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UNDERSTANDING THE INTERACTION BETWEEN STUDENTS’ THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Gadgil, Soniya (2015) UNDERSTANDING THE INTERACTION BETWEEN STUDENTS’ THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. (Unpublished)

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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:
CreatorsEmailPitt UsernameORCID
Gadgil, Soniyasmg58@pitt.eduSMG58
ETD Committee:
TitleMemberEmail AddressPitt UsernameORCID
Committee MemberAleven, Vincentaleven@cs.cmu.edu
Committee MemberLevine, John M.jml@pitt.eduJML
Committee MemberSchunn, Christian D.schunn@pitt.eduSCHUNN
Committee ChairNokes-Malach, Timothy J.nokes@pitt.eduNOKES
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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