their strategies? Lastly, given the relatively short time frame of the treatment period, would longer term surveying of the students validate the long term benefits of such a course?