Gadgil, Soniya
(2015)
UNDERSTANDING THE INTERACTION BETWEEN STUDENTS’ THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Understanding the interaction between students’ motivation and instructional factors is critical
for extending current cognitively based frameworks of learning, and can have important practical
applications. Two laboratory experiments were conducted to explore how students’ implicit
theories of intelligence interact with different types of learning activities. The ICAP framework
by Chi (2009) organizes learning activities into passive, active, constructive, and interactive
activities representing an increasing order of effectiveness. In Experiment 1, participants’
theories of intelligence were manipulated to be either entity or incremental, and the learning
activity — inventing a formula to calculate variability, was manipulated to be constructive
(inventing individually) or interactive (inventing collaboratively). It was predicted that
individuals would learn procedurally simple aspects of the task better than collaborators
regardless of their theory of intelligence, consistent with theories of collaboration and cognitive
load. In contrast, while all collaborators were predicted to learn more conceptual knowledge than
individuals, students with incremental theories were predicted to benefit more from collaboration
than those with entity theories. Results showed that while individuals learned more than
collaborators on procedural problems, the predicted interaction between collaboration and
theories of intelligence on conceptual problems was not supported. Experiment 2 tested whether
different types of constructive activities interacted with students’ theories of intelligence to affect
learning outcomes. In this experiment, students’ theory of intelligence was manipulated to be
either incremental or entity, and the type of constructive activity was manipulated to be either tell-and-practice instruction or invention. Two competing interaction hypotheses were proposed.
Hypothesis one was that if invention activities led to more constructive processing, entity
theorists would learn more from invention than from tell-and-practice instruction, but
incremental theorists would learn equally well from either type of instruction. Hypothesis two
was that if invention activities cause off-task behavior and impose excessive cognitive load, then
tell-and-practice instruction would lead to better learning for entity theorists, however, both types
of instruction would be equally effective for incremental theorists. Bayesian model selection
provided some support for hypothesis one. Results of the two experiments are discussed in terms
of their theoretical and practical significance.
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Details
Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
Status: |
Unpublished |
Creators/Authors: |
|
ETD Committee: |
|
Date: |
13 January 2015 |
Date Type: |
Publication |
Defense Date: |
30 July 2014 |
Approval Date: |
13 January 2015 |
Submission Date: |
2 January 2015 |
Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
Number of Pages: |
175 |
Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Psychology |
Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
Refereed: |
Yes |
Uncontrolled Keywords: |
cognition, motivation,instruction, theories of intelligence, collaborative learning |
Date Deposited: |
13 Jan 2015 16:38 |
Last Modified: |
15 Nov 2016 14:26 |
URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23933 |
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