Abstracts - Earli

topic over the baseline results for the cohort that did not study TELS. Overall gains on explanationassessment items were about one-third of a standard deviation.C 2129 August 2007 08:30 - 10:30Room: 0.81 OrtvaySymposiumInterest and development in practiceChair: Richard Walker, University of Sydney, AustraliaOrganiser: K. Ann Renninger, Swarthmore College, USADiscussant: Marja Vauras, University of Turku, FinlandUnderstanding interest and its development in relation to classroom practice and young people’slives beyond school makes an important contribution to developing learners’ potentials. Thissymposium comprises four papers that seek to develop discussion about how we theorise interestby drawing on our investigations conducted in various practice-based settings. Each of the studieshas been conducted in a different learning context, with participants including beginning teachers,young adults with Asperger’s Syndrome, and secondary and elementary students. The papers alsodiffer in terms of our theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. In each paper,however, we frame our research in relation to the Four Phase Model of Interest Developmentrecently proposed by Hidi and Renninger (2006) and we discuss our studies in response to threeguiding questions. Firstly, we consider how practice-oriented research contributes toconceptualisations of interest and its development. Secondly, we examine the types of researchquestions, designs and methods that are suited to practice-based interest research. Finally, weexplore the implications for practice arising from our research that may develop students’,teachers’ and researchers’ potentials for learning. Reference: Hidi, S., & Renninger, K.A. (2006).The four-phase model of interest development. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 111-127.Investigating interest development in practice: Insights into how we conceptualise situational andindividual interestKimberley Pressick-Kilborn, University of Technology, Sydney, AustraliaRichard Walker, University of Sydney, AustraliaPrevious interest research and theorising has distinguished between situational and individualinterest to explain changes in the source, nature and intensity of interest over time. Most recently,Hidi and Renninger (2006) have advanced explanations for how interest develops through fourphases that are based on this situational and individual interest distinction. Our paper elaborates onthe relationship between the situational and individual through conceptualising interest from asociocultural perspective. Such a sociocultural approach provides a number of theoretical notionsthat can be applied to expand explanations of processes of interest development. Our paper drawson these theoretical notions to analyse and discuss qualitative data collected in a classroom-basedlongitudinal study. Twenty six grade 5 students participated in science lessons that were designedbased on classroom learning community principles. Observational, interview and self-report datawere gathered in relation to whole class and small group activities, as well as more specifically inrelation to the individual participation of six focus students. Data gathered across multiple contexts– 175 –