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Facilitating interest and out-of-school engagement in science in secondary school girls: Increasing the effectiveness of the teaching for transformative experience in science model through parent...

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FACILITATING INTEREST AND OUT-OF-SCHOOL ENGAGEMENT IN SCIENCE IN
SECONDARY SCHOOL GIRLS: INCREASING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE
TEACHING FOR TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE IN SCIENCE MODEL THROUGH
PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT

By

Benjamin Charles Heddy

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(URBAN EDUCATION POLICY)

August 2014

Copyright 2014 Benjamin Charles Heddy
i

DEDICATION
I dedicate this work to my wife and son, Nicole and Hendrix Heddy. I could not have completed
my studies without your love and support.

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Through a lot of effort and some luck, I had the opportunity to complete my Ph.D. at one
of the most prestigious universities in the country. Getting to this point has not been easy and I
could not have succeeded without the support, advice, and encouragement of several individuals.
I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge many of those people. For those of you
who did provide feedback but do not see your names discussed in the following, please know
that your effort and support is also greatly appreciated.
First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge and thank (profusely) my advisor,
mentor, and friend Dr. Gale M. Sinatra. When I began my Ph.D. studies, I was fairly
academically inexperienced. I was a young passionate student with little understanding of what
it meant to be a scholar. Gale recognized my potential and asked me to join her research team.
After five years of mentoring and training I am proud to say that I was hired as an assistant
professor. I could not have succeeded without her constant feedback, both academically and
personally, and will be forever in her debt. Thank you Gale for helping me realize my potential
and achieve my goals.
Second, I would like to acknowledge my colleagues who have provided guidance and
feedback over the years including: Marc Alongi, Sarah Brem, Jason Chen, Jackie Cordova,
Robert Danielson, DeLeon Gray, Antonio Gutierrez, Nancy Hamilton, Judith Harackiewicz,
Jenefer Husman, Marcus Johnson, Suzanne Jones, Doug Lombardi, Gwen Marchand, Ananya
Mukhopdhyay, Louis Nadelson, Michael Nussbaum, Reinhard Pekrun, Kevin Pugh, LeAnn
Putney, Ann Renninger, Ralph Reynolds, Helena Seli, Viviane Seyranian, Andrew Shtulman,
Elen Usher, and Mike Yough,. I also want to acknowledge my dissertation committee: Jesse
iii

Graham, Morgan Polikoff Robert Rueda, Gale Sinatra, and Brendesha Tynes. Every individual
that I mentioned above provided great feedback before, during, and after the dissertation process
and I owe you each a great deal of gratitude. Thank you.
Finally, I want to acknowledge my family for listening to me theorize, vent, and
complain throughout the entire process. In particular, my wife Nicole, who encouraged me when
needed, which was quite often. Last, I would like to thank my son Hendrix who kept me smiling
and laughing even when things got difficult. I did all of this to make you proud.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication i
Acknowledgements ii
List of Tables v
List of Figures vi
Abstract vii
Chapter 1: Overview of the Study 1
Chapter 2: Background literature 12
Chapter 3: Methods 44
Chapter 4: Results 55
Chapter 5: Discussion 67
References 87
Tables 103
Figures 106
Appendices
Appendix A: Transformative Experience Survey 108
Appendix B: Interest Surveys 109
Appendix C: Conversation With Parents Scale 110
Appendix D: UCV Journal Entry 111
Appendix E: Parent Brochure 112

v

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1 Descriptive Statistics 103
Table 2 Group Differences 104
Table 3 Table 3: Correlations between Qualitative Codes and Post Surveys 105

vi

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 TE as Behavioral, Cognitive, and Affective Engagement 106
Figure 2 Relationship between TTES+PI and Connected Learning 107

vii

ABSTRACT
This study investigated the impact of adding a parental involvement intervention to the Teaching
for Transformative Experience in Science (TTES) model in science courses (biology and
chemistry) in an all-girl middle and high school (N = 89). Specifically, the goal was to increase
out-of-school engagement, interest, parental involvement, and achievement. Analysis showed
that TTES with the addition of a parent intervention (TTES+PI) facilitated more out-of-school
engagement and parent involvement than a comparison. Furthermore, a high initial level of
situational and individual interest was maintained in the TTES+PI condition; whereas both forms
of interest decreased in the comparison. A content analysis of transformative experience journal
entries suggested that when parents showed value for science concepts, students’ experiential
value increased. The results provide evidence that the addition of a parent intervention may
increase the effectiveness of TTES and maintain girl’s interest in science, which has theoretical
and practical implications.
1

CHAPTER ONE
OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
The goal of this study was to explore whether the utility of Teaching for Transformative
Experience in Science (TTES) model could be enhanced through a parent involvement
intervention for developing middle and high school girls’ interest in STEM. Pugh (2002; 2004)
developed TTES to facilitate out-of-school engagement in the form of transformative
experiences. This model has been lauded for integrating several pedagogical constructs such as
motivation, engagement, interest, transfer, and value (Pugh, 2011; Renninger & Su, 2012).
However, the model has had mixed results when attempting to facilitate out-of-school
engagement (Pugh, 2002; Pugh, 2004; 2010a). To explore whether TTES could be enhanced, I
have added a parent intervention to the model in order to increase the likelihood that students
engage with content in their everyday life. Specifically, I applied the modified model, which I
call TTES+PI (TTES+ Parent Intervention), to science courses in an all-girls middle and high
school in Los Angeles with the goal of facilitating out-of-school engagement and the
development of interest. In this introduction, I will briefly explain the background of the
problem. Next I discuss the purpose of the study. I then give a short summary of the results and
implications. Finally, I explicitly define each of the relevant constructs before moving on to
Chapter 2.
Statement of the Problem
According to Wigfield and colleagues (Wigfield, Eccles, Yoon, Harold, Arbreton,
Freedman-Doan, & Blumenfeld, 1997) motivation and achievement begin to decline in late
elementary and continue through secondary education. This is especially true for girls and
young women in the STEM disciplines (Tyler-Wood, Knezek, & Christensen, 2010). More
2

specifically, girls’ interest seems to decline in STEM fields, which can have negative
implications for women and STEM as a whole. Subsequently, an important research goal
includes the exploration of methods and techniques for facilitating increased interest in STEM.
One potential way to increase interest may be to generate out-of-school engagement with
classroom content. Doing so may allow students to recognize the personal relevance and value
that STEM concepts can have to their everyday experience, which are factors that have been
shown to increase interest in prior research (Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Renninger and Su, 2012).
Further, increasing interest is associated with increased engagement (see Renninger, under
review).
A method for facilitating out-of-school engagement has been developed by Pugh and his
colleagues (2010a), called the Teaching for Transformative Experience in Science model or
TTES. The goal of TTES is to generate out-of-school engagement in the form of transformative
experiences (TE). A transformative experience occurs when students apply what they learn in
class to their everyday experience and come to recognize the value of academic concepts.
Specifically, TE has three dimensions including motivated use, expansion of perception, and
experiential value, which map onto the three components of engagement: behavioral, cognitive,
and affective, respectively. Renninger and Su (2012) predict that TTES and the facilitation of
TE may effectively trigger and maintain interest.
In my own prior research, my colleagues and I have demonstrated that engagement in
transformative experience leads to increased student interest at the college level (Heddy, Sinatra,
& Seli, 2013; Heddy, Sinatra, Seli, and Mukhopadhyay, 2014). However, results have been
mixed when TTES has been applied to middle and high school students (Pugh, 2002; Pugh,
2004; Pugh, Schmidt, Russell, & Heddy, 2010; Pugh et al., 2010a). That is, prior research has
3

not always shown a significant difference between treatment (TTES) and comparisons with
regard to self-reported transformative experience. Therefore, TTES has yet to be confirmed as
an effective method for facilitating out-of-school engagement via transformative experience. For
this reason, I chose to examine how the addition of a parental involvement intervention might
facilitate increased levels of out-of-school engagement and in turn interest for science concepts.
One problematic issue with regard to the effectiveness of TTES is that there is no
mechanism or cue in a student’s out-of-school experience to remind them to engage with
academic content. Currently, only classroom based instruction is implemented in TTES, which
may limit the potential of this pedagogical technique. Parents can potentially be used as an
additional motivational factor outside of school to generate out-of-school engagement. That is,
TTES with the addition of a parental involvement intervention, or what I am tentatively calling
TTES+PI, may be a more effective teaching model because it generates out-of-school
engagement and a more connected learning experience (Ito et al., 2013).
Ito and her colleagues (2013) suggest that three spheres of learning exist including:
academic learning, interest-driven learning, and social learning. When all three spheres of
learning occur simultaneously the best possible learning takes place, which Ito calls connected
learning. When connected learning happens, achievement and ideal motivation can follow,
including the development of interest (Ito et al., 2013). The TTES model may be a way to
facilitate two spheres of connected learning including the academic sphere (through classroom
based instruction) and the interest-driven sphere (through making personally relevant
connections). However, in its current form, TTES lacks a mechanism to generate learning in the
social sphere. The addition of a parental involvement intervention may be an effective method
for facilitating social learning through interaction with students’ parents and family. Therefore,
4

TTES+PI could potentially lead to a connected learning experience by causing students to
engage in all three spheres of learning (academic, interest-driven, social), which according to Ito
et al. (2013) will increase and develop student interest.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a parent intervention for
generating out-of-school engagement and interest in science, as an additional motivational
technique when paired with TTES. Based on the review of the literature, knowledge of the topic,
and analysis of the problem the following four questions guided this study:
1) Would TTES+PI promote more out-of-school engagement than a comparison?
2) Would TTES+PI promote more interest development than a comparison?
3) Would the parent intervention promote more parental involvement than a comparison?
4) Would TTES+PI promote greater achievement than a comparison?
The first hypothesis was that TTES+PI would facilitate greater self-reported out-of-
school engagement than TTES alone. In previous research TTES has been moderately effective
at generating out-of-school engagement when implemented with middle and high school students
(Pugh, 2002; Pugh, 2004; Pugh, Schmidt, Russell, & Heddy, 2010). The addition of a parent
intervention may ameliorate the impact of TTES by providing students with a cue outside of
school, something that is missing from TTES in its current form.
A second hypothesis was that TTES+PI would develop interest, over the course of a
semester. This hypothesis is based on previous research that revealed TTES can successfully
develop interest in college students (Heddy, Sinatra, & Seli, 2013; Heddy, Sinatra, Seli, &
Mukhopadhyay, 2014). However, TTES, especially with the addition of parent intervention, has
not been previously used to develop interest with K-12 students. Renninger and Su (2012)
5

predicted that TTES may successfully develop interest in K-12 students and the current study
sought to test that prediction. When engaging with content in one’s everyday experience,
content becomes personally relevant and perceived as valuable, which could increase interest.
Moreover, previous research shows that when parents value academic content, students often
mirror that value (Jodl, Michael, Malanchuck, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2001), which could further
increase interest in the TTES+PI condition.
A third hypothesis was that the parent intervention would successfully facilitate parental
involvement, essentially a manipulation check. The parent intervention that I implemented was
designed as a home-based intervention, which has shown mixed results in previous research
(Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwack, 2007). However, I based my parent intervention on one
designed by Harackiewicz and her colleagues (2012). She found that her intervention effectively
increased parent and student conversations, which in turn developed student value for science
content. Therefore, I predicted that my parent intervention would generate similar results.
Finally, I predicted that TTES+PI would lead to increased achievement because knowledge
acquisition should occur along with interest development (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). I also
predicted TTES+PI would lead to higher achievement than TTES because it would increase the
likelihood that students engage in all three spheres of learning (academic, interest-driven, social)
according to Ito et al.’s, (2013) connected learning model, which she ascertains will create an
optimal learning experience.
To investigate these questions and hypotheses a quasi-experimental study design was
utilized, with a comparison of TTES to TTES+PI. I gained access to an independent all-girls
middle and high school in Los Angeles County. Specifically, the participants were students in
five 7th grade life sciences classes (biology) and two 10th grade chemistry classes. Four of the
6

courses (3 life sciences, 1 chemistry) were taught using the TTES+PI method, while three of the
courses (2 life sciences, 1 chemistry) were taught using TTES without the parent intervention.
Students in both conditions received TTES instruction in the form of modeling and scaffolding
TE, explicitly teaching for value, and engaging in online and face-to-face Use Change Value
(comparison) or Use Change Value Conversation (treatment) discussions. The major difference
between conditions was that the treatment received a parent involvement intervention. Students
completed pre and posttest surveys that assessed out-of-school engagement (TE), situational and
individual interest, and parental involvement. Achievement was assessed using end of semester
grades. All quantitative data was analyzed using univariate analysis of variance (achievement)
or repeated measures analysis of variance (TE, interest, parent involvement). Last, online
UCV/C journal entry posts were qualitatively analyzed to explore student responses.
Significance of the Study
This research begins to address a gap in the literature by using TTES and a parental
involvement intervention together, to generate more connected learning and in turn maintain
interest in STEM. The results of my study suggest that TTES+PI did generate higher self-
reported out-of-school engagement and parent involvement than a comparison (TTES without
parent intervention). Further, both situational and individual interest were maintained in the
treatment condition (TTES+PI), whereas both forms of interest declined in the comparison.
Finally, there was no significant difference between conditions with regard to achievement. I
will briefly discuss the significance of each finding below.
An important finding in the present study was that TTES+PI facilitated significantly
higher self-reported out-of-school engagement, in the form of transformative experience, than
TTES alone. It appears that the addition of a parent intervention to TTES may be an effective
7

method for increasing the goal of the instructional technique, which is to facilitate out-of-school
engagement. In previous studies instructors implementing TTES have had no means outside of
the classroom to ensure that students actually engage with content (Pugh, 2002; Pugh, 2004;
Heddy & Sinatra, 2013). A parent intervention may fill this void. The journal entries support
the quantitative findings by suggesting that parental involvement facilitated increased
experiential value in the treatment students.
A second key discovery was that the parent intervention that was created successfully
increase self-reported parent involvement in the form of parent-student conversations. Previous
researchers have found mixed results with home-based parental involvement interventions
(Halle, Kurtz-Costes, & Mahoney, 1997; Hill & Craft, 2003). That is, some researchers find that
home-based interventions successfully facilitate parent involvement, motivation, and
engagement (Hill & Taylor, 2004; Hickman et al., 1995; Kurdek & Sinclair, 1988); whereas
others find that they have no impact or even a negative influence on these variables (Cooper,
Lindsey, & Nye, 2000; Georgiou, 1999; Chen & Stevenson, 1989). Furthermore, Harackiewicz
and her colleagues (2012) found that a home based intervention implemented to increase
perceived value of science actually decreased motivation in young women. The fact that the
presently designed parent intervention was successful speaks to the power of home-based
involvement and provides a potential model for developing an effective parent intervention.
An intriguing finding was that TTES+PI did not significantly increase self-reported
situational or individual interest. However, in the comparison, students actually reported a
decline in both forms of interest. Renninger and Su (2012) predicted that TTES could be an
effective way to develop student interest. However, it appears that not only did interest not
increase, but it actually declined. TTES+PI maintained both forms of interest, which is a
8

positive finding. Wigfield and his colleagues (1997) showed that achievement and other
motivational variables tend to decline in the middle and high school years, thus maintenance of
interest is an important outcome. TTES+PI may be a successful pedagogical model to negate
this decline and maintain motivational factors such as interest over time.
The finding that interest was maintained for middle and high school girls learning science
topics is important. An important goal for education and society as a whole is to increase the
number of women pursuing STEM degrees and careers (Cooney & Bottoms, 2003). Researchers
argue that one way to increase the number of women in STEM fields is to generate interest from
an early point in their academic careers (Tai, Liu, Maltese, & Fan, 2006). TTES+PI may be way
to reduce this reported decline and motivation and achievement for young women, which could
in turn lead to more women setting and pursuing STEM goals. Obviously much more research
needs to be conducted on this finding due to the important implications.
Finally, there was no significant difference between conditions with regard to
achievement as assessed by final course grades. Final course grades were equally high for both
the treatment and comparison. Although questions could be raised with regard to the population
under exploration (moderate to high SES), this finding suggests that both conditions received
effective instruction, which generated high achievement. However, the more optimal situation is
to have high achievement along with high interest, parent involvement, and out-of-school
engagement. TTES+PI may be more effective at generating all of these positive outcomes
because it enhances connected learning as posited by Ito and her colleagues (2013). TTES+PI
can be an effective method for encouraging students to engage in all three spheres of learning
(academic, interest-driven, social) simultaneously. Each of these implications and others will be
described in detail in Chapter 5.
9

Definition of Terms
It is important to be clear about how constructs and terms are used and defined in the
present study. Thus, the following section provides definitions of key terms.
Connected Learning: Ito and her colleagues (2013) state that there are multiple spheres in
which learning occurs including: 1) academic learning, 2) socially embedded learning, and 3)
interest driven learning. The academic learning sphere involves typical classroom context
through direct instruction. The social learning sphere includes learning that takes place naturally
when interacting with family or peers. Finally, interest driven learning occurs when students
pursue the attainment of knowledge that they are intrinsically interested in exploring. When
each of these three spheres interacts dynamically or occurs simultaneously, optimal learning
transpires.
Engagement: Engagement is defined as having three dimensions including behavioral,
cognitive, and affective (Fredricks et al., 2004). Behavioral occurs when students physically
engage with learning including raising ones hand, leaning forward to better listen, or physically
seeking out educational stimuli (e.g. books, computer, T.V.). Cognitive engagement includes
metacognitive processes such as regulating one’s own learning or mentally grappling with
alternative ideas. Affective engagement involves emotionally connecting with content, such as
enjoying watching an educational video or being frustrated when content conflicts with one’s
current beliefs.
Interest: Interest is defined as liking and/or willingness to reengage with content or an activity
(Schraw & Lehman, 2001). Specifically, in alignment with Hidi and Renninger’s (2006) four
phase model of interest development, I define interest as containing four components including
triggered situational, maintained situational, emerging individual and well-established individual
10

interests. Situational interest is caused by the immediate environment. Triggered situational
interest occurs when an environmental factor generates a fleeting interest. Maintained situational
interest occurs when an outside force such as an instructor catches and holds interest for a short
period of time. Individual interest is an internally driven process and remains more stable over
time. When students begin to use their own personal time to explore content they start to
develop emerging individual interest. Finally, when students begin to identify with content so
much so that they may major in or pursue a career in the topic area, they have a well-established
individual interest.
Parental Involvement: I define parental involvement in this study as parent’s commitment of
resources such as time and effort to their children’s academic life (Grolnick & Slowiaczek,
1994). A distinction has been made between school-based involvement and home-based
involvement (Pomerantz, Moorman, and Litwak, 2007). School-based involvement requires
parents to make contact with schools such as attending parent teacher conferences or science
fairs. Home-based involvement characterizes assisting students with school but that takes place
outside of school.
STEM: STEM is an acronym that represents the fields of science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics. In the present study I focus on one aspect of STEM, science including life sciences
(e.g. biology) and chemistry.
Teaching for Transformative Experience in Science Model (TTES): The teaching for
transformative experience in science model or TTES is an instructional technique that was
developed to facilitate out-of-school engagement with classroom content (Pugh, 2011; Pugh et
al., 2010a). By out-of-school engagement I mean connections to everyday life outside of school.
TTES has three components including teaching for experiential value, modeling instructor
11

transformative experience, and scaffolding student transformative experience. TTES is the
instructional tool used to facilitate out-of-school engagement via transformative experience.
Transformative Experience: Transformative experience or TE occurs when students apply
what they learn in school to their everyday life (Pugh, 2011; Heddy & Sinatra, 2013). TE
consists of three dimensions including: 1) motivated use, 2) expansion of perception, and 3)
experiential value. Motivated use occurs when students actively search for academic concepts in
their everyday life. An expansion of perception happens when classroom topics change the way
students perceive phenomena in their out of school experience. Last, experiential value happens
when students value content for its ability to impact their everyday life. The three dimensions of
TE roughly map onto the three components of engagement including behavioral (motivated use),
cognitive (expansion of perception), and affective (experiential value).
Organization of the Study
In the remainder of this dissertation, I start by thoroughly defining the constructs relevant
to the proposal including engagement, interest, and transformative experience. Next, I provide a
brief overview of empirical research on the topic of interest development, engagement, and
parental involvement. After the literature review I discuss how TTES with the addition of a
parental involvement intervention can effectively facilitate connected learning. I then state the
research questions that drive my design as well as predicted outcomes. I lay out the design,
procedures, analysis, and results. I conclude with a discussion of the impact, limitations, and
future directions.

12

CHAPTER TWO
BACKGROUND LITERATURE
Generating student interest in STEM is the first step to increasing the likelihood that
students pursue STEM careers later in life (Harackiewicz, Rozek, Hulleman, & Hyde, 2012).
More than ever, an increase in the number of students seeking STEM degrees and careers is
essential. Economists fear that there will be a shortage of STEM employees, which could be
devastating for the economy (Cooney & Bottoms, 2003). A stable pipeline of STEM employees
is essential to ensure success in an increasingly global society. Researchers predict that over the
next ten years there will be 17% growth in STEM related careers and over two thirds of those
will require a bachelor’s degree (Carnevale, Smith, & Melton, 2011). Further, over 80% of the
fastest growing careers are STEM related, and universities are only training half of the necessary
employees (Hecker, 2004). Therefore, finding new populations to fill STEM positions is an
essential task.
More women pursuing degrees in STEM fields could help fill economic needs.
Caucasian and East Asian males dominate STEM fields and this population has been recruited to
capacity (Burke & Mattis, 2007). Further, absence of diversity in STEM jobs can lead to
homogeneous perspectives and lack of innovation. In addition, STEM careers can provide
women with opportunities for higher paying jobs and increased upward mobility (Melguizo &
Wolniak, 2012). However, student interest in STEM fields declines over the middle high school
years (Tyler-Wood, Knezek, & Christensen, 2010). For this reason, motivation researchers have
been exploring methods for counteracting this decrease in interest.
Hidi and Renninger (2006) posit that in order to facilitate the development of interest,
students must continuously reengage with content. However, previous research shows that 25%
13

of middle and high school students are not engaged (Shernoff, 2012). Further, over 50% of
students are labeled as chronically unengaged with classroom content (Furlong & Christenson,
2008; Marks, 2000). Low levels of engagement may be due in part to a lack of connection
between students’ spheres of learning. In their connected learning model, Ito and her colleagues
(2013) suggest that three spheres of learning exist including the academic sphere (school based
learning), the interest driven sphere (pursuing one’s own interests), and the social sphere
(learning that takes place in peer or family groups). They suggest the student academic learning
sphere has little connection to their social and/or interest driven spheres leading to a lack of
personal relevance and engagement (more on this theory will be discussed below). This lack of
engagement poses a large problem for educators who are trying to encourage and facilitate
student interest in STEM topics. Early interventions for facilitating STEM interest are the most
effective (Tai, Liu, Maltese, & Fan, 2006). This leads to the critical question of how can
instructors successfully develop middle and high school girls’ interest in STEM topics? One
potential avenue is to generate student engagement in STEM topics in out-of-school contexts
(Pugh, 2011). When students engage with school concepts in their everyday experience out of
school, they often begin to value and perceive the personal relevance of the content (Pugh,
2011), which can facilitate the development of STEM interest (Heddy, Sinatra, & Seli, 2013).
Previous research on the facilitation of transformative experience (TE) suggests that it
can be impactful for generating and developing student interest (Heddy, Sinatra, & Seli, 213;
Heddy, Sinatra, Seli, & Mukhopadhyay, 2014). However, these studies were conducted with
college students in a study strategies course and results cannot be generalized to K-12 science
contexts. Further, when studies on TE as a facilitator of out-of-school engagement have been
conducted in K-12 settings, results have been mixed (Pugh et al., 2010a; Pugh, 2004; Pugh,
14

2002). For this reason, I posited that adding a parental involvement intervention to the Teaching
for Transformative Experience in Science (TTES) model (Pugh, 2011) would improve its
effectiveness. Doing so may provide students the opportunity to engage all three spheres
(academic, interest-driven, and social) of learning as suggested by Ito et al.’s (2013) connected
learning theory, leading to beneficial outcomes for students. Specifically, an increase of young
women’s interest and engagement in STEM may be possible through an enhanced TTES
approach. The enhancement under investigation is the addition of a parent intervention, which
could generate increased motivation and learning.
In the following literature review I begin by investigating interest and how it develops
with a specific focus on the Four Phase model of interest development as posited by Hidi and
Renninger (2006). They theorize that continuous reengagement is the most important aspect for
interest development. With this knowledge in mind, I then define engagement and suggest that
out-of-school engagement may be particularly beneficial for facilitating interest. For this reason,
I explain TE and how it can be thought of as encompassing all three components of engagement
(behavioral, cognitive, and affective). Next, I discuss the relationship between interest and
engagement and explore empirical research on motivational factors that influence motivation for
STEM topics. I then describe the TTES teaching intervention, which has been used to facilitate
out-of-school engagement. I include a discussion of its shortcomings and present an addition to
the model designed to improve its effectiveness. Specifically, I suggest adding a parental
involvement intervention to TTES to optimize out-of-school engagement. Finally, I explain why
TTES with the addition of a parental involvement intervention could effectively facilitate
connected learning and thus increase interest for middle and high school girls learning about
science.
15

What is Interest and How Does it Develop?
For over a century psychologists and philosophers have posited that interest is essential to
human motivation and achievement. Prominent scholars such as William James (1890), John
Dewey (1913), Edward Thorndike (1935) and Frederic Bartlett (1932) theorized the integral role
that interest maintains in the learning process. More recently, researchers suggest that student
interest can increase learning, attention, and goals (Hidi, Renninger, & Krapp, 2004; Durik &
Harackiewicz, 2003; Alexander & Murphy, 1998). The most commonly accepted definition of
interest is: liking and intentionally reengaging in an activity (Schraw & Lehman, 2001).
However, interest has been defined as an emotion (Pekrun, 2006), a motivational variable that
impacts student engagement and learning (Hidi & Renninger, 2006), and a relationship between
a person and an object (Hidi, 2006). Clearly, an issue with research on interest is conceptual and
theoretical clarity.
There are many perspectives on how to best define interest in the process of human
learning. Krapp and colleagues (1992) suggest three perspectives including personal interest
(individual disposition), interestingness (an environmental aspect), and interest as a cognitive
state (situational interest). Hidi and Renninger (2006) have combined these ideas to suggest that
interest can develop over time in the four phase model of interest development. For instance, a
student may experience interest as a psychological state, which was caused by a factor in the
environment that had interestingness. If a student interacts with this factor over a certain period
of time, interest can develop and become more dispositional in nature, which represents personal
interest. This example exhibits the dynamic interaction that exists between each of these
perspectives. Hidi and Renninger’s (2006) model of interest development posits the manner that
interest can be impacted and developed by an instructor, which I describe below.
16

Four Phase Model of Interest Development
Mitchel (1993) theorized two different types of interest including situational and
individual. Situational interest occurs when activities, content, or events catch a student’s
attention, which may or may not hold across time. Individual interest occurs when a student
begins to relate to, value, and identify with content, which holds across time. Further, he
proposed that it was possible to catch (trigger) and hold (maintain) student interest. Based on
this foundation, Hidi and Renninger (2006) developed a model that suggests interest develops
through four phases including: 1) triggered situational, 2) maintained situational, 3) emerging
individual, and 4) well-developed individual. Each of the phases of development is
characterized differently based on characteristics and needs that exist within the learner.
Triggered Situational Interest
Triggered situational interest is defined as a “psychological state resulting from short-
term changes in cognitive and affective processing” (Renninger & Su, 2012, pg. 170). In the
first phase, interest is triggered by elements of the environment such as humor, novel activities,
personal relevance, and intensity (Sadoski, 2001; Renninger & Hidi, 2002). Although not
always that case, triggered situational interest is externally supported by environmental factors or
an instructor (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). Finally, triggering interest is an important first phase
that may allow for development into further more dispositional phases (Renninger, 2010).
Learner characteristics in the triggered situational interest phase often include fleeting
attention to content. That is, students may have their interest triggered but if no support is
provided interest will be lost (Renninger & Su, 2012). Related, external support from instructors
and the environment is typically a necessity in this phase due to the aforementioned short-lived
attention. Learners can have their interest triggered and experience both positive and negative
17

emotions. For instance, a video clip showed in class may be funny, which elicits enjoyment
(positive emotion) and triggers student interest. Similarly, an instructor may show a video of
prejudice, which causes frustration (negative emotion) and still triggers attention and interest.
Finally, students in this phase may not be cognitively aware that their interest is being triggered.
Here, interest is a physiological state that has been psychologically labeled as an emotion but not
consciously labeled as interest.
Due to the ephemeral nature of the first phase, students with triggered interest need to
have their ideas respected. Having ideas respected and appreciated at this juncture is important
because if a student feels like her/his ideas are not valued then interest will be lost (Hidi &
Renninger, 2006; Renninger & Su, 2012). As discussed in the engagement section, if learners
have low self-efficacy both motivation and engagement will suffer and interest, being a
motivational concept, is hindered as well. Students also need to know they comprehend the
content and thus positive feedback regarding comprehension is essential. Finally, students need
well-structured external support to continue engagement. That is, an instructor should design
classroom activities to facilitate initial engagement with content.
Maintained Situational Interest
After triggering interest maintain it over time is possible, which is the second phase of
interest development. Maintained situational interest is defined as a, “psychological state that
involves focused attention and persistence over extended period, and/or reoccurs and persists”
(Renninger & Su, 2012, pg. 170). Interest can be maintained if tasks are personally meaningful
or relevant (Harackiewicz et al., 2000). Similarly to triggered interest, maintained is generally
externally supported (Renninger & Hidi, 2002; Wolters, 1998). Such external supports can
involve meaningful assignments such as project-based learning, small-group discussion, peer-to-
18

peer mentoring, and guided discovery opportunities (Mitchel 1993; Heddy, Sinatra, & Seli,
2013). Finally, maintaining student interest can lead to further phases of interest (Renninger &
Su, 2012).
Learners in the maintained situational interest phase reengage with the content that had
been originally triggered as interesting. Although reengagement is occurring, as with the
previous phase, interest is still being externally supported by instructors or aspects of the
environment (Renninger & Su, 2012). To successfully maintain situational interest instructors
may relate material to student prior knowledge and experience. As students assimilate the new
interesting content with their prior knowledge, learning occurs and they begin to develop a
framework of knowledge with the new topic. In contrast to triggered situational interest,
learning in the maintained phase is characterized by experiencing positive emotions. In the case
of our frustrated student who was watching a video on prejudice, s/he has now replaced this
negative emotion with enjoyment, which is driven by a sense of purpose such as making an
impact on reducing prejudice. Finally, learners begin to develop a primitive sense of value for
the content.
Although maintained situational is more stable than the triggered phase, interest is still
transitory and ideas need to be respected and appreciated. Further, external support is still
necessary, but can be slowly scaled back so that the learner can begin to self-regulate her/his
interest (Renninger & Su, 2012). Moreover, students may need some support in self-regulating
learning and interest. For example, Heddy, Sinatra, and Seli (2013) conducted a study in which
the instructors modeled self-regulation with the content and provided scaffolding for students to
engage with the content. After practicing self-generated engagement the students were able to
do it on their own and interest improved significantly. Finally, student needs to be able to
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calibrate their own knowledge. That is, they need to know what they have learned and what they
still want to learn.
Emerging Individual Interest
Emerging individual interest is defined as a, “psychological state and the beginning of a
relatively enduring predisposition to seek reengagement with particular classes of content”
(Renninger & Su, 2012, pg. 170). Knowledge, value, and positive emotions are components of
emerging individual interest (Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012). Further, students choose to
reengage with content due to the generation of curiosity questions. These self-generated
curiosity questions lead to self-regulated goal directed behavior. That is, unlike the previous two
phases (triggered and maintained situational interest) emerging situational interest is not
externally supported, but rather self-generated by the learners. Finally, if learners reengage
enough, they can move to the final and most desirable stage of interest development (Renninger,
2012).
When students transition from situational to individual interest they begin to
independently reengage with content in their own time. This self-regulated reengagement occurs
due to self-generated curiosity questions for which students are motivated to seek out answers
(Renninger & Su, 2012). Also, as students seek out and answer questions, they continue to build
a solid foundation of knowledge with regard to the topic of interest. Emotions remain and
continue to become more positive as students gain prior knowledge. As Jesse Bering (2011)
suggests seeking out answers can generate neurological pleasure similar to that of eating a
delicious meal and thus students who have interest in and questions about a topic seek out
pleasurable answers. Value for the content is stored along with knowledge as the information
becomes increasingly personally relevant and tied to one’s self-concept. That is, the more
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students learn and become psychologically invested in content the more it becomes an aspect of
their identity.
As interest emerges and becomes an individual characteristic, the content begins to infuse
with identity. However, the infusion is not complete and as we saw with situational interest, if
students ideas are not respected and appreciated interest can disintegrate (Renninger & Su,
2012). Further, students now have goals for their learning and need constructive feedback to
know that the goals are worthwhile and appropriate. External support becomes less necessary as
students transition through to higher level phases.
Well-Developed Individual Interest
The final phase in the four phase model of interest development is well-developed
individual interest, which is defined as a, “psychological state and a relatively enduring
predisposition to reengage particular classes of content” (Renninger & Su, 2012, pg. 170). The
fourth phase is characterized by high stored knowledge, perceived value, and positive affect
(Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012; Renninger, 2000). Students in this phase will generate and
answer their own curiosity questions (Lipstein & Renninger, 2007) and persist through obstacles
(Renninger & Shumar, 2002). In fact, student’s attention can become so effortless, they often
engage in flow experiences, which is a loss of sense of time and space because one is so
cognitively immersed in the situation (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Students in this phase of interest
are almost entirely self-regulated in their pursuit of knowledge and external support is not a
necessity (Renninger, Bachrach, and Posey, 2008). Well-developed interest is the most sought
after form of interest but rarely occurs (Renninger & Su, 2012).
In the fourth and final phase of interest development students engage with content in a
completely independent manner. Students have become totally self-regulated when seeking
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answers to curiosity questions. Related, the curiosity questions are now very refined and
specific. Learners display persistence and resilience in the face of challenges and obstacles
(Renninger & Su, 2012). For example, if students receive critical feedback from the instructor,
rather than get upset and give up on the task, they are likely to put forth considerable effort to
correct the mistakes pointed out in the feedback. Moreover, students may seek out such critical
feedback with the understanding that it will improve knowledge of the content. New positive
emotions other than enjoyment begin to arise such as hope and pride. Value is extremely high
due to the content becoming an integral component of one’s self-concept and identity. Finally,
students with a well-established interest recognizes others contribution to the discipline and
display deference for experts in the field.
When content has become a well-established individual interest, the concepts are a part of
identity. For instance, if the content was math, students may say things like, “I am a math
person.” Further, students may start to plan for a career in mathematics. Students in this phase
want to be challenged and provided with critical feedback because a goal is to make an impact
on the field. As official members of the field students may weigh personal standards against
those held by experts. Finally, with impact as a goal, students’ needs to know that their ideas are
being heard and respected by knowledgeable others.
Measuring Interest
Currently, there exists no single agreed upon instrument for assessing either situational or
individual interest. Instruments range from self-report (Linnenbrink- Garcia, Durik, Conley,
Barron, Tauer, Karabenick, & Harackiewicz, 2010), brain scanning techniques (Kim, Lee,
Chung, & Bong, 2010), and participant observation (Nolan, 2007). Most research implements
self-report instruments as they are the most convenient and reliable (Renninger & Su, 2012).
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Self-report measures explore teacher related interest (Mitchel, 1993), specific learning situations
(Chen, Darst, and Pangrazi, 2001), and a combination of both (Linnenbrink-Garcia et al., 2010).
To this date there are no instruments that assess both situational and individual interest. Rather,
to assess both forms of interest, multiple instruments must be implemented. Linnenbrink-Garcia
and her colleagues (2010) developed a survey that measures both triggered and maintained
situational interest. Individual interest is best captured by asking students to report their
membership and identity with the content (Azevedo, 2006). However, modified portions of the
task-value scale from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionaire or MSLQ (Pintrich et
al., 1993) are typically implemented to explore individual interest. Unfortunately, a clear
psychometric distinction has not been made between emerging individual and well-established
individual interest.
Engagement and its Influence on Interest Development
Engagement has been called the holy grail of school based learning (Sinatra, Heddy, &
Lombardi, in press). The reason that engagement is considered to be so integral is due to its
relationship with many other important educational outcomes such as achievement, motivation,
and interest (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). Moreover, engagement is posited to be a
mechanism for facilitating conceptual change (Dole & Sinatra, 1998). Further, facilitating
student engagement has proven to be a key component in reducing student dropout rates for
academically at-risk students (Finn & Frone, 2004). With so many positive outcomes,
engagement has become the staple of effective instruction. While the many positive outcomes of
engagement are documented; defining the concept is an arduous task.
As with many motivation related constructs, a proliferation of terms has occurred with
regard to the concept of engagement. Indeed, engagement is a multifaceted construct that not
23

only includes behavioral aspects such as involvement but also contains a psychological element
as well. There has been debate amongst scholars regarding just how many facets of engagement
exist. Disagreement exists on the number of types of engagement with some suggesting two
(Finn & Frone, 2004), three (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004), four (Appleton,
Christenson, Kim, & Reschly, 2006), and even as many as eleven (Martin, 2007). Although,
much dialogue continues related to the exact quantity of forms of engagement, within the field of
educational psychology, agreement exists for the three types including behavioral, cognitive, and
affective as posited by Fredricks and her colleagues (2004), which I define below.
Behavioral Engagement
A goal of many instructors and researchers is to facilitate students’ participation in their
own learning process, which is known as behavioral engagement. Specifically, behavioral
engagement is defined in three ways including positive conduct (Finn & Rock, 1997),
involvement in academic tasks (Heddy, Sinatra, & Seli, 2013), and participation in school related
activities such as athletics and clubs (Finn & Voelkl, 1993). Although all operational definitions
have been used extensively in previous research, I will focus solely on the second definition,
involvement. Behavioral engagement, operationalized as involvement in one’s own learning and
academic tasks is comprised of several important factors including effort, persistence, attention,
participation in group discussions, and self-directed academic behavior (Buhs & Ladd, 2001).
Behavioral engagement would take the form of paying attention to the teacher during class,
exhibiting resiliency through obstacles, and purposefully seeking out information on concepts in
one’s own time.
Cognitive Engagement
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Cognitive engagement is the most vaguely defined of all three types. The problem that
plagues cognitive engagement is lack of agreement amongst scholars about how it should be
operationalized and measured. A generally accepted definition of cognitive engagement is
referred to as psychological investment (Fredricks et al., 2004). A student becomes
psychologically invested when she expends cognitive effort in order to understand, goes beyond
the requirement of the activity, uses flexible problem solving, and chooses challenging tasks. As
can be seen from the previous definition, many of the components of cognitive engagement seem
to overlap with components of behavioral engagement (i.e. effort). Due to the ill-defined nature
of cognitive engagement I turn to the motivation literature to assist in operationalization.
Cognitive engagement is a goal of many researchers as they attempt to facilitate
motivation in participants (Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992; Corno & Mandinach, 1983). Motivation
is defined as a process in which goal directed behavior is initiated, directed, and sustained
(Schunk, Meece, & Pintrich, 2013). Engagement is action that is initiated from the process of
motivation (Ainley, 2012). According to motivation scholars cognitive engagement occurs when
students are self-regulated (Schunk, Meece, & Pintrich, 2013). Self-regulation is a process by
which students plan, monitor, and evaluate their own thinking and learning strategies
(Zimmerman, 1990). Self-regulation relates to cognitive engagement in that it is a metacognitive
form of effort and uses flexible problem solving strategies (Cleary & Zimmerman, 2012).
Affective Engagement
Affective engagement is defined as students’ emotional reactions to academic phenomena
such as math specifically or school in general (Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012; Skinner &
Belmont, 1993). For instance, enjoyment is an emotion that generally leads to high student
engagement and attention, whereas emotions such as relief can cause a student to lose focus and
25

disengage. Theoretically, negative and positive emotions can facilitate attention and
engagement; however research shows that positive emotions are more likely to lead to
engagement (Heddy & Sinatra, 2013; Broughton, Sinatra, & Nussbaum, 2011)
Also included in operational definitions of affective engagement are perceptions of value
related to school. Task values are beliefs about the return benefit that individuals perceive for
engaging in specific school related tasks (Schunk, Meece, & Pintrich, 2013). For example,
completing homework may be beneficial for a student’s career as an architect and therefore
would have high task value. Eccles (2005) posited the expectancy-value theory, which states
that motivation to engage with a certain task is based on expectancy for success, interest,
attainment value, utility value, and relative cost. Each of these perceived values operate together
to determine the overall value of a task and thus predict the intensity at which students choose to
engage.
Transformative Experience as Out-of-School Engagement
A large body of research exists suggesting the positive and beneficial outcomes
associated with engagement (Fredricks et al., 2004; Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2013;
Schunk, Meece, & Pintrich, 2013). Recently, researchers have been investigating the impact of
engagement as it occurs in students’ everyday lives. Some examples are expansive framing
(Engle, 2012), culturally relevant pedagogy (Gay, 2000), connected learning (Ito et al., 2013),
and transformative experience or TE (Pugh, 2011). Researchers and instructors are finding that
when students apply what they learn in school to their everyday out-of-school experience,
motivation and learning increase (Pugh et al., 2010a; Heddy & Sinatra, 2013). Of particular
interest in the present study is TE because it relates to the three dimensions of engagement.
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Pugh (2011) has developed a construct known as transformative experience that is based
on a Deweyian constructivist framework. John Dewey (1938, 1958) believed that the power of
education is based on its ability to influence the everyday life of students as they construct
knowledge. Dewey emphasized that a reciprocal relationship should exist between learning and
experience. That is, one’s experience should have a positive impact on learning and reciprocally,
learning should influence and enrich one’s experience. Related, classroom concepts should have
a direct impact on the way in which one perceives the world.
Dewey stated that not only should education impact distant future experiences (college or
employment experiences) but should affect immediate everyday experiences. Based on this
logic, Pugh and his colleagues (2010a, 2010b) developed the construct of TE. Pugh (2011)
defines TE as a “…a learning episode in which a student acts on the subject matter by using it in
everyday experience to more fully perceive some aspect of the world and finds meaning in doing
so.” (pp. 111). From this definition, Pugh describes TE as being composed of three components
including motivated use, expansion of perception, and experiential value.
The first component, motivated use, occurs when a student applies content to her/his
everyday experience. For instance, when learning about physics, a student may look for
examples of velocity in their everyday experience such as the speed and distance a baseball
travels when at a Los Angeles Dodgers game. Second, expansion of perception occurs when the
student perceives the baseball in terms of the physics concept of velocity. Finally, sports are
more interesting now because the student is aware of the physics that occurs, which represents
velocity having experiential value. These three components are each aspects of engagement.
That is, motivated use is an aspect of behavioral engagement, expansion of perception is an
aspect of cognitive engagement, and experiential value is an aspect of affective engagement (see
27

Figure 1). TE has been found to effectively facilitate achievement, positive emotions, interest,
and conceptual change (Pugh et al., 2010a, 2010b; Pugh, Schmidt, Russel, & Heddy, 2010;
Heddy, Sinatra, & Seli, 2013; Heddy & Sinatra, 2013).
[Insert Figure 1 about here]
Engaging in TE may effectively facilitate the development of interest for several reasons.
First, students can bring examples from their own experiences into class, thereby increasing
personal relevance (Pugh et al., 2010a). Second, it is plausible that engaging in TE will allow
students to recognize the meaningfulness of STEM topics to their own life and may integrate the
content into their self-concept. Students may come to value the content, which could cause them
to modify their future possible selves to incorporate STEM careers. Last, TE is defined as
engagement and this continued reengagement could lead to development of interest, as posited
by Hidi and Renninger’s (2006) model of interest development.
The Relationship between Interest and Engagement
As stated previously, motivation is defined as the process whereby goal directed behavior
is initiated, directed, and sustained (Schunk, Meece, & Pintrich, 2013). As a motivational
construct, interest initiates, directs, and sustains behavior. For instance, when a student’s interest
is triggered, motivation is initiated. In the phases of maintained situational, emerging individual,
and well-established individual interest, goal directed behavior is sustained and directed as the
student seeks answers to curiosity questions. Earlier, I stated that whereas motivation is a
process, engagement is action that stems from this process (Schunk, Meece, & Pintrich, 2013).
Therefore, the logic follows that interest leads to engagement. As an example, a student that has
an emerging individual interest will seek out information and thus behaviorally engage with the
content. When the interested student is relating content to her/his prior knowledge and
28

experience, cognitive engagement takes place. Finally, because the student is interested, s/he
enjoys learning about and values the content, which is emotional engagement.
It would appear that interest leads to engagement; however the reciprocal relationship
exists as well (Ainley, 2012). That is, the more a student engages with content and integrates it
into their existing framework the information becomes personally meaningful and relevant.
Thus, this continued reengagement increases interest. The cyclical process of reengagement and
interest development is continuous as long as the student is motivated to explore the content.
Motivational Factors Influencing Engagement and Interest
What factors influence engagement and interest development in STEM topics? In the
following, I describe empirical research that will answer the above question as it relates to the
proposed study. I begin by describing motivational factors that influence engagement and
interest in STEM such as emotion and task-value. Next, I describe an intervention known as
TTES, which was designed to facilitate learning in a way that would effectively promote interest
and engagement in STEM. Last, I describe how adding a parent involvement intervention to
TTES could increase the effectiveness of the model and truly facilitate connected learning.
Motivational factors play an important role in facilitating engagement and interest
development related to STEM topics and careers. Students develop negative emotions, low self-
efficacy, and little value, especially for science and math courses, through interactions with
instructors (Harackiewicz, Rozek, Hulleman, & Hyde, 2012). Recently researchers have
designed interventions aimed at increasing student motivation and engagement in STEM (Pugh,
2010a, 2010b; Harackiewicz, Rozek, Hulleman, & Hyde, 2012; Johnson & Sinatra, 2012; Heddy
& Sinatra, 2013). These motivational interventions focus on impacting student emotions and
value for STEM courses and concepts. I will discuss some of this research below.
29

Emotions. Emotions have been shown to profoundly impact student achievement and
engagement (Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012; Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & Perry, 2002b).
Specifically, Pekrun (2006) discusses academic emotions, which are defined as emotions directly
related to education. Academic emotions are described as forming a 2x2 matrix that includes
positive/negative and activating/deactivating. Positive and negative emotions include enjoyment
and frustration respectively. Activating emotions (e.g., pride) lead to physical arousal and can
generate engagement, whereas deactivating emotions (boredom) cause disengagement.
Academic emotions can be any combination of positive/negative and activating/deactivating (for
more information see Pekrun, 2006). Previous research shows that positive activating emotions
are the most beneficial for motivation and learning related to STEM (Broughton, Sinatra, &
Nussbaum, 2011; Heddy & Sinatra, 2013; Heddy, Sinatra, Danielson, & Graham, 2013).
Broughton and colleagues (2011) conducted a study where they tested the impact of
emotions on conceptual and attitude change when learning about science, specifically the
reclassification of Pluto as a planet. Elementary students held negative emotions about the
reclassification at pretest and were submitted to a refutation text intervention. A refutation text
directly refutes misconceptions and states why they are not consistent with scientific viewpoints,
after which it provides the scientific conceptions and explains the rationale for the concept. This
intervention increased student engagement with the text, which increased positive affect and
facilitated conceptual and attitude change. The findings are important because they show that
engagement can increase positive emotions related to STEM topics, which has a positive impact
on achievement and interest. Similarly, Heddy and Sinatra (2013) conducted a study where they
investigated the influence that out-of-school engagement would have on positive affect and
conceptual change related to learning science. The results showed that out-of-school
30

engagement increased enjoyment related to the science topic (biological evolution). Enjoyment
is a key component of developing interest and thus one could posit that out-of-school
engagement may play a major role in interest development related to STEM topics.
Negative emotions may reduce student achievement, engagement, and motivation for
STEM courses (Lombardi & Sinatra, 2013; Griffith & Brem, 2004; Linnenbrink & Pintrich,
2003; Sharafi, Hedman, & Montgomery, 2006). Specifically, anxiety can have a detrimental
impact on student engagement as it leads to lack of attention (Rosenfeld, 1978). Anxiety can be
particularly damaging for students who may experience stereotype threat, such as the myth that
women are not able to succeed in science, when learning STEM (Steele & Aronson, 1995).
Heddy, Sinatra, and Seli (2013) found that facilitating out-of-school engagement through TTES
reduced negative emotions and promoted interest. This study was conducted with college
students and results likely will not generalize to K-12 contexts. Motivational research suggests
that a dynamic interplay exists between engagement, interest, and emotions (Pekrun &
Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012).
Task Value. According to expectancy-value theory, task value is defined as the reason
that students believe that they should engage in particular tasks (Eccles, 2005; Wigfield &
Eccles, 2002). Eccles and Wigfield (1995) posit four types of task values including intrinsic
value (interest, enjoyment), attainment value (importance), utility value (usefulness), and relative
cost (time, effort). Task value has an intimate relationship with both engagement and interest.
Hidi and Renninger (2006) theorize that increased perceived value can advance students through
the four phases of interest development. Johnson and Sinatra (2013) found that inducement of
task value generates engagement.
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Recent research has developed interventions that increase perceived value and lead to
interest in science (Harackiewicz & Hulleman, 2010; Harackiewicz, Rozen, Hulleman, & Hyde,
2012; Johnson & Sinatra, 2013). Hulleman and his colleagues (Hulleman, Godes, Hendricks, &
Harackiewicz, 2010) explored the impact that task values have on interest in math and science.
Students in the treatment condition were asked to write how math or science concepts were
relevant to their everyday lives. This writing task increased students perceived task value and
consequently increased interest in the topics. This finding is particularly relevant because TTES
facilitates recognition of task-vale of classroom content to everyday life.
Johnson and Sinatra (2013) conducted an intervention in which they induced task value
(attainment, utility) in students learning about science (common cold) in an attempt to facilitate
engagement and conceptual change. To induce value, participants read a text about a fictional
character that valued the content and then the student reflected on times when they had value.
The participants where then told to approach a task, in this case learning science, the same way
as the fictional character. The students in the value induction conditions reported higher levels
of engagement and conceptual change than in the control. Further, the students in the utility
value condition reported the highest level of engagement. The findings suggest that when
science topics have utility value (e.g. usefulness for ones future career) students are more likely
to engage with the content. However, this study was conducted in a laboratory setting and the
extent of external validity is questionable. More research needs to be conducted on generating
value, engagement, and interest in STEM for female students. Below I describe a motivational
intervention that combines constructs of emotions, task-value, interest, and engagement to
facilitate an optimal learning experience known as TTES.
Teaching for Transformative Experience in Science Model
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Transformative Experience (TE) is a special kind of learning that takes place when
students apply what they have learned in class to their everyday experience to see their world in
exciting new ways (Pugh, 2002, 2004). Specifically, TE has three components including
motivated use, expansion of perception, and experiential value. Each of the three components is
considered an aspect of one of the three forms of engagement. First, motivated use is considered
to be an aspect of behavioral engagement because students exert effort to physically apply
science concepts to their out-of-school experience. Next, when application occurs the student’s
perception is expanded and thus s/he is cognitively engaged. Last, the value component of TE is
related to affective engagement. Pugh and his colleagues (2010a, 2010b) have designed an
instructional model in order to generate out-of-school engagement.
The Teaching for Transformative Experience in Science (TTES) model was developed in
order to facilitate out-of-school engagement with school concepts (Pugh, 2011). TTES has three
elements including the instructor modeling her/his own TE, scaffolding student TE, and teaching
for value (Girod, Twyman, & Wojcikiewicz, 2010; Pugh, 2002, 2004). As suggested by social
cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), TTES implements modeling as a pedagogical technique. That
is, instructors provide examples of when they engaged TE in their own everyday experience.
The instructor then gives students an opportunity to apply concepts and share in class. When
students share, the instructor helps them relate the experience to the three components of TE.
Eventually, students can comprehend their transformative experiences without aid from the
instructor. Finally, the instructor explicitly teaches for value when presenting concepts.
TTES has proven to be successful for facilitating each of the three forms of engagement
with science concepts (Pugh, 2002, 2004; Pugh et al., 2010a, 2010b; Girod, Twyman, &
Wojcikiewicz, 2010; Heddy & Sinatra, in press). Pugh (2002, 2004) explored the impact that
33

TTES would have on behavioral engagement in informal learning environments. Students in the
treatment exhibited more engagement than those in the control when observational coding was
implemented. Pugh and colleagues (2010a) and Heddy and Sinatra (2013) showed the
effectiveness that TTES has for facilitating conceptual change (cognitive engagement), which
was predicted by the cognitive reconstruction of knowledge (CRKM) model (Dole and Sinatra,
1998). Researchers have found that when students engage in TE, positive emotions (enjoyment,
enthusiasm, hope, pride) increase and negative emotions (boredom, dullness) decrease, which
suggests that TE impacts affects engagement as well (Heddy & Sinatra, 2013; Heddy, Sinatra, &
Seli, 2013).
Researchers have not yet attempted to develop student interest in science using TTES.
However, Renninger and Su (2012) posit that TTES would in fact develop interest because it
facilitates reengagement, knowledge acquisition, and recognition of value, all factors
hypothesized to generate interest by Hidi and Renninger (2006). Heddy, Sinatra, and Seli (2013)
showed that students who received TTES instruction reported higher levels of interest than a
comparison condition. Although students in the treatment exhibited higher interest, whether or
not interest actually developed was inconclusive because interest was only measured at one time
point. To assess interest development, interest has to be measured on multiple occasions.
Exploring whether or not TTES facilitates the development of interest through Hidi and
Renninger’s (2006) four phases would be a fruitful topic for future research.
Although TTES may be an effective pedagogical tool for facilitating out-of-school
engagement and interest development, there are three potential limitations related to the
construct and research conducted on the topic. First, the construct only includes one aspect of
each form of engagement. A problematic is that TE and out-of-school engagement are
34

synonymous because engagement consists of more than just the three aspects of TE. Second,
TTES has almost exclusively been implemented on biological science. One study has explored
the influence of TTES on educational psychology concepts (Heddy, Sinatra, & Seli, 2013).
TTES needs to be implemented not only in biology, but in physics, chemistry, technology,
engineering, and math before claims can be made on its usefulness at a STEM intervention.
Third, Heddy and Sinatra effectively implemented TTES, but the lead researcher was the
instructor, which poses threat to external and ecological validity. Further, this study was
conducted with college students and thus results cannot be generalized to K-12 settings. Last,
currently no mechanism exists in TTES to ensure that students actually engage with content in
their everyday experience. TTES is a classroom intervention, that asks students to look for
examples of content outside of school, but no medium exists outside of school to remind students
to look for examples. However, parents may be an untapped motivational resource to encourage
engagement with classroom content in student’s everyday life.
Parental Involvement
Researchers, instructors, and parents almost unanimously agree that parent’s caring about
and being involved in their children’s academic lives is beneficial for students. In fact, federal
policy such as No Child Left Behind (2001) had parental involvement as one of its six targeted
reform areas. Even state and local policy has adopted parent and child interaction as an
important aspect of improving education (Adams et al., 2004). These policy initiatives are based
on a large amount of research suggesting that parent involvement in students’ academic lives has
many positive outcomes such as motivation and achievement (Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008;
Jynes, 2005; Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwack, 2007; Hill & Taylor, 2004; Fan & Chen, 2001).
However, parental involvement involves more than just homework time and many factors may
35

influence whether or not involvement is in fact beneficial (Epstein & Voorhis, 2001). To fully
comprehend the multiple facets of parent involvement, a concrete definition is necessary.
Parental involvement is defined as parents giving resources (e.g. time, effort, money),
which impacts their children’s academic lives (Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994). Further, a
distinction has been made between school-based and home-based involvement (Pomerantz,
Moorman, & Litwack, 2007). School-based involvement occurs when parents make contact with
the school including: attending parent-teacher conferences and science fairs, calling to talk to
teachers, chaperoning field trips, etc. Home-based involvement occurs when parents engage
with students’ academic lives outside of school, often in the home. This can include helping
students with homework, asking children what they learned at school, and discussing the value of
schooling. Both school-based and home-based involvement has proven to have many beneficial
effects on children’s academic lives such as achievement and motivation (Hill & Taylor, 2004;
Grolnick, Kurowski, & Gurland, 1999; Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008).
There are many mechanisms suggested to generate the benefits of parental involvement
on schooling. One set of positive benefits is related to skill development. First, Baker and
Stevenson (1986) suggest that when parents become involved in school, they better understand
their children’s academic lives, and can assist them in developing cognitive and metacognitive
strategies. Second, when parents become involved, they more accurately understand their
children’s skill level and can assist them accurately (Connors & Epstein, 1995). Third, when
teachers perceive parents as involved, they give the involved parents children more attention in
the classroom (Epstein & Becker, 1982). Each of these mechanisms better assist children in
developing beneficial skills for school achievement.
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A second set of mechanisms that causes parent involvement to impact schooling includes
developing children’s motivational resources. When parents are involved they show value for
schooling and children often acquire this value, which may be internalized over time (Hill &
Taylor, 2004). Second, when parents are involved, they model how to assert control over and
conquer challenges (Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994). Therefore, children will learn how to be
autonomous over their own academic lives. Third, parental involvement can build self-
confidence when parents help children succeed, which can lead children to be self-efficacious
towards school tasks.
School-based involvement has clearly shown to predict benefits such as achievement and
motivation in children (Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008; Hill, 2001; Grolnick & Ryan, 1989;
Miliotis, Sesma, & Masten, 1999). However, the result of home-based involvement on school
outcomes has been mixed (Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwack, 2007). On the one hand,
researchers have found that there are positive effects of home-based parent involvement on
children’s school functioning (Hill et al., 2004; Hickman et al., 1995). On the other hand,
researchers have found that parent involvement with homework can have a negative impact on
children’s school functioning (Georgiou, 1999; Cooper, Lindsay, & Nye, 2000). But when
parents’ involvement does prove to have a positive impact on children’s academic life, it seems
to be due to both skill and motivational development. For this reason, in the present study a
home-based intervention will be used to impact children’s’ engagement, value, interest, and
learning related to STEM. I will now discuss research that specifically explores the impact of
home-based parent involvement on interest and engagement related to STEM.
Parental Involvements Impact on Interest and Engagement with STEM
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The pipeline that moves students to pursue STEM careers often narrows in high school,
which is where some students begin to lose interest in the disciplines (Tyler-Wood, Knezek, &
Christensen, 2010). Parents can be an integral factor influencing student motivation to pursue
STEM knowledge and careers (Harackiewicz, Rozek, Hulleman, & Hyde, 2012). A large
amount of research has highlighted the benefits of parental involvement in school learning
including higher achievement, attendance, graduation rates, attitudes toward school, engagement,
and motivation (Eccles & Gootman, 2002; Comer, 2005; Mapp, Johnson, Strickland, & Meza,
2008; Harackiewicz, Rozek, Hulleman, & Hyde, 2012). Unfortunately, many times parents do
not have the knowledge or ability to assist their children in engaging with STEM content (Hill &
Tyson, 2009; Hyde, Else-Quest, Alibali, Knuth, & Romberg, 2006). However, scholars suggest
that facilitating engagement needs to include students, teachers, and parents if interventions are
going to be successful (Wentzel, 2012).
Parents’ attitudes about school and the extent to which they value education have a
dramatic impact on student motivation and engagement (Bempechat, 2004). For instance, when
parents take a mastery approach to learning and homework, students also engage with content in
a mastery-oriented fashion (Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwack, 2007). Further, when parents are
not involved in student learning, the message is sent that education is not of value. However,
when parents do become involved and support students learning process, students become more
self-regulated and engaged with content due to the communicated value for education (Jeynes,
2010; Grolnick & Ryan, 1989). This could be especially true for parents when they express
value or a lack thereof with regard to STEM topics.
Parents’ values toward school disciplines and career fields predict their students’ values
in these areas in students (Jodl, Michael, Malanchuck, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2001). This finding
38

is important because it shows that a parental involvement intervention could be designed to
facilitate value in STEM disciplines and careers in students. Related, recognition of value is a
key component of both affective engagement and the development of interest (Fredricks,
Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004; Hidi & Renninger, 2006). Interventions that target parents’
perceived value in STEM would be effective.
Harackiewicz and her colleagues (2012) conducted an experiment in which the
researchers implemented a parental involvement intervention that was meant to facilitate the
perceived importance of mathematics and science. Brochures were sent home and a website was
created, both of which expressed the usefulness of science and mathematics to students in their
everyday lives. Moreover, the intervention material discussed the benefits of pursuing STEM
careers such as financial aspects (e.g. high paying jobs, more career options). The intervention
successfully facilitated more parental involvement in the treatment than the comparison.
Students whose parents were in the treatment condition enrolled in more science and
mathematics courses, and treatment students reported higher levels of value for STEM courses
and careers. The findings are important and suggest that parents may be an untapped
motivational resource for facilitating interest and engagement in STEM.
Parental Involvement as an Additional Motivational Tool in TTES
Previously, I discussed how TTES can be used to facilitate out-of-school engagement
with STEM topics. However, I also stated that limitations exist with this model. One limitation
in particular is that there exists no mechanism in student’s everyday experience to prompt
students to engage with classroom content. Currently, instructors who implement TTES, model
and scaffold out-of-school engagement (via transformative experience) and suggest that students
look for examples of academic content in their everyday lives. When students return to the
39

classroom they are asked to self-report their experiences; but there is no cue outside of school to
prompt their engagement. I want to explore if adding a parental involvement intervention to
TTES would better facilitate out-of-school engagement, learning, and interest in STEM for
middle and high school girls.
I hypothesized that TTES plus a parental involvement intervention (or TTES+PI) would
generate more out-of-school engagement, interest, and learning in students for several reasons.
First, as stated above parents can function as a reminder in a student’s everyday life to prompt
them to engage with classroom content. Second, a goal of the intervention is to encourage
parents to discuss the value that science topics can have in everyday life. Previous research
shows that when parents express value for school content, students often express similar levels of
value (Jodl, Michael, Malanchuck, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2001). In fact, Harackiewicz and her
colleagues (2012) conducted a study designed to increase parent conversations about the value of
STEM. The results exhibited that students who had increased parent conversations about value,
signed up for more STEM courses in high school. Therefore, the parent intervention
implemented in the present study was modeled from Harackiewicz et al.’s design. Finally, Ito
and her colleagues (2013) suggest that optimal learning takes place when academic, interest-
driven, and social learning occur concurrently, which they call connected learning. Below I
describe connected learning and discuss how TTES+PI can effectively facilitate this optimal type
of learning by facilitating engagement in all three aspects.
Connected Learning
Recently, researchers have begun to conceptualize an approach to education meant to
broaden access to learning known as connected learning (Ito, Gutierrez, Livingstone, Penuel,
Rhodes, Salen, Schor, Sefton-Green, & Watkins, 2013). Connected learning is described is
40

socially embedded, interest driven, and focused on educational or economic advancement.
Specifically, connected learning occurs when a student is afforded the opportunity to pursue
topics of interest with scaffolding from an adult or mentor with the goal of educational
achievement or career success. Connected learning researchers recognize that the most effective
learning takes place when students are individually interested and have social supports to help
them overcome challenge and adversity.
One of the goals of connected learning is to merge three spheres or contexts in which
student learning takes place including: 1) student interests, 2) academic learning, and 3) peer
group or social learning. Underrepresented students may feel like science as belonging to out-
group members (Oyserman, Terry, & Bybee, 2002) thus rendering academic learning ineffective.
Therefore, involving student interests and social aspects of their world such as peer-to-peer
interaction and parental involvement is another avenue for generating increased student
engagement and learning. When students reconcile each sphere connected learning occurs. Ito
and her colleagues (2013) have developed the concept but not a teaching method for how to
achieve connected learning.
The purpose of the proposed study is to facilitate the development of interest and
achievement in STEM encouraging students to engage with content outside of school.
Specifically, I will implement the TTES model (discussed above). TTES, with the addition of a
parental involvement intervention, may be an effective pedagogical method for facilitating
connected learning for three reasons (see Figure 2). First, when students apply content outside of
school, the content becomes personally relevant and valuable, which are components of the
interest sphere. Second, TTES requires an instructor to model and scaffold transformative
experiences in school, which is a component of the academic sphere. Last, the parental
41

involvement intervention is a component of the social sphere. That is, when children socialize
with their parents and discuss school, learning takes place, which can lead to the appropriation of
value and interest. To summarize, TTES, with the addition of the parental involvement
intervention include components of all three spheres of connected learning. According to Ito et
al. (2013) when a student engages in all three forms of learning (interest, academic, social),
effective learning takes place in the form of connected learning. This is why I hypothesize that
TTES+PI will successfully develop student interest and facilitate achievement in middle and
high school girls, which brings me to the research questions and hypotheses below.
[Insert Figure 2 about here]
Research Questions and Hypotheses
Based on my search of the literature and knowledge of the field, I have developed the
following questions to explore the influence that TTES with the addition of a parental
involvement intervention has on out-of-school engagement, interest development and
achievement in science for middle and high school girls:
1) Would TTES+PI promote more out-of-school engagement than a comparison?
2) Would TTES+PI promote more interest development than a comparison?
3) Would the parent intervention promote more parental involvement than a comparison?
4) Would TTES+PI promote more achievement than a comparison?
I predicted that TTES with the addition of a parental involvement intervention would
facilitate increased out-of-school engagement, interest development, achievement, and parent
involvement in middle and high school girls. I predicted that TTES plus a parent intervention
would facilitate greater out-of-school engagement than TTES alone. I made this prediction
because previous research exhibited that TTES can generate out-of-school engagement (Pugh et
42

al., 2010a; Pugh, 2002; Pugh, 2004; Heddy & Sinatra, 2013). However, TTES in K-12 contexts
has shown mediocre results (Pugh, 2004; Pugh, 2002: Pugh et al., 2010a). The addition of the
parent intervention will enhance the impact of TTES and lead to increased recognition of value
and thus engagement as has been seen in previous research (Harackiewicz et al., 2012).
I posited that out-of-school engagement would lead to the development of interest. In
one of my recent studies (Heddy, Sinatra, & Seli, 2013) I found that out-of-school engagement
led to more interest in classroom concepts than another teaching method that has proven to be
successful in previous research. However, since I collected data for interest at one time point
there was no way to investigate if the participants developed interest over time (Renninger & Su,
2012). In the present study I am implementing the interest surveys on two occasions and thus
will be able to assess whether there is development through the interest phases.
More evidence suggesting that TTES+PI may develop interest is that when parents
express value for school, students tend to increase their value too (Jodl, Michael, Malanchuck,
Eccles, & Sameroff, 2001). Renninger and Su (2012) suggest that when students value for
content increases, interest is likely to develop as well. Therefore, if parents become more
involved in students science learning, the students may perceive parental value. This increased
perception of parental science value could lead to an increase in the student’s value, which may
predict further interest development.
I hypothesized that the parent intervention would facilitate parental involvement
significantly more than the comparison (manipulation check). Harackiewicz and her colleagues
(2012) showed that parental involvement interventions can be effective for generating student
value for academic content. Further, when parents exhibit value and interest to schooling,
students are likely to value schooling as well (Jodl, Michael, Malanchuck, Eccles, & Sameroff,
43

2001; Bempechat, 2004). It follows that if parents are involved in their children’s schoolwork
and show interest in content, children’s value, interest, and engagement should increase too.
Therefore, I predicted that a parent intervention would be effective in the present context.
I predicted that TTES with the addition of a parent involvement intervention would
predict greater achievement than the comparison. The addition of a parent intervention may
effectively facilitate engagement in the social sphere of connected learning (Ito et al., 2013).
Learning with the social sphere may have been the missing link in previous research
investigating the impact of TTES. When all three spheres of learning (academic, interest driven,
social) are engaged simultaneously, achievement is likely to increase. Further, a reciprocal
relationship between interest development and achievement has been shown to exist (Hidi &
Renninger, 2006; Renninger & Su, 2012), which may occur in the present study as well.

44

CHAPTER THREE
METHODS
Design
The design for this study was an experimental pre and post intervention with two
conditions. The first condition received the TTES model with the addition of a parent
intervention (TTES+PI). The second condition was a comparison that received the TTES model
without the parent intervention. Stratified random selection was implemented to separate classes
into conditions. Approximately half of the classes at each grade level were randomly selected
into each condition (treatment, comparison). Specifically, three 7th and one 10th grade courses
received the treatment; whereas two 7th and one 10th grade courses received the comparison.
The independent variable was the parent intervention. The dependent variables were engagement
(assessed as transformative experience), interest development, parental involvement, and
achievement.
Participants and Context
The participants in this study were middle-school students from a diverse all-girls
independent school in Los Angeles County. Although not a specifically STEM oriented school,
it has a STEM coordinator that focuses on increasing STEM achievement. This school has 430
students in grades 6-to-12. It is all female and contains the following ethnicities: 64%
Caucasian, 12% Hispanic, 9% African American, 6% Asian, 1% Indian, and 8% other (including
one or more ethnicities). Approximately 28% of the students receive financial assistance.
Participants were students in 4 biology and 2 chemistry classes including five 7th and two 10th
grade courses. The same instructor taught all of the 7th grade classes and a different instructor
taught the 10th grade classes; each contained approximately 15 students (102 overall).
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To gain access to the school I met with the principal and science teachers to discuss the
plan of action. I began the recruitment by presenting a PowerPoint on research that I have
conducted on the topic of out-of-school engagement. I stated the tasks and requirements of the
instructors and explained step-by-step how the study would be implemented. I then asked
permission to collaborate with the instructors. They all agreed to participate and we began co-
designing the study.
Instruments
Out-of-School Engagement
Out-of-school engagement was measured using a 27- item Likert scale modified from an
instrument (Transformative Experience Scale) designed and validated in previous research by
Pugh and colleagues (Pugh, Linnebrink-Garcia, Koskey, Stewart, & Manzey, 2010a). The
survey was delivered pre and post intervention. Items asked students about the degree to which
they apply concepts learned in class to their out-of-school experience. For example, one item
asked, “I thought about the chemistry ideas outside of class.” Participants responded on a 6-
point scale (1 strongly disagree to 6 strongly agree). TES had a high reliability score (pretest: α
= .97; posttest: α = .98).
The TE scale contains all three dimensions of transformative experience: active use,
expansion of perception, and experiential value. Nine questions asked about the participants’
active use (behavioral engagement) of chemistry concepts. An example of an active use question
was, “I sought out opportunities to use the chemistry ideas I’ve learned.” Nine expansion of
perception (cognitive engagement) questions were on the scale such as, “The chemistry ideas
changed the way I view the world.” To explore experiential value (affective engagement), nine
questions were asked regarding science concepts such as; “The chemistry ideas I learned make
46

my out-of-class experience more meaningful.” The scores on all three dimensions were summed
to obtain an overall TE score for each condition.
The TE scale was used to assess student levels of out-of-school engagement. Although
TE only includes one aspect of each of the three forms of engagement, the scale is one of the few
instruments that purports to specifically measure out-of-school engagement. Moreover, the TE
scale is the only validated instrument that includes behavioral (motivated use), cognitive
(expansion of perception), and affective (experiential value) engagement in out-of-school
contexts. Further, the TE scale continuously yields high validity and reliability in previous
research (Pugh et al., 2010a, 2010b; Heddy & Sinatra, 2013; Heddy, Sinatra, & Seli, 2013).
Pugh and his colleagues (2010a) performed a Rasch analysis (Bond & Fox, 2013), which was
used to develop the instrument so all of the items fit the purpose of the scale (for full scale see
Appendix A).
Interest
To explore situational interest, both triggered and maintained, I used a modified version
of the Situational Interest Survey (SIS) (Linnenbrink-Garcia, et al., 2010), which consists of 12
items. The items on this survey assessed both triggered (e.g. “I enjoy the activities in this class”)
and maintained situational interest (e.g. “I think chemistry is very interesting”). Participants
ranked all items on a Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
Individual interest was investigated using a modified version of an 8-item scale adapted
by Linnenbrink-Garcia and her colleagues (2010). The Individual Interest Scale (IIS) assessed
the emotional component (e.g. “I enjoy chemistry”) and value component (e.g. “It is important
for me to learn chemistry”) of interest. Again, items were ranked by students on a scale that
ranged from1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). Both instruments were administered at
47

the onset and conclusion of the study. The SIS (pretest: α = .95; posttest α = .96) and the IIS
(pretest: α = .90; posttest α = .93) had high reliability scores.
The interest instruments were designed using a factor analysis, which provided a
rationale for the factors within each survey. Researchers have since used the surveys and both
have demonstrated validity and reliability in prior studies (Linnenbrink-Garcia, Pugh, Koskey, &
Stewart, 2011; Heddy, Sinatra, & Seli, 2013). Further, these surveys allow disaggregation of
triggered situational, maintained situational, and individual interest in order to investigate the
development of interest. That is, I assessed whether out-of-school engagement effectively
triggers and maintains situational interest and develops individual interest over the course of the
intervention (for full scales see Appendix B).
Parental Involvement
To assess parental involvement, I used a modified version of the Conversations With
Parents (CWP) scale developed by Harackiewicz and her colleagues (2012). CWP is a five item
instrument in which students’ rated their agreement with a statement regarding how much they
had talked to their parents about science class. For example, a question asked, “I have talked to
my parents about science ideas more during this physics unit than during other units.” The
students then rated their agreement on a Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly
agree). CWP was administered at the conclusion of the intervention. I administered the CWP to
assess whether students actually reported engaging in conversations with their parents regarding
classroom content. The CWP had a high reliability score (pretest: α = .88; posttest: α = .93) (for
full scale see Appendix C).
Achievement
48

Knowledge was assessed by exploring differences in final course grades between
conditions. At the end the semester the instructors reported course grades for each student.
Although knowledge gain was not a main focus of the research study, assessment of knowledge
was included for two reasons. First, an important aspect of any science learning intervention is
to facilitate greater understanding of content. Research shows that engagement and interest lead
to higher levels of learning (Heddy & Sinatra, 2013). Second, as Hidi and Renninger (2006)
posit, knowledge and interest have a positive relationship. That is, after triggering a student’s
interest, an important aspect of developing interest to latter phases is knowledge gain.
UCV/C Journals
Students were required to complete a journal entry every two weeks over the course of a
semester, in which they were asked to record a transformative experience that they had in the
two-week time period. These journals were called UCV journals in the comparison condition,
which stands for Use, Change, and Value and UCVC journals, which stands for Use, Change,
Value, and Conversation in the treatment condition. The students recorded their experience in
terms of when they used a concept outside of school, how using the concepts changed their
perception, and why the concepts are useful to them. In addition to these three aspects, the
treatment condition participants also recorded a conversation that they had with a parent about
applying science concepts to their everyday life. Students were then asked to reply to one of
their classmates’ journal entries to promote a discussion oriented atmosphere. Content analysis
was implemented to investigate themes in the journal entries (Krippendorf, 1980; Weber, 1990).
Special attention was paid to the conversation component of the treatment condition to explore
how they may have impacted the quantitative results.
Procedures
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Professional Development
In the late summer, professional development (PD) was conducted with the science
instructors regarding how to implement the TTES model. TTES took place in the form of eight
sessions, which were based on a model of PD for teaching using the TTES model previously
developed and tested (Heddy, Sinatra, & Seli, 2013). The PD sessions were based on the
concepts of modeling how to teach for TE and scaffolding the instructor’s ability to implement
TTES in practice sessions. On day one of the PD, I gave the instructors a presentation on
conceptual and empirical literature related to TE. Specifically, I defined TE, explained TTES,
and discussed results reported in empirical research studies. We ended the first day with a whole
group discussion related to TE and how to teach for out-of-school engagement. On the second
day, I modeled how to teach using the TTES model. I acted as the teacher and the instructors
were the students. I taught for experiential value, modeled my own TE’s, and asked the
instructors to look for examples of the concepts in their everyday experience. On Day 3, I
facilitated a mock discussion where I asked the instructors to share their own transformative
experiences. An important aspect of learning to implement TTES is to first engage in
transformative experiences. Going through the entire process will better allow instructors to
understand what students experience and thus lead to more impactful empathetic instruction.
This concluded the direct instruction portion of the professional development.
Day 4 was the beginning of the practice and reflect portion of the professional
development. That is, I asked instructors to choose a couple of concepts from their respective
courses and practice using TTES. As a whole group we reflected on what worked well and what
could have been improved. On Day 5 the instructors practiced teaching a lesson and engaged in
reflection discussions. Day 6 and 7 were a second round of practice and reflect. On the eighth
50

and final day of the PD we had a whole group discussion related to their instruction using TTES
moving forward and I answered any questions that they had. I asked if they felt ready to begin
implementing TTES in their classrooms. They responded positively, which concluded the PD. I
continued to work with the instructors throughout the semester to improve their TTES
instruction.
I observed each instructor twice during the semester when they implemented TTES and
facilitated UCV discussions. I was positioned in the rear of the classroom so as not to be a
distraction to the students as they learned and engaged in discussion. I took notes on positive
and negative feedback related to implementing TTES. After the class I gave my notes to the
instructor and we discussed improvements that could be made and how they felt about
instruction. At each observation session I noticed progress in effectiveness of instruction and
quality of TTES implementation. These two observations concluded the professional
development. The design of this PD aligns with literature on effective PD (Desimone, 2009).
TTES (both conditions)
On the first day of the semester, in all classes, students were administered the
demographics, interest surveys, conversations with parents scale and TE scale. Next, the
instructor explicitly outlined TE and its importance. The instructors picked concepts from their
courses to model experiences and value. Before every weekend, students were asked to look for
examples of these science concepts in their everyday experience.
Every two weeks students posted one or two instances of TEs onto an online discussion
platform called Haiku. We called these Use (active use), Change (expansion of perception),
Value (experiential value) or UCV journals, which consisted of students sharing TEs that they
engaged in within the two-week timeframe. Students were also required to reply to a classmate’s
51

UCV journal entry in an attempt to facilitate discussion. This process continued bi-weekly for
the entire semester (for an example of a UCV journal entry, see Appendix D)
The day following the due date of the UCV journal entries, the instructors led a small and
whole group UCV discussion of the students’ TEs. The instructor shared their own examples of
TE and then scaffold the students’ examples based on the three dimensions of TE (active use,
expansion of perception, experiential value). For example, when teaching about chemical
reactions, the instructor discussed how wearing a copper necklace left a green mark on his skin
(active use). The instructor then stated that now he thinks about how different chemicals interact
with the body (expansion of perception). Last, the instructor stated that now he is careful about
the accessories he wears so that he doesn’t experience negative reactions and have embarrassing
marks on his body (experiential value). The students were then asked to form small groups of
three to four and discuss each other’s experiences and how they fit the three dimensions of TE.
Then the discussion transitioned to whole group and students were asked to share a classmate’s
out-of-school experience with the concepts. UCV discussions continued bi-weekly throughout
the semester. The interest surveys, parental involvement surveys, and TE scale were
administered near the final week of the semester.
Parental Involvement Intervention (treatment only)
Half of the classes received a parental involvement intervention. The goal of this
methodology was to explore the effect of the parental intervention as an additional motivational
tool to facilitate out-of-school engagement and interest development. Parent involvement
occurred in the form of a slightly modified version of the UCV journal entries and a monthly
newsletter to the parents. To begin, the UCV journals had an additional component and became
use, change, value, conversation or UCVC journals. The fourth component asked students to
52

also write about a conversation that they had with a parent or family member about an
experience that they had with the science concepts. These conversations were also incorporated
into the in-class UCVC discussions the day following the journal entry due date.
Parents were invited to attend a welcome event at the school, which was the start of the
parental involvement training. Parents were taught about TE in the form of UCV (use, change,
value) and how to encourage their children to engage with concepts outside of school. Also, I
developed a monthly newsletter, which explained the usefulness of chemistry and biology
concepts and provided parents with information about places that their students can experience
the science ideas that they learn in class (e.g., Museums, gardens, TV shows). Newsletters were
called “Science is Valuable: A Guide to Helping your Child Enjoy Science.” The newsletters
stated that parents could impact student interest and enjoyment in science by having
conversations with them about instances of engaging with science concepts in the student’s
everyday experience. It then provided examples of conversations that parents could have with
students about science concepts. The newsletters included a list of the main science concepts
that the students were going to learn in that particular month including definitions. Examples of
experiences that students could have with selected concepts were also included. Finally, a note
at the bottom of the newsletter stated that parents didn’t need to know all of the concepts. Rather
they should ask their children to teach them about the concepts and discuss experiences that they
have had with them. Emails stating that newsletters were posted to a website were sent to
parents once a month (for full newsletter see Appendix E).
Analysis
A goal of this research was to explore the effectiveness of TTES+PI to facilitate out-of-
school engagement and develop interest with a diverse set of students. In order to achieve this
53

goal it was essential to implement mixed methods; that is, both quantitative and qualitative
analysis (Creswell, 2009). Due to the fact that participants were nested within classrooms, HLM
was the ideal statistical analysis. I conducted a power analysis using Optimal Design software.
The results of the power analysis suggested that a cluster randomized trial with the treatment at
level 2 would require over 50 participants per cluster (class) in order to justify using hierarchical
linear modeling (HLM). Given that there were only approximately 15 participants per cluster, I
was not able to produce the necessary sample size to achieve sufficient power levels according to
Optimal Design. Thus, a more useful method of analysis was to conduct a repeated measures
analysis of variance. All pretest instruments were used as covariates to control for preexisting
differences between the treatment and comparison. Partial eta squared was conducted to explore
effect size. According to Tabachnick and Fidell (2001) partial eta squared effect sizes range
small (.01-to-.05), moderate (.06-to-.13), and large (.14 and above).
Qualitative analysis was performed with the students’ UCVC journals to provide
triangulation and support for the quantitative data. Specifically a content analysis was performed
on the conversation component of the UCVC journals to find and interpret codes in the text
(Krippendorff, 1980; Weber, 1990). Content analysis focuses on investigating themes and
categorizing text. Specifically, text is searched for common statements, which are categorized
into codes and applied systematically to all text. Using this approach, journal entries were
analyzed in an attempt to find patterns between responses. When patterns emerged in the
responses, codes were generated. Codes were then systematically applied to the UCVC journal
entries. Two researchers (author and graduate student colleague) applied the codes to the journal
entries and interrater reliability was recorded. Further, several qualitative responses were used
within the results to provide rich examples of parent conversations that may have facilitated
54

increase perceived experiential value. Although many researchers implement content analysis
with computer programs, my colleague and I searched text manually with highlighter and pen.

55

CHAPTER FOUR
RESULTS
Data Screening and Descriptive Statistics
Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, skewness, and kurtosis for treatment and
comparison conditions on the TE scale (pre/post), the interest surveys, SSI (pre/post), IIS
(pre/post), course grades (post only), and CWP Scale (pre/post). All skewness and kurtosis
values were less than or equal to an absolute value of 3, indicating that I could assume normality
in the remainder of my analyses (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). Furthermore, no outliers were
found in any of the data (i.e., zs ≤ 3). Data from 13 participants were removed because they did
not complete both implementations of the surveys leaving 89 total participants in data analysis.
All reported tests are two-tailed. All data screening techniques, descriptive statistics, and
advanced statistical analysis were conducted using the SPSS 19 software.
[Insert Table 1 about here]
Differences between conditions were investigated by implementing an independent
sample t-test on the pretest measures including the TE Scale, the interest surveys (SSI and IIS),
and CWP Scale. Pretest scores did not differ between the conditions (see Table 2). These results
suggest it could be assumed that there were no significant differences between conditions that
may skew results. That is, equality could be assumed between the treatment and comparison
condition with regard to the pretest instruments.
[Insert Table 2 about here]
Out-of-School Engagement Findings
To address the first question, Would TTES+PI promote more out-of-school engagement
than a comparison?, a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted using
56

time (pre to posttest on the TE Scale) as the within-subjects factor and group (treatment and
comparison) as the between-subjects factor. I controlled for initial levels of situational interest,
individual interest, and parental involvement by using the interest surveys (IIS and SIS) and
CWP scale pretests as covariates and TE as the dependent variable. A Box’s M test for unequal
group sizes indicated that the assumption of equality of the variance-covariance matrices was
met (Box’s M = 1.13, p = .34). Box’s M indicates non-robust results if significant at the .001
level (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). The results of the repeated measures ANOVA revealed that
the interaction between time and group was statistically significant, F(1, 87) = 4.95, p = .029, η2
= .06. The effect size was moderate. To examine the nature of the interaction, simple effects
were examined for TE scale, pretest versus posttest. Pretest scores did not differ between the
two conditions on TE (Treatment M = 101.95, SD = 27.65, Comparison M = 102.21, SD =
26.67), F(1, 87) = .002, p = 0.97. However, posttest TE scores were significantly greater for the
TTES+PI group (M = 117.19, SD = 27.74) than for the comparison group (M = 104.09, SD =
30.23), F(1, 87) = 4.55, p = .036, η2 = .05, indicating a small effect size. These results show that
implementation of TTES+PI resulted in greater out-of-school engagement in the treatment group,
than that evidenced by the group that received just TTES without the parental intervention. I
then conducted a paired samples t-test to determine if the difference between the means was
significant at pretest and posttest for both conditions independently. The t-statistic for the
treatment condition was significant, t (45) = 3.63, p = .001. The t-statistic was not significant for
the control condition, t (42) = .335, p = .739. These results suggest that the treatment condition
reported an increase in TE, whereas the comparison saw no gain.
After investigating differences in scores between conditions on the TE scale overall, I
further dissected differences in out-of-school engagement by exploring dissimilarities on each of
57

the three dimension of TE. There was no difference between the treatment group and the
comparison on the active use dimension (Pre: Treatment M = 36.39, SD = 10.62, Comparison M
= 36.02, SD = 10.53; Post: Treatment M = 41.74, SD = 10.85, Comparison M = 37.33, SD =
11.26) F(1, 87) = 2.19, p = .142. There was no significant difference between conditions on the
expansion of perception dimension comparison (Pre: Treatment M = 25.96, SD = 7.18,
Comparison M = 25.88, SD = 7.85; Post: Treatment M = 30.00, SD = 7.87, Comparison M =
27.28, SD = 7.93) F(1, 87) = 1.86, p = .176. However, there was a significant interaction on the
experiential value dimension of the TE scale (Pre: Treatment M = 39.61, SD = 11.32,
Comparison M = 40.30, SD = 9.55; Post: Treatment M = 45.46, SD = 10.76, Comparison M =
39.49, SD = 12.51) F(1, 87) = 5.811, p = .018, η2 = .06, indicating a moderate effect size. A
follow-up analysis showed that pretest scores did not differ between the two conditions, F(1, 87)
= .097, p = 0.756. However, posttest scores were significantly higher for the TTES+PI group
than for the comparison group on the experiential value dimension of TE, F(1, 87) = 5.84, p =
.018, η2 = .06, indicating a moderate effect size. These results show that implementation of
TTES+PI resulted in greater experiential value in the treatment group, than that evidenced by the
group that received just TTES. I then conducted a paired samples t-test to determine if the
difference between the means was significant at pretest and posttest for both conditions
independently. The t-statistic for the treatment condition was significant, t (45) = 3.70, p = .001.
The t-statistic was not significant for the control condition, t (42) = .353, p = .726. These results
suggest that the treatment condition expressed more experiential value at post than pre.
However, the comparison condition did not report a comparable increase.
Interest Development Findings
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To address the second question, Would TTES+PI promote more interest development
than a comparison? a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted using
time (pre to posttest on the SIS) as the within-subjects factor and group (treatment and
comparison) as the between-subjects factor. Pretests of the TE Scale, ISI, and CWP scale were
used as covariates and SIS was the dependent variable. The Box’s M test indicated that our
assumption of equality of the variance-covariance matrices was met (Box’s M = 4.02, p = .007).
The results of the repeated measures ANOVA revealed that the interaction was statistically
significant, F(1, 87) = 5.99, p = .016, η2 = .07, indicating a moderate effect size. To examine the
nature of the interaction, simple effects were examined for SIS, pretest versus posttest. Pretest
scores did not differ between the two conditions (Treatment M = 59.39, SD = 10.18, Comparison
M = 55.79, SD = 9.91), F(1, 87) = 2.85, p = 0.09. However, posttest scores were significantly
greater for the TTES+PI group (M = 58.15, SD = 8.86) than for the comparison group (M =
49.81, SD = 14.69), F(1, 87) = 10.67, p = .002, η2 = .11, again exhibiting a moderate effect size.
These results show that implementation of TTES+PI resulted in greater situational interest in the
treatment group, than that evidenced by the group that received the comparison. I then
conducted a paired samples t-test to determine if the difference between the means were
significant at pretest and posttest for both conditions independently. The t-statistic for the
treatment condition was not significant, t (45) = .765, p = .448. The t-statistic was significant for
the control condition, t (42) = -2.48, p = .017. These results suggest that the treatment condition
experienced no gain from pre to post. However, the comparison experienced a significant
decrease in situational interest.
After investigating differences in scores between conditions on the SIS overall, I further
examined situational interest by exploring differences on triggered and maintained situational
59

interest. There was no difference between the treatment group and the comparison (Pre:
Treatment M = 19.85, SD = 3.77, Comparison M = 18.14, SD = 3.95; Post: Treatment M = 19.41,
SD = 3.20, Comparison M = 16.70, SD = 5.17) with regard to triggered situational interest F(1,
87) = 3.26, p = .074. However, there was a significant interaction between conditions from pre-
to-post on the maintained situational interest dimension of the TE scale (Pre: Treatment M =
39.54, SD = 6.68, Comparison M = 37.65, SD = 6.32; Post: Treatment M = 38.74, SD = 6.06,
Comparison M = 33.12, SD = 9.88) F(1, 87) = 8.99, p = .004, η2 = .10, showing a moderate
effect size. A follow-up analysis exhibited that pretest scores did not differ between the two
conditions, F(1, 87) = 1.88, p = 0.174. However, posttest scores were significantly greater for
the TTES+PI group than for the comparison group, F(1, 87) = 10.62, p = .002, η2 = .11,
indicating a moderate effect size. These results show that implementation of TTES+PI resulted
in greater maintained situational interest in the treatment group, than that evidenced by the group
that received the comparison. We then conducted a paired samples t-test to determine if the
difference between the means were significant. The t-statistic for the treatment condition was
not significant, t (45) = .771, p = .445. The t-statistic was significant for the control condition, t
(42) = -2.77, p = .008. These results suggest maintained interest remained steady for the
treatment group. However, there was a significant decrease in maintained situational interest in
the comparison condition.
We also explored growth in individual interest by again conducting a repeated measures
analysis of variance (ANOVA) using time (pre to posttest on the IIS) as the within-subjects
factor and group (treatment and comparison) as the between-subjects factor. I controlled for
initial levels of transformative experience, situational interest, and parental involvement by using
the TE Scale, SIS, and CWP scale as covariates and IIS as the dependent variable. A Box’s M
60

test for unequal group sizes was met (Box’s M = 1.87, p = .132). The results of the repeated
measures ANOVA revealed that the interaction between time and group was statistically
significant, F(1, 87) = 7.06, p = .009, η2 = .08. The effect size was moderate. To examine the
nature of the interaction, simple effects were examined for the IIS, pretest versus posttest.
Pretest scores did not differ between the two conditions (Treatment M = 37.50, SD = 7.55,
Comparison M = 34.60, SD = 6.64), F(1, 87) = 3.67, p = 0.059. However, posttest scores were
significantly higher for the TTES+PI group (M = 36.91, SD = 7.46) than for the comparison
group (M = 30.84, SD = 9.44), F(1, 87) = 11.43, p = .001, η2 = .12, again showing a moderate
effect size. These results show that implementation of TTES+PI resulted in greater individual
interest in the treatment group, than that evidenced by the group that received the comparison.
We then conducted a paired samples t-test to investigate if the difference between the means
were significant at pretest and posttest for each condition independently. The t-statistic for the
treatment condition was not significant, t (45) = .551, p = .585. The t-statistic was significant for
the control condition, t (42) = -2.60, p = .013. These results suggest that, similarly to the
situational interest findings above, the treatment did not report a change in individual interest
from pre to post; whereas the comparison reported a significant decline in individual interest.
Parental Involvement Findings
To address the third question, Would the parent intervention promote more parental
involvement than a comparison? a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was
conducted using time (pre to posttest on the CWP scale) as the within-subjects factor and group
(treatment and comparison) as the between-subjects factor. I used the SIS, IIS, and TE scale as
covariates and CWP scale as the dependent variable. A Box’s M test for unequal group sizes
indicated that our assumption of equality of the variance-covariance matrices was met (Box’s M
61

= 3.62, p = .01). The results of the repeated measures ANOVA revealed that the interaction
between time and group was significant, F(1, 87) = 7.84, p = .006, η2 = .09. The effect size was
moderate. To examine the nature of the interaction, simple effects were examined for TE scale.
Pretest scores did not differ between the two conditions (Treatment M = 20.59, SD = 5.23,
Comparison M = 19.98, SD = 5.52), F(1, 87) = .286, p = 0.59. However, posttest scores were
significantly higher for the TTES+PI group (M = 23.15, SD = 7.74) than for the comparison
group (M = 19.09, SD = 7.09), F(1, 87) = 10.89, p = .001, η2 = .11, again indicating a moderate
effect size. These results show that implementation of the parent intervention resulted in greater
parental involvement and conversations in the treatment group. I then conducted a paired
samples t-test to determine if the difference between the means were significant at pretest and
posttest for each condition alone. The t-statistic for the treatment condition was significant, t
(45) = 2.80, p = .007. The t-statistic was not significant for the control condition, t (42) = .730, p
= .469. These results show that the treatment experienced an increase in parent conversations,
whereas the comparison did not report an increase.
Achievement Findings
To address the fourth question, Would TTES+PI promote more achievement than a
comparison? a univariate analysis of variance was conducted on the final course grades of
students in each condition. Levene’s test for equality of variance was conducted which indicated
that our assumption of equality of variance was met, F(1, 87) = .024, p = .876. There was no
significant difference between conditions on achievement (Treatment M = 90.09, SD =6.96,
Comparison M = 90.26, SD = 6.99), F(1, 87) = .013, p = .910. These results suggest that there
was no difference in semester grades between the treatment and comparison. Further, 56
participants (63%) scored a 90% or higher showing that overall the sample was high achieving.
62

Qualitative Interpretation of UCV/C Journals
The results discussed above suggest that students in the treatment condition (TTES+PI)
engaged in significantly higher self-reported TE than the comparison condition. This is an
interesting finding because both conditions received TTES instruction. The treatment received
TTES with the addition of a parental involvement intervention, while the comparison received
TTES without a parent intervention. Further, when the TE Scale was disaggregated into its three
subcomponents (motivated use, expansion of perception, experiential value) and analyzed, there
was no significant difference between conditions with regard to motivated use and expansion of
perception. That is, both conditions equally used the content in their everyday experience and
had their perceptions changed by the science concepts. However, the treatment condition
reported significantly higher experiential value, suggesting that parental involvement may have
been a factor in increasing students’ perceived value. This increase in perceived value may have
been the mechanism for maintaining interest in the treatment condition, whereas interest declined
in the comparison. Therefore the goal of the qualitative analysis was to investigate patterns
related to experiential value recorded in students UCV/C journals.
The focus of the qualitative analysis was with relation to the finding that the treatment
group scored higher on the experiential value subcomponent of TE Scale. The treatment
condition received a parent intervention and for that reason the UCVC journals were analyzed
for responses that included value related statements that included parent conversation and
involvement. Specifically, a content analysis (Weber, 1990) was implemented to investigate the
text for patterns. Three codes emerged from the data that suggest that students may have
perceived experiential value from parent conversations including: 1) parental value statements,
2) co-activity engagement, 3) student teaching the parent. Two independent researchers applied
63

the codes to the journal entries and interrater reliability was established with 86% agreement,
which is considered excellent (Fleiss, 1981). Further, interrater reliability was calculated for
each coding scheme including PVS, co-activity engagement, and child teaching the parent, with
agreement scores of 88%, 91%, and 78% respectively (all excellent according to Fleiss, 1981).
Disagreements were discussed and a final code was rendered for each journal entry. Each of
these categories will be explained and student responses will be provided.
The most common category of parents’ behavior that may facilitate experiential value
was parental value statements, which was coded in 35.21% of the responses. This occurs when
students report that parents stated that science concepts were valuable. For instance, one student
wrote, “When I talked to my mom about how nickel rings cause your skin to turn green, she
thought it was really interesting that something so simple could cause a chemical reaction.” Here
the student’s mother is showing value for the concept of chemical reactions by simply stating
that she thinks they are interesting. Another student stated, “I learned that no two people will
never see the same rainbow because when you see a rainbow you are seeing the light reflected
off of different raindrops, and if someone is standing next to you, they also see the light, but
reflecting off of different raindrops. When I discussed this with my dad he was amazed by this
fact, because like me he never knew of this.” In this situation, the parent either stated that he was
amazed or the child perceived them to be amazed. Amazed is a strong word, and perceiving
someone as amazed shows that the person has value for the concept; so much value that they are
amazed. Previous research suggests that when parents express value for school, children express
value as well (Jodl, Michael, Malanchuck, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2001). Therefore, these value
statements may be beneficial for children, which potentially could increase experiential value
and in turn overall TE, while maintaining interest.
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A second category of parent involvement that could influence experiential value was co-
activity engagement, which was coded in 15.49% of the responses. In this type of involvement,
parents engaged in activities with their children and discussed the concepts. For example, a
student wrote, “Over the weekend I found a penny on the ground when I was with my dad. I
noticed it had some green on it. Then I realized that it was due to a chemical reaction. I did not
know what happens to old pennies so I asked my dad. He loved that I asked him. He did not
know what the chemical reaction was so we looked it up on the computer.” In this example the
child and her father searched on the internet to answer questions about chemical reactions.
Looking up answers together on the internet was a common theme that arose in the UCVC
journal entries. Another theme in this category occurred when students wrote about real world
activities that they engaged in with their parents. A student wrote, “My mom and I got our nails
done the other day and so we decided to talk about acetone. Acetone strips away old nail polish
because it’s a base. The base breaks the bonds of the polish.” In this instance, the mother and
her child engaged in a real world activity together (manicures) and discussed science concepts.
When parents are willing to engage in activities with their children related to schooling, it can
show that they value it enough to spend time during leisurely activities to discuss science, which
may increase out-of-school engagement.
The third theme that arose from the journals was instances where the student taught the
parent about science concepts, which was coded in 19.72% of the responses. For example, a
student wrote, “When I talked to my mom about this at first she was really confused so I had to
explain the electromagnetic spectrum etc. to her. After explaining the process to her she said that
it was very interesting to know how our eyes work because she never knew before.” This is a
good example of a mother letting her daughter teach her about the science concepts. A second
65

student explained, “I had a discussion with my mom and sat down and explained to her
everything that we had been covering in class so far regarding waves, frequency, wavelength and
electromagnetic radiation. I then told her about how radio waves had a longer wavelength and
smaller frequency, which is their inverse relationship and how depending on their type of radio
station (AM or FM) they would have a higher or lower frequency. I could tell she actually
understood what I was saying because she couldn’t believe how interesting it was that the radio
was transmitted through waves.” Again the parent learned about science concepts by letting her
child explain the ideas. When parents take time to listen and learn from their children it may
show value for the concepts.
To explore the relationship between the qualitative codes and the quantitative outcomes,
bivariate correlations were investigated. Specifically, the parent value statement code, co-
activity engagement code, and student teaching parent code were analyzed with regard to their
relationship to the posttest scores of TES, SIS, IIS, achievement, and CWP. The frequency that
each participant was recorded writing each code was calculated, as was the overall frequency of
codes for each student. The results showed that: parent value statements were significantly
correlated with TES, SIS, and achievement; co-activity engagement was significantly related to
achievement; student teaching the parent was correlated with the Conversations with Parents
scale; and the overall frequency of codes per participant was correlated with situational interest
(see Table 3 below). These results suggest that each of the codes was significantly related to one
or more of the outcomes in the current study.
[Insert Table 3 about here]
Each of the three themes that emerged from the qualitative data contributes to
understanding how the parent involvement intervention may have facilitated increased
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experiential value in the treatment condition. When parents express value, co-engage in
activities, and allow their children to teach content to them, student’s value for science may
increase. Further, this increase in value could have an impact on interest, achievement, and
motivation in general. More research needs to explore these themes and others that may emerge
when parents engage with their children related to science, especially for young women.

67

CHAPTER FIVE
DISCUSSION
Summary of the Findings
Question 1: Transformative Experience
In Question 1, I explored if TTES+PI facilitated more TE than TTES. The results
suggest that as predicted, TTES+PI did in fact predict higher self-reported TE than TTES alone.
Indeed, the significant interaction revealed that the treatment condition reported a significant
gain from pre-to-post survey; whereas the comparison condition did not report a gain in TE. I
also analyzed each dimension of TE, which included motivated use, expansion of perception, and
experiential value. There was no difference between conditions on the motivated use and
expansion of perception subscales. However, there was a significant interaction between
conditions on the experiential value subscale. Further analysis suggests that TTES+PI made a
significant gain on experiential value and the comparison made no such gain. The results
suggest that TTES+PI prompted middle and high school girls to engage more with science
content in their everyday experience. The major difference between conditions was a higher
recognition of value of science concepts through parental involvement. The qualitative results
support the finding that students in the treatment reported higher experiential value. Themes that
arose that could explain this phenomenon were parent value statements, co-engaging in
activities, and allowing children to teach content to parents. Each of these themes could help
explain increased experiential value in the treatment group.
Question 2: Interest
An important goal of this study was to investigate the impact that TTES+PI would have
on the development of interest. There was a significant interaction between conditions from pre-
68

to-post on the SIS. I further explored this interaction and found that there was no difference
between conditions on the initial implementation of the survey. However, there was a difference
with regard to the post intervention survey. TTES+PI did not lead to a change in reported
situational interest; whereas the comparison (TTES) reported a significant decline in situational
interest. I then examined triggered interest and found no interaction between conditions. There
was, however, a difference between conditions on the maintained interest subscale, which
showed that the treatment saw no change, but the comparison experienced a decline in
maintained interest. Finally, I also explored individual interest and found a similar result. The
treatment reported no change in individual interest; whereas the comparison reported a decline.
The results suggest that TTES+PI maintained middle and high school girls situational and
individual interest related to science concepts. However, TTES without a parent involvement
intervention showed a decline in maintained situational and individual interest for middle and
high school girls with regard to STEM topics.
Question 3: Parent Involvement
In question 3, I explored if the parent intervention in the TTES+PI condition actually
facilitated more parent involvement than the comparison, which was essentially a manipulation
check to see if the treatment was effective. Indeed, the parent intervention successful facilitated
increased self-reported conversations with parents in the treatment group. The results suggest
that TTES+PI effectively worked as a home-based intervention. The parent intervention was the
only difference between conditions, which suggests that parent involvement was the mechanism
that facilitated the results.
Question 4: Achievement
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Finally, I investigated if TTES+PI would have a greater impact on achievement than a
comparison. I found that there was no significant difference between conditions with regard to
achievement, which was measured by comparing average end of semester grades. Both
conditions reported high average semester grades. The lack of a difference could be contributed
to the population under investigation. Further, grades are universally high and may not be a
good predictor of achievement. Discussion of these ideas will be provided below.
Theoretical Implications
The results of this study have important theoretical implications related to facilitating
transformative experience, the development of interest, parental involvement interventions, and
facilitating connected learning. To begin, the addition of a parental involvement intervention to
TTES can increase its effectiveness for enhancing engagement in TE. Inconsistent results have
been found when implementing TTES in previous research (Pugh, 2002; Pugh, 2004; Pugh et al.,
2010a; Heddy & Sinatra, 2013). In particular, TE has been difficult to facilitate in K-12 contexts
(Pugh, 2002; Pugh, 2004; Pugh et al., 2010a). Heddy and Sinatra (2013) successfully
implemented TTES to facilitate TE and conceptual change. However, in that study, the sample
consisted of college students and the instructor was the researcher. Inconsistent results may have
been due to the design and/or implementation of the TTES model.
In most previous research that has investigated TTES implementation occurred in the
following fashion. First, students were taught content, where the instructor modeled the three
components of TE (motivated use, expansion of perception, experiential value). Next, students
were asked to look for examples of classroom content in their everyday life. Then students
would come back to the classroom and share their experiences, which were scaffolded by an
instructor. These steps are repeated on several occasions or over the course of a semester. The
70

hope was that with practice, modeling, and scaffolding, students would begin to engage in
transformative experiences on their own. However, no tool exists within TTES to ensure that
students actually engage with content in their everyday life. That is, there is no mechanism in
students’ everyday life to prompt their re-engagement with classroom content out of school. In
an attempt to solve this issue, a parent involvement intervention was added to TTES.
In the present study, adding a parent intervention to TTES increased student engagement
in TE. Parents can serve as a tool in students’ everyday life to increase the probability that
students make connections between classroom content and out-of-school activities. The increase
in TE may have occurred because parents work as a cue in the child’s life. That is, parents can
remind children to make connections and consider the value of academic content. When
children are reminded, they are more likely to actually engage in TE, which increases the
effectiveness of TTES. For this reason, TTES+PI is suggested as an improved model for
facilitating transformative experience.
When transformative experience was broken down into its three components (motivated
use, expansion of perception, experiential value), an analysis showed that students in the
TTES+PI group perceived more experiential value than the comparison. The qualitative themes
that emerged from the UCVC journals supported the quantitative findings. The enhanced
perceived experiential value of science content may have served as the mechanism for the
increased TE in the TTES+PI condition. This enhancement of experiential value can be
attributed to parent interaction. Previous research suggests that parent’s value, predicted
children’s value for schooling (Jodl, Michael, Malanchuck, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2001). A major
component of the parent intervention in the current study was to facilitate parent and child
conversations about the value of academic content. Therefore, when parents discussed the value
71

of science concepts, their children may have begun to value the content as well, which increased
out-of-school engagement.
Harackiewicz and her colleagues (2012) found inconsistent results with regard to the
value that middle and high school girls reported when having conversations with their parents.
Based on the results of this study, I argue that discussion of value alone may not be enough to
generate perceived experiential value. Rather, a more effective scenario occurs when students
personally experience value in their everyday life and have discussions of value with their
parents. When this happens, the parental conversation becomes more realistic and concrete,
increasing the chances that actual perception of value is enhanced. Further, this conversation and
experience relationship may be reciprocal. For example, a child may have a conversation with
her parent about how chemistry relates to cooking. The child may then attempt to cook and
notice the chemistry concept during the process, thus enhancing engagement. This experience
could then lead to another more reflective and engaging parent conversation. Therefore, a
feedback loop may exist with regard to relationship between parent involvement and out-of-
school engagement.
The results of this study have implications for facilitating the three dimensions of
engagement in out-of-school contexts. In the literature review I suggested that the three
components of TE; which include motivated use, expansion of perception, and experiential
value; align with behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement respectively. Therefore,
TTES+PI may be an effective method for facilitating all three dimensions of engagement. This
is an area for future research. Researchers and instructors may be able to optimize learning by
increasing motivation, participation, and socio-emotional aspects of school. Previous research
suggests that when students are engaged with schooling retention, perceived self-belonging, and
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academic self-concept improves (Finn & Rock, 1997; Finn & Frone, 2004; Oyserman, Terry, &
Bybee, 2002).
The results of this study also have important theoretical implications for student interest.
In the four phase model of interest development, Hidi and Renninger (2006) suggest several
variables that can develop interest including achievement, continuous reengagement, and
increased value, all of which were outcomes of TTES+PI in the current study. Although, there
was no difference between conditions with regard to achievement, both groups (TTES+PI,
TTES) had high final course grades averaging over ninety percent. Therefore, knowledge
increased in both conditions, which can contribute to interest development. However, the big
difference between conditions was higher engagement in TE in the TTES+PI group. As stated
previously, transformative experience can be thought of as willful reengagement with academic
content in one’s everyday life; thus contributing to interest development. Finally, the results
suggest that students who received the TTES+PI intervention had increased perceived
experiential value when juxtaposed to the comparison, another variable that facilitates interest
development. As predicted there was a significant interaction between conditions with regard to
situational and individual interest development. However, when further analyzed the results
were surprising.
The results showed that students who received the TTES+PI intervention did not develop
interest (situational or individual). That is, there was not significantly higher self-reported
interest in the treatment condition than the comparison condition. However, the comparison
condition reported a significant decline in both situational and individual interest. These results
align with previous research, which suggests that students’ motivation for learning science
decreases through middle and high school (Wigfield et al., 1997; Osborne & Dillon, 2008;
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Vedder-Weiss & Fortus, 2011). That is, researchers have consistently discovered that middle
and high school student’s motivation, such as interest, for learning science decreases as they
progress through school. Therefore, the decline that was recorded in the comparison is typical of
what happens in science classrooms.
The finding that the treatment condition had no change in interest may actually be a
positive discovery. No change could be interpreted as interest being maintained over time,
especially when contrasted to the comparison, which saw a decrease in interest. In fact, when we
disaggregated triggered and maintained interest from the SIS, I discovered findings that
paralleled my conclusion about interest being maintained. That is, there was no significant
difference between conditions with regard to triggered situational interest. However, maintained
situational interest declined in the comparison; whereas there was no change in maintained
situational interest from pre to post intervention, in the treatment condition. Again, suggesting
that high initial interest was maintained from the beginning of the semester until the end.
The results suggest that the drop in motivation that is typically found occurring in middle
and high school students (Wigfield et al., 1997; Osborne & Dillon, 2008; Vedder-Weiss &
Fortus, 2011) may potentially be mitigated by TTES+PI. The mechanisms that maintain this
interest are likely knowledge gain, continuous reengagement, and recognition of value of the
scientific content. For these reasons, Renninger and Su (2012) predicted that TTES would
facilitate interest development. The present study shows that TTES alone may be ineffective for
developing interest. The addition of an out-of-school reminder or trigger, such as the parent
involvement intervention seen here, may increase the probability that interest is at least
maintained. This can likely be contributed to the increased value that occurred in the treatment
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condition. TTES+PI is a more effective method at maintaining interest than the original TTES
model.
An interesting finding in the present study was that there was no significant difference
between conditions with regard to achievement. Although on the surface this finding seems
anticlimactic, it must be put in context. Both conditions recorded over 90 percent for final
course grades, which is considered high. The high scores suggest that both interventions were
successful at facilitating learning. This is important because it suggests that the comparison was
also an effective pedagogical technique. That is, two good interventions were compared, rather
than good instruction verses typical or poor instruction, which has implications for the TE and
interest findings. However, course grades may be an ineffective method for assessing
achievement.
Hidi and Renninger (2006) suggest several variables that impact the development of
interest including knowledge gain, continuous reengagement, and recognition of value. The
treatment and comparison had high levels of achievement, which suggests that knowledge gain
alone is not enough to develop or, in the current situation, maintain interest over time. In the
current study a major difference between conditions was that the treatment engaged in
significantly more TE. In particular, the treatment reported higher perceived experiential value
of the science concepts than the comparison. Therefore, a conclusion that can be drawn is that
achievement and knowledge gain alone does not facilitate interest. Instead, the addition of out-
of-school engagement (in this case transformative experience) and in particular recognition of
value may have facilitated the maintaining of situational and individual interest over the course
of the semester. That is, the combination of all three variables (achievement, engagement, value)
may be necessary to maintain interest and should be taken into consideration when designing
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instruction. It appears in the current study that the parent involvement intervention was the
mechanism that facilitated increased transformative experience and maintained value, which has
theoretical implications as well.
Many researchers agree that parental involvement has several positive benefits for
children’s schooling (Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008; Jynes, 2005; Pomerantz, Moorman, &
Litwack, 2007; Hill & Taylor, 2004; Fan & Chen, 2001). This finding was corroborated in the
present study as the addition of a parent involvement intervention to TTES facilitated increased
transformative experience and maintained situational and individual interest. However, the
finding of increased parent involvement and its impact is important because it suggests that
home-based interventions can be effective for generating positive student outcomes such as
learning and achievement.
Home-based interventions are designed to facilitate parent engagement with their
children’s academic lives (Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwack, 2007). Research on the impact of
home-based interventions has been inconsistent with some researchers finding that they can be
beneficial (Hill et al., 2004; Hickman et al., 1995), while others discover that it can actually
hinder learning and motivation (Georgiou, 1999; Cooper, Lindsay, & Nye, 2000). In the present
study a home-based parent involvement intervention was implemented with positive impact on
student out-of-school engagement and maintained situational and individual interest. Several
factors may have contributed to a home-based intervention being effective in the current study.
First, the parent intervention was combined with TTES. The combination of personally relevant
out-of-school experiences and parent conversations may be beneficial when implemented
together. Without the TE, parental conversations about academic content may seem out of
context. Second, as suggested by Baker and Stevenson (1986), parents who become involved in
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children’s school, better understand their academic life and can help them build metacognitive
and cognitive strategies such as engaging in transformative experiences, recognizing value, and
pursuing interests. Third, Epstein and Baker (1982) suggest that when teachers perceive a
student’s parents as being involved, they give more attention to the student. In the present study
students completed UCV/C journals, which the teachers read and graded. The teachers in the
parent group may have given more attention to these students because they perceived their
parents as being involved. Last, the parent conversations can build self-confidence in children
being able to engage with content, which could further facilitate engagement, motivation, and
achievement. More research is needed to explore the mechanisms that made the home-based
intervention in this study more impactful than those implemented in other research studies.
Using mixed-methods, specifically the combination of quantitative and content analysis,
has methodological implications for investigating parent involvement. Harackiewicz and her
colleagues (2012) implemented self-report instruments to explore the effectiveness of their
parent value conversation intervention. In the current study, a content analysis of students’ bi-
weekly parent conversation essays (an aspect of the UCVC journals) were added to the self-
report measure. Adding the analysis of the journal entries provided rich examples of the parent
conversations as well as the mechanisms in the parent conversations that may have increased
perceived experiential value (parent value statements, co-activity engagement, and student
teaching the parent). The content analysis moves beyond the quantitative analysis and allows
thick description of parent conversations. Future studies exploring parent conversations would
benefit from implementing mixed methods in a similar fashion.
Finally, the findings of this study have important implications for facilitating connected
learning. As discussed previously, connected learning occurs when students engage in three
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spheres of learning including academic, interest-driven, and social learning (Ito et al., 2013).
When students engage in all three spheres concurrently optimal learning takes place, which can
maximize achievement and motivation. The TTES model generates academic learning due to the
classroom based modeling and scaffolding of transformative experiences. Further, TTES
facilitates interest-driven learning by promoting personally relevant out-of-school experiences
and value. However, no mechanism exists within TTES to ensure the social aspect of connected
learning. The addition of a parent intervention to TTES promotes parent and family discussion,
which is a social interaction. Therefore, TTES+PI can be an effective tool for facilitating
connected learning and could explain the increase in engagement, maintaining of interest, and
high achievement, which was found in the current study. More research needs to be conducted
to explore the relationship between TTES+PI and connected learning.
Practical Implications
Beyond theoretical and conceptual impact, the findings of the current study have several
practical implications as well. Practical implications include potential influences on practice,
policy, and society. To begin, the findings have implications for classroom instruction.
TTES+PI provides an effective, minimally intrusive, low cost, and fairly easy to implement
method for facilitating student out-of-school engagement and parental involvement for K-12
instructors, specifically, middle and high school science teachers. In the present study, teachers
successfully implemented TTES+PI and had a positive impact on student outcomes. Researchers
have recently called for more applied research to make a direct impact in the classroom and
apply motivational and learning theories (Furlong & Oancea, 2005), which was the goal of the
current study. TE is an integrative concept that combines ideas from expectancy-value theory,
transfer, interest, and engagement (Pugh, 2011). TTES is a pedagogical model that incorporates
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concepts from constructivism, social cognitive, and socio-cultural theories. The goal of the
current study was to add a parent involvement intervention to increase the effectiveness of TTES
in an applied manner. With more research, teachers may be able to apply this model in their own
classrooms.
A second practical implication is the design and successful implementation of a PD
model to teach instructors how to implement TTES+PI. Although, the PD was only briefly
discussed, the instructors successfully conducted TTES+PI and increased beneficial student
outcomes. The PD was relatively brief and simple to implement and could potentially be
implemented on a larger scale. The PD conducted in this study could be a useful option for
teachers to engage in a beneficial continuing education opportunity. More research needs to be
conducted on the effectiveness of the PD within multiple contexts. However, the initial findings
show promise for a high impact PD to generate effective instruction designed to facilitate
learning and motivation in STEM, especially for middle and high school girls.
In the introduction to this study I suggested that motivation and achievement begin to
decline in the middle and high school years (Wigfield et al., 1997; Osborne & Dillon, 2008;
Vedder-Weiss & Fortus, 2011), and that this decline was especially salient for young women in
the STEM disciplines (Tyler-Wood, Knezek, & Christensen, 2010). When young women’s
interest in STEM declines, they are less likely to pursue majors and careers in STEM fields
(Harackiewics et al., 2012). A lack of women pursuing STEM degrees and careers poses a threat
to society. Economists are predicting that soon there will be a shortage of STEM employees
(Cooney & Bottoms, 2003). Further, East Asian and Caucasian men dominate the STEM fields
but this population has been tapped to capacity (Burke & Mattis, 2007). To fill essential STEM
positions unrepresented populations must be trained. Women are one of the underrepresented
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populations that can be reached to fill STEM positions, which would have a positive impact on
STEM fields, the economy, and in turn society. Moreover, STEM careers can provide women
with high paying careers and more upward mobility (Melguizo & Wolniak, 2012). For the
aforementioned reasons, maintaining and generating women’s interest in STEM should be a
major goal for researchers and teachers. TTES+PI may be an effective method for maintaining
young women’s interest in STEM and reducing the typical decline that has been recorded
following elementary school (Wigfield et al., 1997). More research needs to be conducted in
multiple populations before sweeping claims can be made about the impact of TTES+PI but
initial results are promising.
Limitations
As with any study, there are limitations in the current investigation including but not
limited to the population under investigation, research design, and statistical analysis. To begin,
the current study included only 15 participants in each class and a small number of classes at a
single school. Therefore, generalizing findings to other contexts is difficult, which is a threat to
external validity. However, before conducting a large-scale intervention, an important first step
is to ensure that interventions are effective. That is, the goal of the current study was to explore
the effectiveness of the TTES model with the addition of a parent involvement intervention for
facilitating learning and motivation. A second limitation related to the sample under
investigation was that the school is considered moderate to high SES. An eventual goal is to
implement this study with a larger sample including students from lower SES populations to
explore its effectiveness further and increase external validity.
A final limitation related to the context was that research shows that elementary and
middle school students tend to report high initial scores on self-report measures (Rubie-Davies &
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Hattie, 2012). When this occurs a ceiling effect can follow, which happens when participants
report such high scores initially that there is not much room to improve on the posttest. This
limitation could explain the finding of no increase of interest in the treatment condition in the
present study. That is, students scored high on the first implementation of the interest instrument
and did not have much room to improve. This could happen for several reasons including social
desirability, novelty of a new study, or excitement from a new school year.
There were also limitations related to the design of the current investigation. First, there
was no true control condition. That is, a treatment intervention was compared to another
intervention, but the design lacked a true control condition that received typical instruction.
Including a control condition would have afforded the opportunity to compare the interventions
to typical instruction to explore if they were both comparatively effective pedagogical strategies.
However, school administrators and instructors were concerned that students not receiving an
intervention were being treated unfairly and receiving significantly lower quality instruction.
Furthermore, the current design, comparing TTES+PI to TTES, had benefits. The current design
allowed for a comparison of two instructional techniques, which has theoretical and practical
implications (see above). Moreover, a direct comparison could be made between the two
instructional techniques to investigate whether the impact was in fact caused by the addition of
the parent involvement intervention.
A second design related limitation was that there was that the treatment and comparison
conditions contained students in mixed grades (7

and 10). Collapsing grades into conditions can
impact ecological validity because such a scenario does not represent real world contexts and
developmental differences may exist between the students in the different grade levels.
However, due to constraints on sample size combining scores from students in different grades
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was necessary. Moreover, differences between grades with regard to interest, out-of-school
engagement, and parent involvement were explored and no differences were found suggesting
that grades were similar enough statistically to combine.
A third design related limitation was the use of final course grades to assess student
achievement. The results suggest that there were no significant differences between conditions
with regard to final course grades and that both conditions scored relatively high (above 90%
average for both conditions), which provides limited information. This is a limitation because
final course grades are very difficult to interpret due to their subjective nature and restricted
range. In addition, many factors impact final course grades that may not necessarily be related to
the study. A more objective measure would have been test scores throughout the semester. I
inquired about retrieving student test scores but administration was hesitant to provide scores
because of their personal nature. Therefore, course grades were the only option of available data
to explore achievement in the current study.
A final design relevant limitation was highlighted in the findings when the TTES
(comparison) condition did not successfully facilitate TE. An optimal scenario would have been
for TTES to generate an increase in TE, but TTES+PI to facilitate a significantly larger increase.
However, TTES was ineffective for generating TE and I can theorize three reasons why this may
have been the case. First, TE is a very interest laden construct and if the comparison experienced
a decrease in interest, this could have negatively impacted TES scores. Second, UCV
discussions have shown to effectively facilitate TE in prior research (Heddy & Sinatra, 2013).
However, UCV discussions have never been implemented at the K-12 level. A possibility is that
UCV discussions may need to be further modified in K-12 contexts to be effective. More
research needs to be conducted on the usefulness of UCV discussions in secondary school
82

settings. Third, fidelity of implementation may have been a contributing factor to this finding.
Due to time constraints, teachers may have spent minimal time on UCV discussions in class and
not provided enough feedback on UCV journal entries, which could negatively impact
engagement in TE. Further, the teachers discussed fidelity issues that arose in their classrooms.
Both instructors stated that as the semester progressed they began to reduce the amount of class
time they used to facilitate UCV/C discussions. In fact one instructor stated that towards the end
of the semester she did not use class time at all for discussions. A decrease in modeling and
scaffolding could have a negative impact on transformative experience. A weakness of TTES is
that PD needs to be improved to ensure that instruction is implemented with full fidelity. Each
of these reasons is speculative and more research needs to be conducted on TTES and the PD.
A final limitation of the present study was related the statistical analysis conducted. To
analyze the data, univariate, repeated measures, and paired samples t-tests were conducted to
explore differences between the means of each condition. However, students were nested within
classroom and further nested within grades. A more appropriate method of statistical analysis
would have been to conduct multi-level modeling. Multi-level modeling allows analysts to take
nested participants into consideration statistically (Rabe-Hasketh & Skrondral, 2012). As
mentioned previously, a power analysis was conducted to investigate how many participants
were necessary to successfully conduct multi-level modeling and find sufficient statistical power.
The results of the analysis suggested that the sample size was not sufficient to find significant
power when running mutli-level modeling. To solve this issue, previous literature on studies that
implemented similar designs were investigated to explore what analysis was conducted. Pugh
(2002; 2004) implemented repeated measures ANOVA while controlling for all pretest
instruments. A power analysis was conducted on the appropriate sample size when
83

implementing repeated measures ANOVA, of which the results suggested that the sample size
was in fact sufficient. Due to this information the decision was made to conduct repeated
measures ANOVA. Again, the conclusions that can be drawn from this study are limited until a
larger scale study with appropriate analysis strategies are able to be employed.
Future Directions
Many future directions of research were spawned from the findings of the study and I
will discuss five. First, several mechanisms may mediate the relationship between out-of-school
engagement and interest including increased personal relevance, knowledge gain, task-value,
enjoyment, social interaction, and continuous reengagement. Investigating these mechanisms
would assist in progressing understanding of what causes interest to be maintained or decline.
Second, in the present study self-report in the form of Likert scales and open-ended
essays were implemented to explore outcomes of instructional interventions. Other forms of
measurement should be implemented to explore outcomes such as experience-sampling methods,
which allow researchers to explore out-of-school engagement and interest development as it
occurs in context (Csikszentmihalyi, Hektner, Schmidt 2006). Such methods include giving a
student a pager and paging them on numerous occasions randomly throughout the day. When
paged, students write down if they are engaging with classroom topics outside of school.
Implementing experience-sampling methods would afford researchers the opportunity to better
understand the triggers of behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement as it exists out of
school. This would be better than the current method of data collection because ESM would
capture engagement, interest, and parental involvement closer to the point of occurrence,
allowing for better recall of the experiences.
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Third, in the present study the impact of TTES+PI was only limited to TE, interest,
achievement, and parent involvement. There are several other variables that TTES+PI could
potentially impact. For instance, an interesting potential outcome that could be facilitated by
TTES+PI would be identity. When students engage with content in their everyday life,
recognize the value and personal relevance, and become interested in the content, they may begin
to identify with science. Specifically, science may begin to represent the student’s personality.
Further, they may take science related courses and electives in high school and/or major in a
science career in college. As Oyserman et al. (2002) theorize students who come to identify with
science may include scientist as a future possible self. Exploring if TTES+PI can provide
researchers and instructors with a method for increasing the likelihood that students pursue
science and thus could decrease the employee shortage in STEM fields.
A fourth potential future direction based on the findings of the current study would be to
explore the type of value that is occurring when students report an increase in experiential value
through TTES+PI instruction. Results of this study suggest that students in TTES+PI reported
higher levels of experiential value than those in the comparison. Eccles (2005) suggests that four
different types of value exist including intrinsic, attainment, utility, and cost. When students find
content interesting because of TTES+PI this would be intrinsic value. If students find that
science content is important to helping them to define their personality or achieve future goals,
attainment value would be said to occur. Further, students could discover that science content is
useful to their everyday life, signifying utility value. Finally, what are the costs of spending time
and effort to try to engage in transformative experiences or have parent conversations? This may
impact student motivation and willingness to learn and engage with science concepts outside of
85

school. Exploring the impact of TTES+PI on different types of task-value will help to better
understand the idea of experiential value that occurs during this instructional technique.
The fifth, but assuredly not the last, potential future direction based on the findings of the
current study is to explore the impact of TTES+PI on varied contexts. As stated previously, the
present sample was mostly moderate to high SES middle and high school girls. Would TTES+PI
effectively facilitate out-of-school engagement in low SES context? Also, what would be the
impact of TTES+PI in different cultures, where parental involvement may exist in different
forms then how it occurs in this very specific population? Finally, would TTES+PI work
similarly for boys and girls in co-ed settings? These questions and many more should be
explored in depth to investigate the generalizability of TTES+PI to multifarious contexts that
exist within the United States and beyond. The future directions stated above are just but a few
that could be explored to better understand the impact of this pedagogical technique and the
relationship between out-of-school engagement, learning, and motivation.
Conclusion
The goal of the present study was to investigate the impact of TTES with the addition of
a parental involvement intervention for facilitating out-of-school engagement in the form of
transformative experiences, interest, achievement, and parent involvement when compared to
TTES alone. The findings suggest that TTES+PI facilitated significantly more TE and parental
involvement than the comparison. Further, TTES+PI maintained student interest; whereas
interest declined in the comparison condition. The findings have important theoretical,
conceptual, and practical implications. Specifically, TTES+PI can maintain young women’s
interest and motivation in science, which is typically seen to decline after elementary. Although
86

much more research needs to be conducted on the effectiveness of TTES+PI, the initial findings
show promise for a potentially impactful instructional technique and intervention.
87

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TABLES

Table 1: Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive Statistics for the Transformative Experience Scale (Pre to Post), Situational Interest
Survey (Pre to Post), Individual Interest Scale (Pre to Post), Course Grades (Post only), and the
Conversations With Parents survey (Pre and Post) between Groups (N=89)

Treatment Comparison
______________________________ _______________________________
Statistic Mean SD Skewness Kurtosis Mean SD Skewness Kurtosis
TES(pre) 101.95 27.65 .02 -1.00 102.21 26.67 .25 -.81
TES(post) 117.19 27.74 -.25 -.57 104.09 30.23 -.04 -.86
SIS(pre) 59.39 10.18 -.63 -.06 55.79 9.91 -.05 -.80
SIS(post) 58.15 8.86 .22 -.95 49.81 14.69 -.78 .25
IIS(pre) 37.50 7.55 -.47 -.21 34.60 6.64 .14 -1.17
IIS(post) 36.91 7.64 .08 -1.00 30.84 9.44 -.19 -.75
Grades 90.09 6.96 -.87 -.14 90.26 6.99 .57 -.48
CWP(pre) 20.59 5.23 -.79 .27 19.98 5.52 -.13 -.71
CWP(post) 23.15 7.74 -1.02 2.27 19.09 7.09 -.65 -.07

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Table 2: Group Differences
Independent Sample t-score and Descriptive Statistics for the Transformative experience Scale
(Pre), Situational Interest Survey (Pre), Individual Interest Scale (Pre), and the Conversations
With Parents survey between conditions (N=89).

Treatment Comparison Statistic
______________ _____________ _____________
Variable Mean SD Mean SD t

P
TES(pre) 101.95 27.65 102.21 26.67 -.09 .921
SIS(pre) 59.39 10.18 55.79 9.91 1.42 .160
IIS(pre) 37.50 7.55 34.60 6.64 1.73 .087
CWP(pre) 20.59 5.23 19.98 5.52 .25 .805

105

Table 3: Correlations between Qualitative Codes and Post Surveys
Between the qualitative codes including Parent Value Statements (PVS), Co-Activity
Engagement (CAE), Student Teaching the Parent (STP), overall number of qualitative codes per
student and the following surveys: Transformative Experience Scale (Post), Situational Interest
Survey (Post), Individual Interest Scale (Post), Course Grades, and the Conversations With
Parents survey (Post) between Groups (N=46)
______________________________________________________________________________
Statistic PVS CAE STP Overall Number of Codes
TES(post) .58* .36 .17 .45
SIS(post) .69** .03 .08 .53*
IIS(post) .43 .27 .34 .33
Grades .61* .54* .35 .47
CWP(post) .38 .24 .58* .21
Note: * = significant <.05, ** = significant <.01

106

FIGURES

Figure 1: Transformative Experience as Behavioral, Cognitive, and Affective Engagement

Behavioral

Engagement:

Mo2vated
Use

Affec2ve

Engagement:

Experien2al

Value

Cogni2ve

Engagement:

Expansion
of

Percep2on

Transformative Experience
107

Figure 2: Relationship Between TTES+PI and Connected Learning

Interests

Culture

or
Social

Academic

Connected
Learning
Out-of-School
Engagement Personal
Relevance, Value
Parental Involvement
Teaching for
Transformative
Experience in Science
108

APPENDICES

Appendix A

Transformative Experience Scale
Instructions: For each question, select the response that best matches the extent to which you
agree or disagree. “Outside of school” refers to your everyday life and experience when you are
not in class or working on school assignments.
[Responses will be on a 6 pt. likert scale, Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree]
1. I talk with others about science concepts during my science courses.
2. Outside of school, I talk with others about science concepts.
3. I talk with others about science concepts just for the fun of it.
4. During class time, I think about how science concepts apply to real-world objects and events.
5. Outside of school, I think about science concepts.
6. I find myself thinking about science concepts in everyday situations.
7. I apply the knowledge I’ve learned about science during class.
8. Outside of school, I apply the knowledge I’ve learned about science.
9. I apply the stuff I’ve learned about science even when I didn’t have to.
10. I look for chances to apply my knowledge of science in my everyday life.
11. I think about the things differently now that I have learned about science concepts.
12. During class, I notice examples of science concepts.
13. If I see a really interesting natural things (either in real life, in a magazine, or on TV), then I think
about it in terms of science concepts.
14. The concepts I learned in my science classes changed the way I see the things.
15. I can’t help but see the things in terms of science concepts now.
16. I notice examples of science in my everyday life that I would not have noticed before taking
science courses.
17. Outside of school, I look for examples of science concepts.
18. Learning about science concepts is useful for my future studies or work.
19. Science concepts help me to better understand the world around me.
20. Knowledge of science concepts is useful in my current, everyday life.
21. I find that science concepts make my current, out-of-school experience more meaningful and
interesting.
22. Science concepts make things much more interesting.
23. In class, I find it interesting to learn about science concepts.
24. I think science is an interesting subject.
25. I find it interesting in class when we talk about the science concepts.
26. I am interested when I hear things about science concepts outside of school.
27. Outside of school, I find it exciting to think about science concepts.

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Appendix B

Situational Interest Survey
Think about your science course and please circle the words that most accurately represent how
much you agree or disagree with each of the following statements.
[Responses will be on a 7 pt. likert scale, Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree]
1. My science teacher is exciting.
2. In my science class, my teacher does things to grab my attention.
3. My science class is often entertaining.
4. My science class is so exciting it’s easy to pay attention.
5. What I am learning in my science class is fascinating to me.
6. I am excited about what I am learning in my science class.
7. I like what I am learning in my science class.
8. I find what I am learning in my science class interesting.
9. What I am studying in my science class is useful for me to know.
10. The things I am studying in my science class are important to me.
11. What I am learning in my science class can be applied to real life.
12. I am learning valuable things in my science class.
Individual Interest Scale
Think about the topics that you have been learning in your science course. Please circle the
words that most accurately represent how much you agree or disagree with each of the following
statements.
1. The topics in my science class are practical for me to know.
2. The topics in my science class help me in my life outside of school.
3. It is important to me to be a person who knows the topics in my science class.
4. Knowing the topics in my science class is an important part of who I am.
5. I enjoy the topics in my science class.
6. I like the topics in my science class.
7. I enjoy learning the topics in my science class.
8. The topics in my science class are exciting to me.

110

Appendix C

Conversations With Parent Scale

Instructions: For each question, select the response that best matches the extent to which you
agree or disagree.

[Responses will be on a 7 pt. likert scale, Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree]
1. I have talked to my parents about the importance of science more this year than in previous years.
2. I have had more conversations with my parents about the usefulness and value of science courses
this year than previous years.
3. During this school year, I talked with my parents about my science ideas.
4. I talked to my parents about how science ideas connect to my everyday life more this year than
last.
5. I talked to my parents about why science is interesting more this year than last.

111

Appendix D

UCV Journal Entry

What is one everyday occurrence that you notice that relates to a concept we are learning
in class? After learning about chemical reactions and bonding between elements, I began to
wonder how the elements in our bodies react with outside environments. I am a diver and dive 5-
6 days a week. I noticed that after diving for quite some time, my hair became blonder, weaker,
and damaged. This made me wonder if the carbon in my hair was bonding with the chlorine and
causing some type of chemical reaction that changed the color of my hair and strength of carbon
bonds.
Thinking about what we are learning in class, how does this change your outlook on what
you noticed or on that concept? This idea that chlorine can effect the hair due to chemical
reactions and bonding made me realize just how influential the outside environment is to our
bodies. Additionally, this understanding makes me question how cosmetic products use specific
elements that will react with the body in order to form a desired product. For example, what
elements in hair dye react with the hair to cause it to change color and how does this effect it's
bonding?
In what way do you find value in what you noticed that you did not see before, or how is
this concept valuable to everyday life? I really value this idea of chemical reactions occurring
in and outside of the body as it gives me a greater understanding on how cosmetic products work
with the body to produce desired results. I can now be able to understand not only what cosmetic
products do but also how they work. Additionally, with this newly gained knowledge I can also
begin to develop my own simple products such as homemade deodorant.

112

Appendix E

Parent Brochure

Science is Valuable: A Guide to Helping your Child Enjoy Science
Did you know the following facts about science?
1) Science can be beneficial to multiple careers even outside of typical science jobs.

2) Scoring well in science classes can help your kids get into college, no matter what degree
they want to pursue.

3) Learning the scientific method can help your children use better reasoning and logic in
everyday life.

4) When parents show value in science, children are more likely to show value as well.
You can help your child become interested in science!
The best way to help your child to become interested in science is to help them realize the value
of science in their everyday lives.
It’s easy to help your child become interested in science.
In just a few minutes a week, you can:
1) Simply ask your child if they have noticed science ideas out of school. Doing so will
encourage them to make connections.

2) Talk to your children about why science ideas are valuable.

Here is an example of a how you can help your child notice science each day. You might have a
conversation like this:
Parent: Have you thought about science ideas yet this week?
Student: Yes.
Parent: Oh yeah, what ideas have you thought about?
Student: I tried looking for biotic and abiotic things.
Parent: What is biotic and abiotic?
Student: biotic things are living things in the environment like animals and abiotic things are
non-living things like soil or air.
Parent: Cool! So what did you notice?
Student: Well, we are biotic. And the sun is abiotic.
Parent: That sounds pretty cool. What are some more abiotic and biotic things?
You can also talk about the value of these ideas. Here is an example of a conversation you can
have with your child about how science ideas are valuable.
Parent: Why is it valuable to know if things are biotic or abiotic?
Student: Knowing if things are biotic or abiotic can help you classify things.
Parent: Oh and why is that valuable?
Student: It makes it easier to understand what’s living and what’s not.
Parent: Wow that is pretty cool.
Here is a list of science ideas from school that you can ask your child about:
113

1) Abiotic – non-living chemical and physical factors in the environment, which affect
ecosystems such as light, radiation, temperature, water, soil, and atmosphere.
2) Biotic – a living or once living component of a community such as plants or animals.
3) Organization of life – cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, organisms.
4) Cells (plants and animals) – basic building block of life. Plant cells have chloroplast and a cell
wall.
5) Experimental design – variables, samples sizes
6) Bar graphs and line graphs – graphs that allow readers to see the difference between variables.
Here are some more examples of potential experiences students could have with the above
concepts.
Concept – Cells
Example 1: All living things are made up of cells. That means that I am made up of cells. Cells
are valuable because they make people live and grow.
Example 2: I noticed that the cactus on our front porch is made up of cells. The cactus is green
because its cells have chloroplast. Chloroplast is important in plant cells because it makes sugar
(glucose) for the plant.
Concept – Organization of life
Example 1: I am made of cells, which are make tissues, which make organs, which make organ
systems, which make up me. My body is made up of building blocks. Without the smallest things
the biggest things wouldn’t work.
Example 2: I was looking at our dog today and realized that she is made up of cells, tissues, and
organs just like us. Without all of these parts working together she couldn’t live.
Concept – Experimental design
Example 1: I was watching the news today and noticed that the reporter said he interviewed ten
people about what they think about pit bull dogs. The reporter said that because all of the ten
people don’t like pit bulls that California should ban them. But I don’t think ten people is a big
enough sample size. Knowing the sample size is important because it lets you know if you can
trust the results.
Example 2: They were talking about obesity on the news today. They said that exercise and fatty
foods are causing people to be overweight. I noticed that these are variables. Variables are
valuable because they let you know why things may be happening, like obesity.
Remember
• You don’t need to know what all of these concepts are. Also, you don’t need to teach
your children about science concepts.
• It’s been awhile since you were in school and it’s ok if you don’t remember this stuff.
• Ask your children to tell you about what they are learning in science.
• Your children may become more interested in science by simply asking them about it.

If you have any questions or comments please contact me by email:

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This study investigated the impact of adding a parental involvement intervention to the Teaching for Transformative Experience in Science (TTES) model in science courses (biology and chemistry) in an all-girl middle and high school (N = 89). Specifically, the goal was to increase out-of-school engagement, interest, parental involvement, and achievement. Analysis showed that TTES with the addition of a parent intervention (TTES+PI) facilitated more out-of-school engagement and parent involvement than a comparison. Furthermore, a high initial level of situational and individual interest was maintained in the TTES+PI condition

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Asset Metadata

Creator Heddy, Benjamin Charles (author)

Core Title Facilitating interest and out-of-school engagement in science in secondary school girls: Increasing the effectiveness of the teaching for transformative experience in science model through parent...

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Education

Publication Date 06/10/2014

Defense Date 04/24/2014

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag engagement,interest,Motivation,OAI-PMH Harvest,parent involvement,STEM,transformative experience

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Sinatra, Gale M. (committee chair), Graham, Jesse (committee member), Polikoff, Morgan (committee member), Rueda, Robert (committee member), Tynes, Brendesha (committee member)

Creator Email ben.heddy@gmail.com,heddy@ou.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-418133

Unique identifier UC11297479

Identifier etd-HeddyBenja-2542.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-418133 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-HeddyBenja-2542.pdf

Dmrecord 418133

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Heddy, Benjamin Charles

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA