Browsing by Author "Santana Sepúlveda, Macarena Paz"

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    Having Fun Doing Math: Text Messages Promoting Parent Involvement Increased Student Learning
    (2019) Santana Sepúlveda, Macarena Paz; Nussbaum Voehl, Miguel; Carmona Penna, Raimundo Alejandro; Claro, Susana
    There is a consensus that family involvement is key to academic achievement. However, it is often difficult to keep parents involved, particularly when they lack the time or academic knowledge. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact on achievement in mathematics among adolescent children when involving parents from low-income communities in the learning process. This involvement is achieved through activities that do not include any formal curricular content. A randomly selected group of parents was nudged, via text message (SMS), to complete short and simple weekly activities with their children. The teacher then connected these activities to the curricular content in class. The results reveal that, on average, the intervention increased the students’ math grade point average (GPA) by 0.488 standard deviations (p < .05) more than students whose parents only received administrative text messages. This effect remains over time, extending into the following school year. These findings highlight the power of behavioral nudges that encourage positive parent–student exchanges.
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    How Prioritizing Number Skills Can Act as a Mediator for Socioeconomic Inequality within a National Math Compulsory Curriculum
    (2020) Santana Sepúlveda, Macarena Paz; Cabezas Gazaga, Verónica; Nussbaum Voehl, Miguel; Cabello-Hutt, T.; Claro, M.; Maldonado, L.
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    Intelligence can grow in all dimensions: findings from an experiment in Latin America
    (2023) Claro, Susana; Santana Sepúlveda, Macarena Paz; Ossandón, Tomás; Cea, Sebastián; Amesti Mujica, José de; Santander Monsalve, Daniela Alejandra; Huerta, Mauricio
    Computer-based interventions that aim to help students endorse a growth mindset have been designed and tested in high-income countries for a number of years. However, there is no evidence of their efectiveness in middle-income nations. In those studies, students’ growth mindset has traditionally been measured using surveys where students report the extent to which they believe intelligence is fxed or malleable, without linking intelligence with a more specifc dimension, such as math or language. In addition, these measurements have been undertaken without distinctions being made between personal ability (“my” intelligence) and more general abilities (everyone’s intelligence). Therefore, by means of a randomized experiment, this study assesses the impact of a single-session online growthmindset intervention in Chile on distinct measurements of the growth mindset of students (general, personal, and subject-specifc), as well as their propensity to seek out challenges. Accordingly, a sample of 248 students was recruited from 9 and 11th grades in three secondary schools, all of whom were randomly assigned to either a treatment or control group. The intervention was found to increase their propensity to seek out challenges and to experience an increase in growth mindset scores in all tested dimensions. No evidence of the heterogeneity of results by gender or prior growth mindset was identifed.
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    Let’s spend time together: text messaging parents to help math-anxious students
    (2021) Santana Sepúlveda, Macarena Paz; Nussbaum Voehl, Miguel; Claro Larrain, Susana; Piza Lería, Sebastián; Imbarack Dagach, Patricia; Loeb, Susanna
    Even when parents have the time required to support their children’s education, they can increase their children’s anxiety about school when they try to help, especially if they are not confident in their own abilities. This study measures the effects of having parents complete nonacademic schoolwork with their teenage children. Half of the 422 participating parents were randomly assigned to receive weekly assignments for nonacademic activities to complete with their children, whereas the other half received information about upcoming mathematics tests. Mathematics-anxious students benefited from working on the nonacademic assignments, performing significantly better on their mathematics tests and decreasing their mathematics anxiety after treatment. These findings highlight the importance of involving parents in ways that feel nonthreatening to their children.
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    My family matters: altruistic, mixed and self-oriented purposes for learning among chilean students.
    (2023) Imbarack Dagach, Patricia; Claro Larraín, Susana; Koppmann Kuester, Francisca Agnes; Santana Sepúlveda, Macarena Paz
    This work analyzes the purposes declared by a small sample of Chilean students, categorizing them according to their self-oriented, altruistic or hybrid characteristics, going beyond the dichotomy that is common in the literature, which includes only extrinsic and intrinsic purposes, or self-oriented and prosocial purposes. As an emerging category, it delves into family purposes, discussing factors that could influence the relevance of the family as a determinant of purpose. In addition, the importance given to the family in the purpose of Chilean students is compared with international literature, which tends to relegate the family environment to a second place with respect to other purposes. This comparison is intended to inspire future analyzes that delve into the contextual determinants of the definition of purpose in education. Finally, this work aims to contribute to future research on purpose in Latin American students, since it is likely that in the region there is a similar pattern, which relieves the family as a crucial element for the construction of the purpose and motivations of the students.
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    Parents participating in the adolescent students' learning process : a text messages' intervention in a math class context
    (2019) Santana Sepúlveda, Macarena Paz; Nussbaum Voehl, Miguel; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Escuela de Ingeniería
    There is a consensus that parents’ involvement in student’s school life is key to academic achievement, but it can be very challenging for parents to participate. Even when parents have the time required to support their children’s education, they can increase their children’s anxiety about school when they try to help, especially if parents feel ill equipped to do so. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a teacher-driven intervention to involve parents from low-income communities in the student’s learning process and evaluate its impact on achievement in mathematics among adolescent children. To this aim, quantitative and qualitative evidence of a series of intervention studies and field experiments is provided. To help parents feel at ease and limit the amount of stress they may feel, non-technical parental involvement was promoted using activities for the parents to complete with the adolescent student that did not include any formal curricular content and that were designed to be short, simple and playful. The teacher then connected these activities to the curricular content in class to make the activities useful and, hopefully, meaningful for both parents and students. Through the design-based research method, our research team explored whether developing a meeting space outside the school environment between parents and the adolescent student would increase the child's subsequent academic performance in mathematics. Successive small and medium scale studies were conducted (between 21 and 422 students per iteration). This work includes: (i) Two intervention studies to improve the wording and readability of the messages and to explore initial reactions to the intervention of both parents and students and (ii) Two field experiments to assess the effect of the intervention on students’ academic achievement and to explore whether the effect of parental involvement in simple and playful activities would be moderated by the students’ negative emotions around the subject, i.e. math anxiety, prior to the intervention. It also explored parents’ perceptions about completing activities that were designed to be simple and playful. Based on these studies, this thesis comprises several findings. The first field experiment revealed that for a small group of Chilean students (treatment=28; control=28) the 5-weeks text-messaging intervention increased their math GPA by 0.488 standard deviations (p<0.05) more than students whose parents only received test and homework reminders. This effect remained over time, extending into the following school year. This thesis later confirmed that these students suffered from elevated levels of math anxiety at the outset of the intervention. The second field experiment explored whether math anxiety moderated the relationship between being assigned to the treatment and the student’s post-intervention performance. To this aim, our research team conducted a field experiment with parents of 422 Chilean students in 9th and 10th grade to receive text messages over the course of 12 weeks. Half of the participating parents received weekly assignments for non-academic activities to complete with their children; the other half received text messages informing them of their children’s upcoming math tests. The study found that students whose parents were assigned to do non-academic homework with their children performed significantly better on their math tests, and that the subset of students in that group who suffered from higher levels of math anxiety at the outset of the study demonstrated decreased math anxiety after treatment. The overall effect of the activities was positive, but not significant. Semi-structured phone interviews with parents from low-income schools explored their view of the relationship with their child and the school, two weeks after the intervention. Half of the interviewed parents found the activities were an opportunity to spend time with their child, an opportunity that was valued from two different perspectives. As an opportunity to strengthen their relationship with their child and to become more involved in their child’s school life Many parents appreciated the opportunity to communicate, approach, empathize with and get to know their adolescent child better. The contribution of this thesis is showing teachers can use simple and low-cost technology to improve the performance of students that have math anxiety, students that represent a relevant sample of the worldwide population. These findings highlight the importance of offering parents accessible ways to involve themselves in their children’s school lives and also highlight the power of behavioral nudges that encourage positive parent-student exchanges. Future studies should explore further in the role of parents’ math anxiety and develop new ways to engage parents in positive ways into the student’s learning process.
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    Peso relativo de los ejes y habilidades curriculares en la predicción de éxito académico SIMCE : un estudio longitudinal a escala nacional
    (2015) Santana Sepúlveda, Macarena Paz; Nussbaum Voehl, Miguel; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Escuela de Ingeniería
    Actualmente en Chile existe una baja movilidad en las trayectorias académicas de los estudiantes y, en los últimos años, el país ha tenido un bajo rendimiento en la prueba estandarizada Simce de cuarto básico; nace así la pregunta ¿qué porcentaje de nuestros niños se mantiene en un bajo desempeño entre cuarto y octavo básico? Por otra parte, en el contexto de baja implementación curricular, existe poca evidencia acerca del peso que tienen los distintos ejes de contenido que evalúa cada prueba en cuanto a la predicción del desempeño académico; surge la pregunta ¿qué conocimientos previos en los ejes de la asignatura de matemáticas son más importantes para explicar el desempeño futuro en dicha asignatura?Además, existe evidencia acerca del efecto del grupo socioeconómico, lenguaje y género en el desempeño académico, por lo que es relevante preguntar ¿qué factores sociodemográficos y de desempeño académico son más importantes para determinar el desempeño anteriormente mencionado? Se buscó dichas respuestas, mediante un análisis descriptivo y luego a través regresiones lineales (OLS) aplicadas a las cohortes que rinden las pruebas SIMCE 2007 y 2011 de matemática. Se desarrollaron sub-escalas por eje de contenido (Números, Algebra, Datos y Azar y, Formas y Espacio) a través del método Barlett. Como resultado de este estudio se concluye que al menos un 77% de los alumnos que presentan bajo desempeño en cuarto permanece en esta situación hasta octavo en ambas asignaturas y que el eje curricular Números es el más importante para la predicción de desempeño en la misma asignatura, seguido por Álgebra y lenguaje, y mejorar dos desviaciones estándar en su desempeño podría compensar el efecto de pertenecer a los grupos socioeconómicos más desventajados.