Person-Centered Approaches to Explaining Students' Cognitive Processing Strategies

• In Event: Investigating Strategies and Strategy Use: Where Do We Go From Here?

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
Research examining students’ cognitive strategies has generally sought to define/validate latent constructs and then explain their changes and interactions over time. Students, despite being at the centre of this work, are often sacrificed at the altar of advancing knowledge. Researchers will casually note that once equipped with this “advanced knowledge”, they will be better prepared to help students and support their learning. Given the advancing state of our knowledge of cognitive processing strategies (Dinsmore, Fryer & Parkinson, forthcoming) it is essential that researchers increasingly turn their hands to methods that yield results that step beyond the sample mean. Person-centred research approaches to research design and analyses, having progressed significantly, even in the most recent decade, are well place to support such initiatives.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
This poster will overview the critical role that person-centred research does and should increasingly play within cognitive processing strategy research. Research during the past few decades is reviewed, with special attention to newer methods that offer exciting avenues for future research.
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
The focus of the poster will be on Latent Profile Analysis and longitudinal as well as regression-based extensions. In addition to discussing early cluster analysis research, LPA orientated research from parallel fields which integrates person and variable centred analysis will be overviewed.
Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
The poster draws on a careful and strategic review of the existing, but small, literature base, supplemented by recent research from parallel fields.
Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
Results from this poster point to the growing potential of sophisticated person-centred approaches (e.g., LPA and its extensions) for applying strategic processing theory to student populations. In addition to highlighting critical subpopulations, these approaches have the potential to point toward categorical change (i.e., Latent Profile Transition Analysis) within distinct subpopulations over time; changes that should be addressed at the subpopulation level. As statistical packages continue to open up new avenues for analyses, there are opportunities to predict these critical shifts, directing future, effective interventions with critical, often ignored subpopulations.
In addition to indicating new directions for research and highlighting the impact of person-centred research, the poster points to new directions for interpreting outcomes. Supplementing the growing number of fit indices available for LPAs, qualitative understanding of subgroup profiles is a critical step: i.e., concepts of Shape (of subgroup profiles) and Level (relative quantity of profile indicators) and their combined implications for differentiating and interpreting person-centred results.
Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
Consistent with common sense, the mean is generally an ineffective model for understanding the human experience. Person-centred approaches to design and analyses present a means of avoid the gross over-generalisations variable-centred approaches have and continue to yield. Variable followed by person-centred analysis of data sets (and vice versa) has the potential to pushing theory forward, while providing a window into how strategies are expressed by subpopulations.

Authors

• Luke K. Fryer, The University of Hong Kong

• Alex Shum, The University of Hong Kong

• Kaori Nakao, Seinan Gakuin University, Japan