- 5124130177
Hyesun You
The University of Iowa, Teaching and Learning, Faculty Member
- Arkansas Tech University, Physical Science, Faculty Memberadd
- Hye Sun You earned her B.S in Chemistry and M.S. in science education from Yonsei University and her Ph.D. in Science... moreHye Sun You earned her B.S in Chemistry and M.S. in science education from Yonsei University and her Ph.D. in Science Education at the University of Texas at Austin. She has since worked as a post-doctoral fellow at New York University and Michigan State University, where she participated in NSF funded grant projects. Currently, she is serving as an assistant professor at Arkansas Tech University. Her research interests center upon interdisciplinary learning and teaching, and technology-integrated teaching practices in STEM education. In her dissertation work, she developed and validated a new interdisciplinary assessment in the context of carbon cycling for high school and college students using Item Response Theory. She is also interested in developing technology-embedded curricula and teaching practices in a reform-oriented approach.edit
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Assessing student knowledge based on their writing using traditional qualitative methods is time-consuming. To improve speed and consistency of text analysis, we present our mixed methods development of a machine learning predictive model... more
Assessing student knowledge based on their writing using traditional qualitative methods is time-consuming. To improve speed and consistency of text analysis, we present our mixed methods development of a machine learning predictive model to analyze student writing. Our approach involves two stages: first an exploratory sequential design, and second an iterative complex design. We first trained our predictive model using qualitative coding of categories (ideas) in student writing. We next revised our model based on feedback from instructor-users. The model itself highlighted categories in need of revision. The contribution to mixed methods research lies in our innovative use of the machine learning tool as a rapid, consistent additional coder, and a resource that can predict codes for new student writing.
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This chapter examines how Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-based science engineering practices are embodied in preschool science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching. A preschool teacher’s three STEM lessons... more
This chapter examines how Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-based science engineering practices are embodied in preschool science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching. A preschool teacher’s three STEM lessons were observed, videotaped, and analyzed. The teacher’s teaching practices were coded in a deductive manner using an instrument developed based on the NGSS science and engineering practices (SEPs) framework. The findings demonstrate that (1) the teacher mainly implemented two SEPs—obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information, and planning and carrying out investigations, (2) her teaching practices did not entirely cover all the SEPs of the NGSS, and (3) one important teaching practice, “redirection,” emerged as a strategy used to shift children’s attention or off-task behaviors into active engagement and emotional security. This case study provides insight into what SEPs preschool teachers can integrate into their STEM lessons and the limitati...
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Recent calls for college biology education reform have identified “pathways and transformations of matter and energy” as a big idea in biology crucial for students to learn. Previous work has been conducted on how college students think... more
Recent calls for college biology education reform have identified “pathways and transformations of matter and energy” as a big idea in biology crucial for students to learn. Previous work has been conducted on how college students think about such matter-transforming processes; however, little research has investigated how students connect these ideas. Here, we probe student thinking about matter transformations in the familiar context of human weight loss. Our analysis of 1192 student constructed responses revealed three scientific (which we label “Normative”) and five less scientific (which we label “Developing”) ideas that students use to explain weight loss. Additionally, students combine these ideas in their responses, with an average number of 2.19 ± 1.07 ideas per response, and 74.4% of responses containing two or more ideas. These results highlight the extent to which students hold multiple (both correct and incorrect) ideas about complex biological processes. We described s...
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“Psychometrically sound” assessments possess the ability to make valid inferences of students’ conceptual understanding. However, there is a lack of validated assessments in college biology education. This study assesses the psychometric... more
“Psychometrically sound” assessments possess the ability to make valid inferences of students’ conceptual understanding. However, there is a lack of validated assessments in college biology education. This study assesses the psychometric properties of the constructed response (CR) biology questions to establish construct validity and reliability. We used a polytomous Rasch Partial Credit Model to validate the eight CR items. Responses from 437 students were scored by automated scoring models that were trained on data scored by experts. All items reflected unidimensional construct of biology and local independency. The findings suggest that the instrument is a promising and valid tool to assess undergraduates’ biology concepts from introductory biology courses, but needs further revision to strengthen the psychometric properties, adding more items for low performing students and improving person reliability. The significance of this study lies in its potential to contribute to creating more valid and reliable CR assessments through Rasch calibration.
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Vol. 47, No. 3, 2018 This study investigated the interaction of disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning in a teamtaught, first-year, interdisciplinary sustainability course. We surveyed (pre/post) both STEM (science, technology,... more
Vol. 47, No. 3, 2018 This study investigated the interaction of disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning in a teamtaught, first-year, interdisciplinary sustainability course. We surveyed (pre/post) both STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and non-STEM majors (N = 241), assessing attitudes and content knowledge. Responses were analyzed using factor analysis, classical test theory, and Rasch analysis. Multivariate analyses of variance were performed to look for pre/ post differences and differences between groups. Confirmatory factor analysis verified that the content knowledge items adequately assessed disciplinary and interdisciplinary understanding separately. Tests indicated an adequate item difficulty range, but also a need for more items at the higher end. All groups improved significantly over the semester. Slightly higher gains for STEM students and a correlation between disciplinary, and interdisciplinary learning might indicate a possible benefit of “...
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한국 교육의 최우선 과제는 학업 성취도의 수월성과 평등성이다. 이를 위해 본 연구에서는 학생들의 학업 성취도에 영향을 미치는 변인들에 대한 분석을 통해 한국 교육 정책의 방향성을 제시하고자 하였다. 1966년에 발간된 Coleman 리포트에 따르면, 학생의 학업 성취도는 학교 환경 보다는 가정환경과 또래집단이 더 크게 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났으며, 학교...
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The global carbon cycle (CC) is a key environmental literacy issue related to climate change, ocean acidification, and energy sustainability. Understanding the CC requires interdisciplinary knowledge informed by multiple science... more
The global carbon cycle (CC) is a key environmental literacy issue related to climate change, ocean acidification, and energy sustainability. Understanding the CC requires interdisciplinary knowledge informed by multiple science disciplines such as biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics. To examine the core principles and interdisciplinary nature of CC, we interviewed 10 experts from various science disciplines and asked them to create their own models of the carbon cycle. We utilized the data to identify emerging core concepts of CC and discover commonalities and differences across the experts’ models in the context of interdisciplinary understanding. The concepts and interdisciplinarity were compared with those of CC-related topics in the U.S. Framework and Next Generation Science Standards. Most experts demonstrated a breadth of interdisciplinary knowledge based on their disciplinary backgrounds. The experts hold a wider set of ideas about CC than is present in the standa...
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This study describes a professional development (PD) program designed to support middle school teachers in effectively integrating robotics in science and mathematics classrooms. The PD program encouraged the teachers to develop their own... more
This study describes a professional development (PD) program designed to support middle school teachers in effectively integrating robotics in science and mathematics classrooms. The PD program encouraged the teachers to develop their own science and mathematics lessons, aligned with national standards, infused with robotic activities. A multi-week summer PD and sustained academic year follow-up imparted to the teachers the technical knowledge and skills of robotics as well as an understanding of when and how to use robotics in science and mathematics teaching. The goal of this study is to investigate the effects of the robotics-integrated PD program through the changes of teachers’ technological-pedagogical-and-content knowledge self-efficacy, the improvement in their content knowledge of robotics in the context of science and mathematics teaching, and their reflections on the PD. The 41 participants consisted of 20 mathematics and 20 science teachers and one teacher who teaches both subjects. Three instruments were administered to the teachers during the PD, and follow-up interviews were conducted to further examine benefits and possible impacts on their teaching resulting from the PD. The data were analyzed by both statistical and qualitative methods to identify the effectiveness of the PD. The findings of the study indicate that the PD program was effective in increasing participants’ robotics content knowledge and confidence and outcome expectancy while integrating robotics in their teaching practices. Based on teacher reflections and follow-up interviews, this study offers guidelines for future development of technology-integrated science and mathematics teaching.
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Growing interest in interdisciplinary (ID) understanding has led to the recent development of four ID assessments, none of which have previously been comprehensively validated. Sources of evidence for the validity of tests include... more
Growing interest in interdisciplinary (ID) understanding has led to the recent development of four ID assessments, none of which have previously been comprehensively validated. Sources of evidence for the validity of tests include construct validity, such as the internal structure of the test. ID tests may (and should) test both disciplinary (D) and ID understanding, and the internal structure can be examined to determine whether the theoretical relationship among D and ID knowledge is supported by empirical evidence. In this paper, we present an analysis of internal structure of ISACC, an ID assessment of carbon cycling, selected because the developers included both disciplinary and ID items and posited a relationship among these two types of knowledge. Responses from 454 high school and college students were analyzed using confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) with the Mplus software for internal structure focusing on dimensionality, as well as functioning by gender and race/ethnicity, and reliability. CFA confirmed that the underlying structure of the ISACC best matches a two-factor path model, supporting the developers’ theoretical hypothesis of the impact of disciplinary understanding on interdisciplinary understanding. No gender effect was found in the factor structure of the ISACC, indicating that females and males have similar performance. Race/ethnicity performance was similar to other science assessments, revealing possible ethnicity bias on the part of the instrument. The reliability coefficients for the two-factor path model were found to be sufficient. This study highlights the importance of the internal structure of test instruments as a source of validity evidence and models a procedure to assess internal structure.
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This study developed and validated an assessment that measures interdisciplinary understanding using the topic of carbon cycling, the Interdisciplinary Science Assessment for Carbon Cycling (ISACC). This work was motivated by the need to... more
This study developed and validated an assessment that measures interdisciplinary understanding using the topic of carbon cycling, the Interdisciplinary Science Assessment for Carbon Cycling (ISACC). This work was motivated by the need to assess interdisciplinary understanding, defined as the ability to solve problems requiring knowledge and skills from multiple disciplines. Levels of a construct map for interdisciplinary understanding were generated and refined in the construct-modeling design process (Wilson 2005). Key concepts in carbon cycling to be assessed were determined based on experts’ concept maps and analysis of the Next Generation Science Standards. The final version of the ISACC includes 11 multiple-choice (MC) items and eight constructed-response (CR) items covering nine key concepts. Of these 19 items, six are single-disciplinary items and 13 are interdisciplinary items. Four hundred fifty-four students in grades 9–16 were recruited and administered the ISACC. For the CR items, scoring rubrics were developed and used by a group of evaluators to code student responses. Two item response theory models, a two-parameter logistic model and a generalized partial credit model, provided evidence of the construct validity of the items. All items reflected unidimensionality and local independence and showed moderate internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.782). All except one were a good fit to the models. The findings suggest that the ISACC is a promising tool to assess interdisciplinary understanding of carbon cycling. Future directions include research into test fairness across gender and ethnic/racial groups and further development to cover typical high school students’ knowledge more thoroughly.
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Global carbon cycling describes the movement of carbon through atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere; it lies at the heart of climate change and sustainability. In order to understand the global carbon cycle, students will... more
Global carbon cycling describes the movement of carbon through atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere; it lies at the heart of climate change and sustainability. In order to understand the global carbon cycle, students will require interdisciplinary knowledge. While standards documents in science education have long promoted interdisciplinary understanding, our current science education system is still oriented toward single-discipline-based learning. Furthermore, there is limited work on interdisciplinary assessment. This paper presents the validated Interdisciplinary Science Assessment of Carbon Cycling (ISACC), and reports empirical results of a study of high school and undergraduate students, including an analysis of the relationship between interdisciplinary items and disciplinary items. Many-faceted Rasch analysis produced detailed information about the relative difficulty of items and estimates of ability levels of students. One-way ANCOVA was used to analyze differences among three grade levels: high school, college freshman–sophomore, college junior–senior, with number of science courses as a covariate. Findings indicated significantly higher levels of interdisciplinary understanding among the Freshman–Sophomore group compared to high school students. There was no statistically significant difference between Freshman–Sophomore group and Junior–Senior group. Items assessing interdisciplinary understanding were more difficult than items assessing disciplinary understanding of global carbon cycling; however, interdisciplinary and disciplinary understanding were strongly correlated. This study highlights the importance of interdisciplinary understanding in learning carbon cycling and discusses its potential impacts on science curriculum and teaching practices. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach
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Growing evidence from recent curriculum documents and previous research suggests that reform-oriented science teaching practices promote students’ conceptual understanding, levels of achievement, and motivation to learn, especially when... more
Growing evidence from recent curriculum documents and previous research suggests that reform-oriented science teaching practices promote students’ conceptual understanding, levels of achievement, and motivation to learn, especially when students are actively engaged in constructing their ideas through scientific inquiries. However, it is difficult to identify to what extent science teachers engage students in reform-oriented teaching practices (RTPs) in their science classrooms. In order to exactly diagnose the current status of science teachers’ implementation of the RTPs, a valid and reliable instrument tool is needed. The principles of validity and reliability are fundamental cornerstones in developing a robust measurement tool. As such, this study was motivated by the desire to point out the limitations of the existing statistical and psychometric analyses and to further examine the validation of the RTP survey instrument. This paper thus aims at calibrating the items of the RTPs for science teachers using the Rasch model. The survey instrument scale was adapted from the 2012 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education (NSSME) data. A total of 3701 science teachers from 1403 schools from across the USA participated in the NSSME survey. After calibrating the RTP items and persons on the same scale, the RTP instrument well represented the population of US science teachers. Model-data fit determined by Infit and Outfit statistics was within an appropriate range (0.5–1.5), supporting the unidimensional structure of the RTPs. The ordered category thresholds and the probability of the thresholds showed that the five-point rating scale functioned well. The results of this study support the use of the RTP measure from the 2012 NSSME in assessing usage of RTPs.
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ABSTRACT Crosscutting concepts such as scale, proportion, and quantity are recognised by U.S. science standards as a potential vehicle for students to integrate their scientific and mathematical knowledge; yet, U.S. students and adults... more
ABSTRACT Crosscutting concepts such as scale, proportion, and quantity are recognised by U.S. science standards as a potential vehicle for students to integrate their scientific and mathematical knowledge; yet, U.S. students and adults trail their international peers in scale and measurement estimation. Culturally based knowledge of scale such as measurement units may be built on evolutionarily-based systems of number such as the approximate number system (ANS), which processes approximate representations of numerical magnitude. ANS is related to mathematical achievement in pre-school and early elementary students, but there is little research on ANS among older students or in science-related areas such as scale. Here, we investigate the relationship between ANS precision in public school U.S. seventh graders and their accuracy estimating the length of standard units of measurement in SI and U.S. customary units. We also explored the relationship between ANS and science and mathematics achievement. Accuracy estimating the metre was positively and significantly related to ANS precision. Mathematics achievement, science achievement, and accuracy estimating other units were not significantly related to ANS. We thus suggest that ANS precision may be related to mathematics understanding beyond arithmetic, beyond the early school years, and to the crosscutting concepts of scale, proportion, and quantity.
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This study aims to describe the history of interdisciplinary education and the current trends and to elucidate the conceptual framework and values that support interdisciplinary science teaching. Many science educators have perceived the... more
This study aims to describe the history of interdisciplinary education and the current trends and to elucidate the conceptual framework and values that support interdisciplinary science teaching. Many science educators have perceived the necessity for a crucial paradigm shift towards interdisciplinary learning as shown in science standards. Interdisciplinary learning in science is characterized as a perspective that integrates two or more disciplines into coherent connections to enable students to make relevant connections and generate meaningful associations. There is no question that the complexity of the natural system and its corresponding scientific problems necessitate interdisciplinary understanding informed by multiple disciplinary backgrounds. The best way to learn and perceive natural phenomena of the real world in science should be based on an effective interdisciplinary teaching. To support the underlying rationale for interdisciplinary teaching, the present study propos...
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ABSTRACT Modern mathematics careers are now requiring conceptual skills such as, critical thinking, modeling, and application of the content. This change in skillset needed for careers has strongly impacted mathematics curriculum and... more
ABSTRACT Modern mathematics careers are now requiring conceptual skills such as, critical thinking, modeling, and application of the content. This change in skillset needed for careers has strongly impacted mathematics curriculum and assessment. Meaningful assessment involves examining students' ability to inquire, to reason on targeted questions or tasks, and to promote conceptual understanding, not just focusing on discreet facts and principles. Mathematics assessment tools still focus solely on this procedural side of understanding mathematics instead of the equally important conceptual aspect of learning mathematics. Given that math is an active process that encourages higher-order thinking and problem solving, an assessment focusing on the growth of conceptual understanding is required. The proposed research focuses on the development of a tool that will be used to assess current U.S. calculus students' ability to apply their conceptual understanding of a mathematic concept to scientific phenomena through modeling. The assessment using Netlogo would be very useful for math educators to have good tools to assess students' conceptual understanding, as well as to develop instructional strategies used.