CORE Lab and Collaborators Publish Paper on Construal-Consistent Instructor Language

Several members of the CORE Lab, namely Dr. Nicole Betz (now a postdoctoral researcher at Yale), Jessica Leffers, Emily Dahlgaard Thor, Dr. Michal Fux, and Dr. Coley, recently published a study with collaborators Dr. Kristin de Nesnera in the Department of Biology at Utah Valley University and Dr. Kimberly Tanner in the Department of Biology at San Francisco State University. The paper “Cognitive Construal-Consistent Instructor Language in the Undergraduate Biology Classroom” was published in CBE-Life Sciences Education this past month. The study examined the use of construal-consistent instructor language in biology classes at various levels of undergraduate education from two diverse universities. Findings showed that not only was there construal-consistent language in all the courses sampled, but also that the amount of construal-consistent language was surprisingly consistent across both instructor and course level, and across the two universities. Additionally, language consistent with anthropic thinking was more common than either language consistent with essentialist or teleological thinking. These results suggest that construal-consistent language is common in undergraduate biology education and informs continued research into how construal-consistent language affects students’ learning. You can read the paper here.