LIL at AERA 2026
Our LIL students and faculty will be presenting their work at the 2026 AERA conference in Los Angeles, California. If you're attending, we encourage you to stop by their sessions and check out the work that they've been doing.
Note: All LIL members in bold. Presenters are indicated by italics. All times are listed in Pacific Daylight Time.
From clicks to insights: Exploring SRL behaviors longitudinally using institutional data
Heeryung Choi, Christopher Steadman, Caitlin Mills & Pani Kendeou
Spoken Presentation: Wed, April 8, 7:45 AM to 9:15 AM
Higher education’s adoption of learning management systems provides vast student datasets for academic insight. This study utilized learning analytics on an institutional dataset (N=2293) to cluster students based on engagement and self-regulated learning (SRL) behaviors. By tracking how these patterns evolve over time, we analyzed their impact on academic performance and retention. Results demonstrate that long-term SRL behaviors are critical for success and serve as effective early predictors for identifying at-risk students.
Seeing the source, trusting the source: What helps children integrate conflicting texts?
Haolan Wang, Pani Kendeou, Xinchun Wu, Jason Braasch, Yi Zhao, & Hongjun Chen
Poster Presentation: Thu, April 9, 2:15 PM to 3:45 PM
We investigated how source awareness, credibility evaluation abilities, and prior topic beliefs influence Chinese children’s integration of conflicting texts. In Study 1 (N = 228), upper-elementary students read contradictory texts and wrote essays scored for position anchoring, source-driven evidence, and conflict integration, showing grade-related differences. In Study 2 (N = 224), source awareness was experimentally manipulated. Results showed source-driven evidence was positively predicted by credibility evaluation abilities only when source awareness was activated. Conflict integration was unrelated to these factors but negatively predicted by belief strength. These findings suggest that metacognitive and evaluative abilities jointly support source-based reasoning, while strong prior beliefs may hinder reconciliation of conflicting perspectives during multiple-text integration.
Supporting Justice‑Oriented Data Literacy in Science and History Classrooms
Bodong Chen, Regina Lisinker, Vivian Leung, David DeLiema, & Cassie Scharber
Spoken Presentation: Friday April 10, 9:45 AM - 11:15 AM
This contribution reports findings from the DataX project to show how justice‑oriented data literacy can engage secondary students in investigating real‑world phenomena using public datasets. Focusing on one seventh‑grade life‑science module and one eleventh‑grade U.S. history unit, the study asks how teachers enact justice‑oriented data work in disciplinary lessons and what opportunities and tensions arise.
Designing Accessible Texts for Adults Readers: Comparing Simplified, Authentic, and Parallel Text Versions
Amanda Jensen & Pani Kendeou
Round Table Session: Fri, April 10, 3:45 PM to 5:15 PM
This study examined whether reading times and comprehension outcomes differed across three versions of the same narrative short story—authentic, simplified, and parallel. Adult multilingual and struggling readers (n = 83) were assigned to one of the text versions. Kruskal-Wallis tests showed no significant differences in reading time or comprehension across text formats. However, linear mixed effects models revealed that vocabulary knowledge significantly predicted comprehension, specifically interacting with text version to suggest stronger vocabularies especially benefited parallel text readers.