Scaffolds and Group Work

• In Event: Fostering Complexity in the Conceptualization and Study of Motivation, Engagement, and Self-Regulated Learning: A Workshop

Abstract

In this part of the workshop, participants will work individually and then in small, facilitated groups to explore the extent to which their complexity representations are reflected in their chosen theory, research questions, and methodologies. Participants are then encouraged and guided through different ways to revise/modify their theory, research questions, and methods to align more closely with their complexity representation of their phenomenon.

Re-Seeing and Re-Drawing: As individuals, participants will use scaffolds and graphic templates (Bullock & Poth, 2023; Poth, 2018) to reconceptualize their phenomenon-of-interest to foreground a person-centered unit-of-analysis: consider within-person, interaction-dominant, dynamic processes. The participants will be prompted to articulate the assumptions behind their chosen theory and research method within motivation, engagement, and SRL. This step is intended to demonstrate how the ideas from the introduction and worked example portions of the workshop reveal anomalies that apply to the chosen phenomena.

Next, participants will explore the worked examples as solutions that yield adjustments in the assumptions made within the theory, its application to an intervention setting, and its operationalization using quantitative and/or qualitative methods. To support mapping of participants’ current theory onto complexity-oriented representations, facilitators will share their graphical representations (e.g.). Participants will redraw their chosen phenomenon in ways that speak to theory, such as an interaction- or process-dominant model that also provides clarity among individual and collective units-of-analysis, and method, such as hypothetical outcomes of studying within-person versus between-person variability or change over time using relational networks and lagged models. Participants map the approaches to their representations and consider how they apply to their chosen theory, research questions, and methodologies.

Facilitated small interest groups: Once participants have (re)considered their theoretical and methodological perspectives, they will be prompted to share with others. In small groups, participants will consider their research questions and the corresponding design; e.g., how to model an intervention or other form of change over time. Participants will share their theoretical and methodological journeys towards complexity and will be invited to upload pictures of their representations to a shared folder.

Authors

• Joanna K. Garner, Old Dominion University

• Gwen C. Marchand, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Jonathan C. Hilpert, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Avi Kaplan, Temple University