Inventing and Affect: Impact of an In-School Time Invention Project With a Targeted Measurement Suite

• In Event: 34.088 - Science Teaching and Learning SIG Paper Session: Equitable Education

Abstract

Invention projects can engage youth from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds while learning science and engineering knowledge and skills. Many invention education studies have focused on behavioral or cognitive engagement, but fewer assess affective engagement. Measurement tools are sometimes co-opted from the related fields of science and engineering.
We have developed a targeted, three-instrument suite that is specific to inventing, hypothesizing close, proximal, and distal sensitivity (Ruiz-Primo, Shavelson, Hamilton, & Klein, 2002) related to self-efficacy, anxiety, and career intentionality, respectively. Our suite has performed reliably during the early stages of a design-research, in-school-time intervention in an urban-ring city of Massachusetts. We detail our findings to date and implications for invention-based models of teaching and learning and their measurement.

Authors

• David W. Jackson, Boston College

• Amy R Semerjian, Boston College