Robert Calfee - US grants

Several sources (NAEP reports and Adult Literacy surveys) document serious problems in students' ability to read and write expository text. The problems pervade content areas like science. In fact, the nation's weak international standing in science may reflect students' limitations in reading and writing as much as their knowledge of science content and procedures. Many observers have noted that U.S. science education is "mile-wide and inch-deep." The challenge is to steer students toward competence in digging beneath the surface, and in gaining the ability to transform technical materials into forms that demonstrate their understanding of the material and to apply knowledge in a variety of new settings.

This proposal explores the consequences of curriculum variations based on the concept of a "reading-writing connection" to enhance student ability to search out and select scientific information, to analyze the information using rhetorical structures, and to transform and synthesize the information using the same structures. The practical aim of the proposal is to find out how to help teachers and students in mastering the research report, an ancient genre that remains critical to the scientific enterprise. The conceptual foundation is the application of social-cognitive constructs to the explication of the research report task as an iterative sequence of subtasks: defining the writing assignment; analyzing and summarizing text information (prescribed or to be found), organizing and transforming the information to meet the demands of the assignment, and constructing the composition. In all of these subtasks, the student is bound by the tension between (a) limited cognitive capacity to handle novel and complex information and (b) the organizational support available through various rhetorical structures.

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).

This engineering education research award to the University of California-Riverside will employ researchers to systematically explore how students learn problem solving skills and advance beyond superficial understanding. It will develop well-defined principles for designing efficient and effective practices for the development of expertise in engineering statics, a fundamental engineering course. The project begins with an in-depth analysis of the background and preparation of a diverse student population. The team will conduct continued formative assessment with inexpensive pen-based technology to capture student answers to a problem, as well as the dynamic process by which the solutions were obtained to gain important insights into students' thought processes. A course in statics is often the most substantial introduction to engineering for engineering students, especially for those who ultimately pursue a civil or mechanical engineering major. Problem solving methods learned in this course influence success in more advanced courses, and this can have a strong impact on student retention. The results of this innovative research will advance general understanding of how students learn to solve complex problems and will lead to better preparation of engineering students for engineering jobs after graduation.