09:30-10:45 | Falls Church Sunday Onsite Presentation Session 1

Emerging Philosophical Perspectives on Learning & Education

Session Chair: Susan Lohret

09:30-09:55

69813 | How Highly Achieved Students Differ from the Others? A Text-mining Approach to Personal Learning Goals

Hilary K. Y. Ng, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong

Lester C. H. Chan, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

People often set goals at the start of a new event in their life. Goals are related to performance across different domains, including sports, psychotherapy, leadership, health care, as well as education. Those students who set learning goals are found to have higher learning motivation, more persistence in learning, better course attendance, and better academic performance than their counterparts. Previous studies showed students benefited most from setting specific, challenging, measurable, and achievable learning goals than their counterparts did. While goalsetting activity appears to be an effective and inexpensive way to enhance learning performance, how learning goals vary as a function of students’ course grades remains under-explored. Rather than classifying students’ learning goals into pre-established categories for summative investigation, this research adopts a text-mining approach to examine the underlying similarities and differences directly. We have invited 192 university students to set three different learning goals at the beginning of a semester. Results from 552 valid responses indicated that highly achieved students differ from their counterparts in terms of the clarity of expression, the usage, and the characteristics of words used in setting their personal goals. In general, these students expressed themselves with more clarity, more purpose-driven, and more variety of words, which provides an opportunity for us to learn from the highly achieved students. Other theoretical advances and practical advances in education, teaching and learning will also be discussed.

09:55-10:20

66981

| SCREAM Strategy for Alleviating Teacher’s Stress Levels in Higher Education

Marine Milad, Arab Open University, Kuwait

Hiba Tayara, Australian University, Kuwait

Mohammed Farran, Arab Open University, Kuwait

In the past two years and especially during the pandemic, many instructors have been facing innumerable stress-related incidents due to the ongoing pandemic starting from teaching online to achieving the intended learning outcomes. As a result, teachers have had to continue their job amid a series of circumstances and stressors that may have had a toll on their mental health state (Andrade, Bosano & Paz, 2021). This paper confers a new strategy that could potentially help reduce stress in classrooms. Thus, two tools were designed to collect data. The first one was an observation checklist which was designed to record instructor’s reaction towards the new and unfamiliar reality of virtual teaching. The second tool was a questionnaire that was designed to collect data related to stressful situations in the ESL classrooms. The data collected helped in forming a new strategy to meet the dire needs for coping with the pandemic and enhancing teacher’s performance. The suggested SCREAM strategy aims at alleviating the numerous stress-related incidents that have been plaguing instructors and draining their efforts in the ESL classrooms since the beginning of the pandemic. The SCREAM strategy stands for Survive (S), Change (C), Reflect (R), Execute (E), Admire (A) and Maintain (M). This strategy could possibly help ESL instructors and attendees to recognize some of the online challenges they have been through and empower them to better realize their potential and improve their performance in the workplace.

10:20-10:45

68068 | A Framework for Moving Beyond Awareness: How District and School Level Leaders Address Implicit Bias Through a Professional Learning Community

Susan

Lohret,

St John Fisher College, United States

The presentation includes findings and recommendations that support school building and district-level leaders in addressing implicit bias within a professional learning community model. The descriptive phenomenological design explores the phenomenon of addressing implicit bias and examines the lived experiences of educational leaders through their reflections. Participants included the following criteria: a) professionals with district-level leadership or school building leadership in New York State public schools and b) participation in addressing implicit bias through a formal program, curriculum, initiative, or informal structure. Focus group and semi-structured interviews were conducted and data collection tools were field tested. Data was transcribed, coded, and analyzed using thematic analysis. A system of member checking was implemented with semi-structured transcripts. Four categories emerged and further expanded into 11 themes including: (a) responsibility and commitment, (b) safety and trust, (c) leadership support and approach, (d) readiness versus urgency, (e) staying on the path, (f) community as strength, (g) multi-tiered, (h) key role (s) and student voice, (i) are we there yet?, (j) modeling and dialogue, and (k) action and entry points. Recommendations include areas of future research, policy, and professional practice. Attendees will be introduced to a framework for addressing implicit bias framed as perspectives. Attendees will engage in a workshop-style presentation providing opportunity to reflect on their own leadership practices. The timeliness of the study fills the gap of educational research in addressing the phenomenon of implicit bias in public schools, and reinforces awareness is not enough to address implicit bias.