Bio

Megumi Takada is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Her research centers around children’s literacy experiences in the early elementary school years, with a special interest in designing literacy instruction that promotes student agency and school belonging. Her most recent work focuses on multilingual writing, working with elementary school teachers to design writing instruction that leverages multilingual students' languages, cultures, and identities. Her work is driven by her former experience as a public school teacher in South Korea and Seattle, as well as her transnational, translingual experiences growing up cross-culturally in California and Japan. She is a recipient of the Fulbright teaching fellowship and graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in neuroscience and elementary teaching credentials.

Honors & Awards

  • Fulbright Teaching Fellowship to South Korea, U.S. Student Fulbright Program (2017-2018)

Education & Certifications

  • B.A., Wellesley College, Neuroscience (2017)

Contact

  • Academic
    metakada@stanford.edu
    University - Student Department: Graduate School of Education Position: Graduate

Additional Info

  • Mail Code: 3096

All Publications

  • Measuring kindergarteners' motivational beliefs about writing: a mixed-methods exploration of alternate assessment formats. Frontiers in psychology Takada, M. E., Lemons, C. J., Balasubramanian, L., Hallman, B. T., Al Otaiba, S., Puranik, C. S. 2023; 14: 1217085

    Abstract

    There have been a handful of studies on kindergarteners' motivational beliefs about writing, yet measuring these beliefs in young children continues to pose a set of challenges. The purpose of this exploratory, mixed-methods study was to examine how kindergarteners understand and respond to different assessment formats designed to capture their motivational beliefs about writing. Across two studies, we administered four assessment formats - a 4-point Likert-type scale survey, a binary choice survey, a challenge preference task, and a semi-structured interview - to a sample of 114 kindergarteners engaged in a larger writing intervention study. Our overall goals were to examine the benefits and challenges of using these assessment formats to capture kindergarteners' motivational beliefs and to gain insight on future directions for studying these beliefs in this young age group. Many participants had a difficult time responding to the 4-point Likert-type scale survey, due to challenges with the response format and the way the items were worded. However, more simplified assessment formats, including the binary choice survey and challenge preference task, may not have fully captured the nuances and complexities of participants' motivational beliefs. The semi-structured interview leveraged participants' voices and highlighted details that were overlooked in the other assessment formats. Participants' interview responses were deeply intertwined with their local, everyday experiences and pushed back on common assumptions of what constitutes negatively oriented motivational beliefs about writing. Overall, our results suggest that kindergarteners' motivational beliefs appear to be multifaceted, contextually grounded, and hard to quantify. Additional research is needed to further understand how motivational beliefs are shaped during kindergarten. We argue that motivational beliefs must be studied in context rather than in a vacuum, in order to work toward a fair and meaningful understanding of motivational beliefs about writing that can be applied to school settings.

    View details for DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1217085

    View details for PubMedID 37599752

    View details for PubMedCentralID PMC10437215