Chapter 1 of "Exploring the Relationship Between Social-Emotional Competencies and Student Outcomes in Online Learning Environments"
Author: Sarah K. Teeple
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ABSTRACT
Exploring the Relationship Between Social-Emotional Competencies and Student Outcomes in Online Learning Environments
Sarah K. Teeple, Gwynedd Mercy University, 2021
The present mixed-methods study sought to clarify the complex relationships that may influence student achievement in non-traditional learning environments. In the United States, the number of students who are participating in some form of virtual or remote learning is increasing for a variety of reasons. However, the body of research regarding student outcomes in online learning environments is limited and contains some contradictory findings. The researcher therefore sought to identify the relationships between student proficiency in social-emotional competencies using the Habits of Mind theoretical framework, social presence as defined by the Community of Inquiry framework, and student outcomes on a writing performance task. The results indicate that there is a positive correlation between student social-emotional proficiency and student grades on a summative performance task, although no significant correlation was found between social presence and student performance, despite a moderate effect size. In addition, survey data and narrative responses from individual interviews with teachers and students were used to further extend the discussion on thematic aspects of teaching and learning that were perceived to influence successful student outcomes and a robust sense of social interaction and community.
Keywords: online learning, social-emotional skills, Habits of Mind, social presence
Sarah K. Teeple – Gwynedd Mercy University, 2021
EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL COMPETENCIES AND STUDENT OUTCOMES IN FULLY ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
by Sarah K. Teeple
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership (Ed.D.)
School of Graduate and Professional Studies
Gwynedd Mercy University
Gwynedd Valley, Pennsylvania
November 2021
© Copyright by Sarah K. Teeple 2021
We, the Dissertation Committee, certify that we have read this dissertation and that, in our judgment, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership.
- Amanda Benolken, Ed.D., Dissertation Advisor/Committee Chair
- Kathleen Brewster-Scheid, Ed.D., Dissertation Committee Member
- Tiffany O’Shaughnessy, Ph.D., Dissertation Committee Member
Dissertation Committee Member Affirmation of committee acceptance by:
- Dr. Raymond Bandlow, Director Doctoral Studies in Education, School of Business and Education, Gwynedd Mercy University
DEDICATION
I dedicate this dissertation to my husband, Jason, and to my family for their support in this journey. Even when I doubted myself, they were there to lift me up with encouragement and words of wisdom. I will be forever grateful to them for their blessings in taking this opportunity to further my education and career.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you first and foremost to my incredible committee, Dr. Amanda Benolken, Dr. Tiffany O’Shaughnessy, and Dr. Kathleen Brewster-Scheid, for their invaluable and timely feedback throughout this process. Each member had different expertise and suggestions to offer that made me a better writer and researcher. I would also like to thank Dr. Bena Kallick for her guidance during the early phases of my dissertation, when I was developing my research questions. Her kindness and willingness to support a budding researcher will always be remembered. Of course, this study would not have been possible without the school district in which I conducted my research. A special thanks goes out to Dr. Anthony Rybarcyzk for his assistance in carrying out this study with elementary teachers and students.
Chapter One
Overview
As online learning environments, whether in part or in full, become more mainstream in primary and secondary schools, leaders in education must consider the unique challenges inherent in the process of meeting the diverse needs of students through a digital platform. Much of the current discourse on digital learning has focused singularly on equity in access to hardware, software, and broadband services, and rightfully so. Indeed, this is a critical component of online instruction that must be addressed through educational policy. However, equity in online instruction cannot be focused only on one-to-one device and broadband access (Bendici, 2020). As the desire and need for alternative educational infrastructure increases, policies designed to ensure equitable access must evolve to include intentional program design in service of equitable cognitive access and the ability to attain a high-quality education through modes of instruction that may differ from traditional face-to-face models.
Globally, the greatest number of digital learning opportunities appear to exist for students living in North America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe (Barbour et al., 2015), with China and the United States at the forefront (Business Wire, 2019). Many of these options follow a blended learning model, in which some of the instruction is delivered face-to-face and some is delivered online (Barbour et al., 2015). In the United States, there is inconsistency in the centralized support of online learning through state departments of education, thus further perpetuating inequities in access to online learning opportunities domestically (Vadell, 2013).
The importance of having viable alternatives for instructional delivery becomes more apparent during times of crisis. Conducting face-to-face instruction can become impossible during periods of natural disasters. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 resulted in the physical destruction or damage of so many schools in New Orleans, Louisiana that thousands of students were displaced during the disaster (Valent, 2017). In the wake of the crisis, public schools faced challenges in rebuilding and reorganizing in order to resume delivery of instruction. Similar displacements and institutional challenges occurred in 2017, when Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas (Perry, 2020). Less than three years later, the global pandemic of COVID-19 is creating mass disruptions in the delivery of both public and private education.
With little notice, schools can attempt to circumvent the disruption in education by employing alternative methods of instruction in students’ homes, including through paper and pencil work (akin to correspondence courses), public broadcasts, and delivery of instruction using various online learning management systems. There are significant obstacles that became apparent through these endeavors, including how to meet federal mandates for equity in instruction and battling the digital divide in low-socioeconomic rural and urban areas. Sadly, students of color and students from low-income families may suffer disproportionately during times of school closures (Perry, 2020).
The need to find ways to provide alternative means of instruction has become part of the national conversation on education, so much so that new policies are being implemented that mandate the professional development of teachers in providing online education even once the pandemic has ceased. Pennsylvania’s Governor revealed in his recovery plan post-COVID-19 (Kensinger, 2020) that all educators will be required to receive professional development in the delivery of virtual learning, and that experience in online teaching may count towards student teaching requirements moving forward. These shifting expectations regarding what teacher training must entail in months following a global pandemic provide further impetus for research into what makes online education a viable alternative.
Educational policy is largely a reflection of the perception of schools as institutions. When we consider the mission of public education, much of this vision is inherent in federal mandates to provide a free and appropriate public education to all individuals, regardless of demographics or ability. However, for decades, educators have also underscored an additional component to public education that is sometimes taken for granted as a pleasant by-product of the community and social structure of traditional face-to-face classrooms, and that is the notion that students learn as much socially as they do academically. This concept is not new; John Dewey in 1897 stated his belief that “the social life of the child is the basis of concentration, or correlation, in all his training or growth. The social life gives the unconscious unity and the background of all of his attainments” (Dewey, 1897, p. 79). Educators seem to understand that this social aspect to public education is a critical and important component of the implicit curriculum of a school, as evidenced in large part by recent additions of social and emotional instruction in primary and secondary schools.
Therefore, when making the necessary and inevitable shift to online learning environments, it must be in service of both academic and social/emotional goals for student achievement. However, variability in student motivations, dispositions, and abilities can create obstacles to equal access of distance learning models (Journell, 2013). Success in online courses is correlated with higher student levels of intrinsic motivation because the very nature of online or distance learning means students must be, to some extent at least, self-directed learners. Students must also possess the cognitive abilities to access learning tasks presented in alternative formats, so learning opportunities and curriculum must be designed in such a way that students have the ability to access and understand the material regardless of ability or predominant learning styles. This intersection of equity based on ability and motivation leads to two important areas of further study: Universal Design for Learning in online learning environments (OLEs), and social presence, or the perception of social inclusion and connectedness that John Dewey emphasized as a key component and predictor of academic success more than a century ago.
Universal Design in Learning
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has its origins in the architectural model of universal design for physical spaces and environments (Rose & Strangman, 2007). The concept of Universal Design (UD) in education has challenged educators to design systems of learning such that they can be accessible to diverse learners. UDL is based upon the presumption that students have diverse needs that can be proactively accommodated by shifting the perspective on what learning should look like. In other words, instead of merely adjusting the academic parameters or environment on a case-by-case basis, UDL is predicated upon a proactive and intentional model of education design by which one theorizes that the accommodations and structures that are good for one can indeed be good for all.
Federal mandates for equal access to education have been around for decades, and as inclusion within the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) has become more widespread, UDL is becoming more commonplace and important even in traditional classrooms. There are several principles upon which UDL is based, according to Rose and Strangman (2007): varied and flexible opportunities for student engagement, recognition/internalization of course material, and expression of understanding. As UDL is gaining traction with the traditional classroom, it is important to evaluate what UDL might look like as the infrastructure and delivery of education evolves over time. Additional standards attempt to explicitly outline what competencies and skills an online educator must possess, and such standards should also be considered as part of a virtual-learning specific UDL framework. For example, the National Education Association (NEA), The International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), the International Society for Technology Education (ISTE), and the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) have all released competency frameworks or guides for online education.
Social Presence
One way to address the fundamental social needs in public education as well as help support student motivation and achievement is to focus on building an online community of learners (Journell, 2013). In his book about online strategies for K-12 teachers, Journell (2013) explains that three principles have emerged as foundational to OLEs. Firstly, students and teachers must internalize the belief that interaction is an important component of learning. Secondly, there should be ample opportunities for interaction, both in real-time (synchronously) and asynchronously. Lastly, there must be intentional efforts and interventions to decrease perceptions of isolation and concurrently increase perceptions of social presence.
Social presence as a construct is of utmost importance because it can be a contributing factor to a student’s academic success (Journell, 2013). Additionally, perceptions of social presence can be predictors of attrition and academic achievement. In her research on the role of the instructor in online courses, Crim (2006) notes that regular communications and teacher feedback similarly support the development of an engaged community of learners. In order to help support an online community of learners, there are several strategies and course design elements that have been espoused in the literature (Butler & Evans, 2014; Fiock, 2020; Journell, 2013; Thompson et al., 2017). These elements span in duration from beginning of course to end of course, and encompass both synchronous and asynchronous means of interaction.
In addition to strategies that support the development of an online social presence, educators should consider the vision and mission of the classroom community and the methods of instruction in support of that goal. Even in online instruction, the classroom needs to be student-centered (Bendici, 2020). Students’ needs to feel empowered and connected dictate that delivery of instruction cannot simply be an active process on the part of the teacher and a passive process on the part of the student. It is hypothesized that there is value in the social constructivist learning theory (Crim, 2006; Fiock, 2020), and the 4C’s of instruction: collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking (Bendici, 2020). By designing curriculum from a UDL approach and utilizing varied instructional methods (including project-based learning and cooperative learning), in theory the online classroom environment should be able to replicate the social and cognitive processes that many agree have innate value in face-to-face learning.
I have had many conversations with educators over the past two years where they talk about ‘PD for online learning deliver’. I have never really agreed with this concept, as I have always thouht that good pedagogy is good pedagogy, regardless of the mode of delivery. In some sense, all we are trying to do with online learning is create a similar environment to that of oniste, but simpy virtually. I mean we just have to look at what the iHoM community is doing in KumoSpace as evidence of that. Of course there does need to be training in the use of technology, but that in itself is not pedagogy.
Problem Statement
By making the shift to online learning, schools and districts have the opportunity to maximize resources and circumnavigate some of the obstacles in staffing and physical space (Edwards, 2015). There are additional benefits for students when virtual modes of instruction accommodate diverse learning styles and allow for flexibility in the delivery of content. However, planning for this shift in infrastructure is rife with obstacles, and the expense of ensuring digital access to all users alone can take years to see to fruition within the tight confines of school budgets. When the logistics of physical access have been adequately planned for, however, there remains a slew of additional concerns about how to make sure that online learning is being delivered in the best interests of students through evidence-based practices. Indeed, when online learning environments are necessitated instead of merely desired and teachers are mandated to receive training on providing online instruction, it becomes even more important for cyber learning to be designed with the goal of supporting and benefiting all learners.
Across the globe, rates of online learning are increasing. Countries around the world are navigating new territory by integrating virtual instructional models alongside traditional ones. In an international survey of 50 countries that was conducted on the policies and practice of virtual education in K-12 schools, Barbour et. al (2011, p. 17) identified that ambiguities regarding teacher training remain a global issue in the realm of virtual learning; more specifically:
This lack of training is not only in the use of new technologies, but also in the methodology and pedagogy necessary to fully understand how and why technology can positively impact student performance when in the hands of a competent, highly qualified teacher.
When it comes to online learning, the need and potential benefits are undeniable; the question, rather, becomes how this kind of instruction can be done well and in service of education’s most important stakeholders: the students themselves. How can we make the experience of online learning an engaging and enriching one for students, and one in which all students are able to receive a free and appropriate public education?
Purpose of Study
The current body of research on online learning has largely been conducted in secondary or post-secondary schools. There is a lack of formal research on virtual learning in kindergarten through fifth grades. Previous research is still limited and has revealed some contradictory conclusions regarding the efficacy of instruction in online domains. For example, some prior studies (Coombe, 2017) have pointed to lower levels of achievement in online courses when compared to traditional ones, while others have found either no significant difference in achievement when comparing online vs. face-to-face instruction or higher achievement for students enrolled in online courses (Brodersen & Melluso, 2017; Cho & Tobias, 2016; Richardson et al., 2014). In their analysis of survey data from institutions of higher education, Allen et al. (2016) reveal that the majority of academic leaders surveyed in a single year (71.4%) perceived online courses to be equally effective or superior to traditional face-to-face courses, whereas only 28.6% of survey respondents believed that online instruction was inferior when compared to face-to-face instruction.
Student perceptions of the quality of online learning can vary widely, and may increase or decrease depending on instructor-specific behaviors, such as the quantity and quality of interactions and feedback throughout the course (Crim, 2006). Student satisfaction, then, may be positively correlated with academic achievement in OLEs. However, other studies have found no significant relationship between student interactions via online discussions, student satisfaction, and student achievement (Cho & Tobias, 2016).
Social competencies as a component of social and emotional (SEL) skills are a related construct that may be important in further operationalizing the way that we describe social presence. SEL skills have become part of the curriculum of many K-12 schools due to the increasing perception that such skills have an impact on, and beyond, the academic realm of a student’s formal schooling (Jones et al., 2017). While the relationship between social presence and academic achievement has been unclear, other studies on social competencies and SEL have shown positive correlations with student achievement (Yu, 2014).
This study seeks to clarify the relationship that may exist between SEL competencies, social presence, and student learning outcomes in K-12 online environments. A more robust body of research on virtual learning will allow educational leaders to make more generalizable conclusions regarding the efficacy of curricular decision-making in OLEs. Studies in elementary grades specifically are needed in order to begin to make recommendations for effective pedagogy and professional development according to educational level. In sum, research on virtual learning will help inform policy and practice in the coming years.
Research Guiding Questions
The research questions are threefold, and represent mixed methodologies in service of drawing conclusions that may inform online K-12 course design in the future.
- To what extent do social and emotional competencies predict online social presence and student performance in fully remote instruction?
- How do social and emotional competencies manifest in fully online learning environments?
- How are adaptive student behaviors and attitudes reinforced and modeled through remote instruction?
Possible Limitations and Delimitations
While the intent of this study is to help guide online program development for K-12 learners, there are several limitations that must be considered. The methodology employed herein lacks the ability to establish causal relationships between the studied variables. Study participants are not randomly assigned; rather, this study relies on intact groups that are administratively defined and are not within the control of the researcher. Further, there are many variables that may impact student outcomes such as final course grades and student perceptions of learning, and an experimental design to manipulate and control certain variables with the desire to establish causal effects on student outcomes is not within the realm of possibility, particularly within an elementary environment.
Another limitation is the inability to generalize results beyond the scope of the specific population in which this study takes place. Due to the lack of prevalence of established online courses in elementary public schools, there are fewer opportunities to specifically study online learning environments within the targeted age groups. In order to be able to access participants in an elementary online learning course, the study is limited to certain grade levels and content-area units, which in turn limits the generalizability and scope of any conclusions that may emerge.
Key Terms
- Affective learning – The extent to which students feel that learning has happened can be a function of different realms or categories of student experiences. Affective learning is a category within the larger construct of perceived learning, and refers to a student’s perceptions about the teacher, the topic, and the course itself. (Rockinson-Szapkiw et. al., 2016).
- Asynchronous instruction – This type of instructional delivery within an online learning environment is one in which a student participates in the recognition and expression of course material independent of the time of delivery by the instructor (Journell, 2013).
- Blended/hybrid learning – Blended or hybrid learning represents a framework for delivery of course material by some combination of online or web-based applications and face-to-face instruction (Journell, 2013).
- Cognitive presence – Cognitive presence is one aspect of the Community of Inquiry framework, and refers to student perceptions of having achieved learning outcomes through metacognitive reflection of content knowledge and skills in a given subject area (Fiock, 2020).
- Community of Inquiry (COI) – COI is a theoretical framework with an emphasis on enhancing perceptions of positive learning experiences through social, cognitive, and teaching presences (Fiock, 2020).
- Habits of Mind – A set of 16 predispositions to identify, evaluate, and select efficacious behaviors and attitudes for solving challenging tasks (Costa & Kallack, 2000).
- Online learning environment (OLE) – This is an environment in which students receive full or partial instruction via web-based applications (Journell, 2013).
- Perceived learning – Perceived learning describes a student’s perception that academic outcomes have been achieved as a result of instruction (Rockinson-Szapkiw et. al., 2016).
- Social community – Social community is a cumulative descriptor of students’ feelings or perceptions of interdependence, cohesiveness, interaction, safety, sense of belonging, and trust within the context of an educational setting (Rockinson-Szapkiw et. al., 2016).
- Social and emotional skills – A range of social, interpersonal, emotional, and cognitive processes (Jones et al., 2017).
- Social presence – Social presence is another construct within the COI framework, and refers to student perceptions of feeling a sense of belonging in a learning community, as indicated by group cohesion, open communication, and affective expression (Fiock, 2020).
- Synchronous instruction – Synchronous instruction within an online learning environment occurs when the instruction is delivered by an instructor and received by the student in real-time, or when students and instructors are interacting and participating in course-related objectives at the same time, albeit in different locations. (Journell, 2013).
- Teacher interaction – This refers to any interaction between teachers and students that are course-specific (feedback or procedural, for the purposes of administering instruction) or social (related to the fostering of a social community or social presence); such interactions are not exclusive to online learning environments, but can act as a variable used to predict student outcomes in online learning (Hawkins et. al., 2013).
- Teaching presence – Teaching presence is yet another aspect of the COI framework, and is the combined effect of instructional design, the instructional delivery itself, and the facilitation of discourse or interaction on the social and cognitive aspects of learning (Fiock, 2020).
- Universal Design for Learning (UDL) – Universal Design for Learning is a model of curricular design with a focus on developing systems of learning that are accessible to diverse learners in respect to cognitive, physical, social/emotional, and linguistic abilities. UDL is based on having multiple means of presentation of course material, multiple opportunities for student engagement, and varied means of student expression of understanding. (Rose & Strangman, 2007).
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