Amanda Baker, assistant professor inside the Iowa State University School of Education, continues to be awarded the Paul R. Pintrich Outstanding Dissertation Award from your Educational Psychology division of the American Psychological Association.
Baker’s doctoral dissertation, titled “Epistemic Profiles, Dissonance Negotiation, and Perspective Transformation in Postsecondary Service-Learning,” discusses her research on service learning programs – programs that combine community service with instruction – and in what ways student beliefs about knowledge and the have to draw quick conclusions predicted individual outcomes in those programs.
“Service learning programs often endeavor to help students develop more difficult and socially just understandings of issues like poverty, educational inequality, healthcare inequality, and the like,” Baker said in her own dissertation. “But that depends on students being willing to grapple with ideas which could conflict with closely-held beliefs.”
Using a mode called latent profile analysis to name patterns of beliefs and motivation, Baker found students who considered knowledge as “simple, certain, and transferred from authority figures and who desired quick conclusions” could not see the ‘belief change’ that is desired in service-learning programs.
These beliefs and motivations can originate from past experiences, together with a positive change on how students engaged in the service-learning process.
“By interviewing students with assorted patterns of epistemic beliefs/motivation, I stumbled upon that some students didn’t change their beliefs because, when their beliefs were in conflict with things they learned in school, these folks were quite likely going to use strategies that helped them disengage or avoid considering that conflict,” Baker said.
“Long-term, I do believe this has implications for pondering how we prepare students to get and study high-impact educational experiences,” Baker said.
