Self-Regulation of Science Learning in the Context of Educational Game Creation: A Study of Middle School Students with Learning Disabilities

这项扩大参与范围的研究计划将有助于了解有学习障碍的中学生如何在学习制作教育电脑游戏的同时更好地学习科学。这项研究将有助于确定如何更好地教育这些在我国学习科学的学生。在我们国家的学校里，大约有250万学龄儿童有学习障碍。我们迫切需要确保这些学生高中毕业后成为具有科学素养的人，能够为社会做出贡献，接受大学教育，并在STEM（科学、技术、工程和数学）职业生涯中取得进步。更好地了解有学习障碍的学生如何在创造教育游戏的同时学习科学，有可能导致进一步的基础和应用研究，这可能最终改善这些学生学习科学的方式，以及教师如何改进他们的教学实践，帮助学生更好地学习科学内容和技能。乔治梅森大学的项目负责人将调查学习障碍中学生在科学学习和教育游戏创作方面的努力归因、自我效能和自我调节过程。有学习障碍的学生通常把他们在学习上的失败和成功归因于外部因素，而不是他们自己的努力。利用社会认知理论作为他们工作的基础，研究人员将进行一项探索性研究，以检验两个主要研究问题：1)学生对学习的努力归因如何与他们对严肃教育游戏创作和掌握科学内容的自我效能感的感知相关？2)干预是否会导致努力归因的增加，从而导致严肃教育游戏创作和科学学习的自我效能感的增加？在项目的第一阶段，学生将参与科学学习和教育游戏创作活动。在第二阶段，第一个研究问题将与一组学生一起探索，以获得初步数据。在最后阶段，将研究第二个研究问题，以收集有关影响科学学习的干预措施的未来研究潜力的信息。在完成探索性研究后，预期研究结果将为未来关于学生在教育游戏生成背景下学习自我调节科学学习的基础和应用教育研究提供信息。这项工作的结果有望在专业出版物中与教育研究人员和公众分享。

This broadening participation research project will contribute to foundational knowledge about how middle school students with learning disabilities can better learn science as they learn to create educational computer games. This research will contribute to the need to determine how to better educate these students studying science in our country. There are approximately 2.5 million school-age children with learning disabilities in our nation's schools. There is a pressing need to ensure that these students graduate high school as science literate individuals who can contribute to society, pursue college education, and advance in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers. Gaining a better understanding of how students with learning disabilities learn science while creating educational games has the potential to lead to further basic and applied research which may ultimately improve how these students learn science and how teachers can improve their instructional practices to help students better learn science content and skills.Project leaders at George Mason University will investigate the effort attributions, self-efficacy and self-regulation processes of middle school students with learning disabilities in the areas of science learning and educational game creation. Students with learning disabilities typically attribute their failures and successes in learning to factors that are external to them, rather than to their own efforts. Using social cognitive theory as the grounding for their work, the researchers will conduct an exploratory study to examine two primary research questions: 1) How do student effort attributions for learning relate to their perceptions of self-efficacy for serious educational game creation and mastery of science content? 2) Does intervention result in increased effort attributions that correspond with increased self-efficacy for both serious educational game creation and science learning? During the first phase of this project students will participate in science learning and educational game creation activities. During the second phase the first research question will be explored with a group of students to gain preliminary data. During the final phase the second research question will be studied to gather information about the potential for future research about interventions affecting science learning. At the completion of the exploratory study, it is anticipated that results will inform future basic and applied educational research about students learning to self-regulate their science learning in the context of educational game generation. The results of this work are expected to be shared with education researchers and the public in professional publications.