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- All Subjects: Educational evaluation
- Creators: Thompson, Marilyn
Description
Institutions of higher education often tout that they are developing students to become lifelong learners. Evaluative efforts in this area have been presumably hindered by the lack of a uniform conceptualization of lifelong learning. Lifelong learning has been defined from institutional, economic, socio-cultural, and pedagogical perspectives, among others. This study presents the existing operational definitions and theories of lifelong learning in the context of higher education and synthesizes them to propose a unified model of college students' orientation toward lifelong learning. The model theorizes that orientation toward lifelong learning is a latent construct which manifests as students' likelihood to engage in four types of learning activities: formal work-related activities, informal work-related activities, formal personal interest activities, and informal personal interest activities. The Postsecondary Orientation toward Lifelong Learning scale (POLL) was developed and the validity of the resulting score interpretations was examined. The instrument was used to compare potential differences in orientation toward lifelong learning between freshmen and seniors. Exploratory factor analyses of the responses of 138 undergraduate college students in the pilot study data provided tentative support for the factor structure within each type of learning activity. Guttman's <λ>λ2 estimates of the learning activity subscales ranged from .78 to .85. Follow-up confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling did not corroborate support for the hypothesized four-factor model using the main student sample data of 405 undergraduate students. Several alternative reflective factor structures were explored. A two-factor model representing factors for Instructing/Presenting and Reading learning activities produced marginal model-data fit and warrants further investigation. The summed POLL total scores had a relatively strong positive correlation with global interest in learning (.58), moderate positive correlations with civic engagement and participation (.38) and life satisfaction (.29), and a small positive correlation with social desirability (.15). The results of the main study do not provide support for the malleability of postsecondary students' orientation toward lifelong learning, as measured by the summed POLL scores. The difference between freshmen and seniors' average total POLL scores was not statistically significant and was negligible in size.
ContributorsArcuria, Phil (Author) / Thompson, Marilyn (Thesis advisor) / Green, Samuel (Committee member) / Levy, Roy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The purposes of this study were (1) to examine the direct and indirect effect of school-level testing policies on reading achievement though changes in amount and types of reading instruction, (2) to investigate the reading trajectories moderated by school-level testing policies longitudinally, and (3) to examine the relationship between testing policies and the achievement gap by exploring whether certain student characteristics moderate the relationship between testing policy and reading achievement, using Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten (ECLS-K) Cohort of 2010-2011 data. Findings from a multilevel full structural mediation model suggest that school-level frequency of state/local standardized tests had an indirect effect on student reading achievement through changes in both amount and the types of instruction at the school-level (cross-sectional fall kindergarten sample =12,241 children nested in 1,067 kindergarten classes). The findings from a three-level growth models indicated only children of Asian background and children from high socio-economic backgrounds who had frequent standardized tests in kindergarten accelerated in their monthly reading growth, whereas other children (e.g., low SES, non-Asian children) did not show any changes in the rate of the reading growth (longitudinal sample from fall of kindergarten to spring of first grade = 7,392 children nested in 744 kindergartens). The findings from the current study suggest that testing policy is not an effective means to reduce the achievement gap of children from disadvantaged family backgrounds, underperforming children or that children from low socieo-economic backgrounds. These children did not seem to benefit from frequent standardized tests longitudinally. Implications for supporting school assessment practices and instruction are discussed.
ContributorsIm, Haesung (Author) / Nakagawa, Kathryn (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Marilyn (Committee member) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Iida, Masumi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015