Advancing Measurement of Student Learning and Engagement

• In Event: Changing Mathematics Education With Technology Through Research in Schools

Abstract

While findings in large-scale experimentation have demonstrated robust main effects of SimCalc interventions overall and for a variety of policy-relevant student subgroups, there is also substantial variation in student learning at both the classroom and student levels. The Math Engagement Project (MEP) seeks to measure and investigate individual differences in cognitive, behavioral, and affective engagement in middle school math classrooms. The two main project goals are (1) to develop and validate a suite of instruments to measure engagement in math learning, and (2) to examine what dispositional and contextual factors shape middle school students’ engagement in math lessons. Building on prior results and instrumentation from the SimCalc scaling studies, we examine variations in engagement and learning in classrooms using a SimCalc replacement unit. We will discuss issues around instrumentation for measuring engagement and preliminary findings from our exploratory research.

Author

• Nicole Shechtman, SRI International