We are currently conducting studies to investigate how students of different ages, academic performance levels, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds interpret and react to various kinds of failures, setbacks, and undesirable situations, especially in the STEM field.
For instance, we study what levels of school performance and types of learning are considered as failure or success. For some students, scoring 65% in math class counts as success, and for other students scoring a 95% in math is counted as a success. We want to understand what standards students set for their own success and failure in a wide variety of academic, social, and personal activities. What roles do their sense of self and beliefs of what it takes to succeed in a given field of study play in their understanding and reaction to failure? These types of studies are often done by conducting in-depth psychological interviews with students from varied cultural and academic backgrounds about their personal experiences and about their understanding of failure encountered in various aspects of their lives. In addition, we also examine peoples’ emotional reactions and decision making after experiencing failure across various cognitive tasks.
Related Publications:
- Lin, X. D. & Bransford, J. D. (2010). Personal background knowledge influences cross-cultural understanding. Teachers College Record, 12 (7), 1729-1757.
- Hong, H.-Y., & Lin, X. D. (2008). Introducing people knowledge into science learning. In G. Kanselaar, V. Jonker, P.A. Kirschner, & F.J. Prins (Eds.), International perspectives in the Learning Sciences: Creating a learning world. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference for the Learning Sciences – ICLS 2008, Vol. 1 (pp. 366-373). Utrecht, the Netherlands: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
- Ahn, J., Luna- Lucero, M. Lamnina, M., Nightingale, M., Novak, D., Lin-Siegler, X.D (2016). Motivating students’ stem learning using biographical information. International Journal of Designs for Learning.
- Lin, X.D., Schwartz, D., & Bransford, J. D. (2007). Intercultural adaptive expertise: Explicit and implicit lessons from Dr. Giyoo Hatano. Human Development, 50(1), 65-73.
- Lin, X. D., & Kinzer, C. (2003). Importance of technology for making cultural values explicit. Theory In Practice, 42(3), 234-242
- Schwartz, D., Lin, X. D., & Holmes, J. (2003). Technologies for learning from intercultural reflection. Intercultural Education, 14 (3), 292-306.
- Lin, X.D., & Hatano, G. (2002). Cross-cultural adaptation of educational technology. In T. Koschmann, R. Hall, & N. Miyake (Eds.), CSCL2: Carrying forward the conversation (pp. 89-99). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.