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Full-Text Articles in Education

Examining Culturally Responsive Understandings Within An Undergraduate Teacher Education Program, Kelly M. Gomez Johnson, Anne E. Karabon, Derrick A. Nero Dec 2018

Examining Culturally Responsive Understandings Within An Undergraduate Teacher Education Program, Kelly M. Gomez Johnson, Anne E. Karabon, Derrick A. Nero

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

This article examines how a group of elementary and secondary preservice teachers engaged in understanding “culture” and culturally responsive teaching while enrolled in an early program course. We analyze how culturally-related experiences, emotions, and perspectives contribute to the overall understanding of cultural competency training in teacher education. Preservice teachers varied in their use of individual- and structural-orientations, in isolation and in combination, as they developed and progressed as socially just teachers. These findings reveal that despite attempts to develop and shift toward asset-based perspectives, far more culturally embedded coursework and practicum experiences are necessary. This paper includes a reflection on …


Understanding School And Community Contexts: Leading For Success Along The Texas-Mexico Border, Erin D. Atwood Dec 2018

Understanding School And Community Contexts: Leading For Success Along The Texas-Mexico Border, Erin D. Atwood

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

Enacting social justice leadership requires that school leaders understand social, political, and historic contexts of the communities and schools where they lead. This paper examines the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metropolitan area and highlights some of these issues within this particular community along the Texas-Mexico border. This description of the area provides understanding of the uniqueness of borderlands contexts and allows us to better understand the social justice work of one local school district in leading for success in this context.


Editorial Board 2018-2019, Leticia Villarreal Sosa Dec 2018

Editorial Board 2018-2019, Leticia Villarreal Sosa

International Journal of School Social Work

Editorial Boards 2018-2019


Parents’ Perception Of School Violence, Awareness Of Risk Factors, And School Safety: An Ecological Perspective, Hussein Hassan Soliman, Jennifer Koran, Abdel-Salam Gomaa Dec 2018

Parents’ Perception Of School Violence, Awareness Of Risk Factors, And School Safety: An Ecological Perspective, Hussein Hassan Soliman, Jennifer Koran, Abdel-Salam Gomaa

International Journal of School Social Work

Parents’ concerns about school violence and school safety have been documented in many research studies (Diaz-Vicario & Sallan, 2017; Hundeloh & Hess, 2003). Understanding parents’ perceptions of school safety can be an important issue that will guide teachers (Bosworth, Ford, & Hernandaz, 2011), administrators and staff (Heisterkamp, & Fleming, 2011), and legislators (Elliott, 2015) in setting strategies to enhance school safety and school climate. The purpose of this study is to identify factors that contribute to parents’ views of school safety. Based on existing literature, this study developed a model of one main endogenous variable -- feelings of instructional safety …


The Use Of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy In Chinese Schools: A Qualitative Analysis Of Practitioner Perceptions, Hong Chen, Xuanwen Liu, Samantha R. Guz, Anao Zhang, Cynthia Franklin, Yingping Zhang, Yanzhou Qu Dec 2018

The Use Of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy In Chinese Schools: A Qualitative Analysis Of Practitioner Perceptions, Hong Chen, Xuanwen Liu, Samantha R. Guz, Anao Zhang, Cynthia Franklin, Yingping Zhang, Yanzhou Qu

International Journal of School Social Work

Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) is a strengthens-based, future-oriented approach that has received promising results over the past decade. Literature on SFBT has demonstrated the approach’s ability to meet the unique needs of various client populations while adapting to a variety of service delivery settings. Schools are a specific setting in which SFBT has been successfully utilized in the United States. With the growing popularity of SFBT, countries outside to the United States are beginning to implement SFBT in their schools. This article explored perceptions of the use of SFBT in schools amongst Chinese mental health practitioners. A survey was conducted …


School Social Workers: A Call To Action In Support Of Human Rights, Leticia Villarreal Sosa, Raylinn Nuckolls Dec 2018

School Social Workers: A Call To Action In Support Of Human Rights, Leticia Villarreal Sosa, Raylinn Nuckolls

International Journal of School Social Work

The global climate of extremism and direct attacks on marginalized groups such as LGBTQI persons, Muslims, women, immigrants, and refugees creates a need at this critical juncture for school social workers to ground themselves in the international definition of social work, which defines social work as a human rights profession. While there are many challenges to upholding human rights conventions across the world, a human rights framework can assist school social workers in promoting human rights and advocating for vulnerable and marginalized populations. In the context of global migration, children can be especially vulnerable to human rights violations. A human …


What About Students’ Experiences: (Re)Imagining Success Through Photovoice At A High-Achieving Urban “No-Excuses” Charter School, L. Trenton S. Marsh Nov 2018

What About Students’ Experiences: (Re)Imagining Success Through Photovoice At A High-Achieving Urban “No-Excuses” Charter School, L. Trenton S. Marsh

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

The article highlights the use of photovoice, a method that gives power to creators of images to capture experiences that are central to their life. Students verbal considerations of success in the context of the “no-excuses” school is included, as is a sample of students’ visual data about what success is outside of the “no-excuses” context. The study reveals the “no-excuses” orientation fosters an oppressive definition of success in the context of classrooms. However, the photovoice component reveals students are able to resist the limited view as four emergent findings reveal how students make meaning of success: (1) human connection; …


Phylogenetics: A Catalyst For A Biophilic Revolution?, Holli N. Watne Oct 2018

Phylogenetics: A Catalyst For A Biophilic Revolution?, Holli N. Watne

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

A biology framework in Environmental Education can inspire biophilia, the love for the complex array of lifeforms on this planet, in students. In this paper, a simple, multi-scaled phylogenetic tree is presented to express such a framework. When viewing life from a framework such as a phylogenetic tree, the human species is seen as just one part of something vastly complex. This view is contrasted to another framework, more anthropocentric in nature, that seems to be more typical in the developed world. Challenging students to view the role of humanity from a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, framework can lead to …


How To Make An Orchestra Alone: A Critical, Experiential Performance Of Ben’S Year In The Mountains, Ben Kusserow Oct 2018

How To Make An Orchestra Alone: A Critical, Experiential Performance Of Ben’S Year In The Mountains, Ben Kusserow

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This paper shares the hour-performance traveled from the boat house to the middle of the dam on Diablo Lake, WA. There were two distinct activities in each of the four sections. In each section, Ben shared a story from his year in the NCI Graduate Residency program. He then engaged the audience in some critical thought leading into an activity.


Eating Is An Act Of Learning; Eating Is An Act Of Love, Annah Young Oct 2018

Eating Is An Act Of Learning; Eating Is An Act Of Love, Annah Young

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Environmental Education should exist to address injustices in our world, be they social or environmental since the two rarely exist isolated from each other. Environmental Education should exist to unite people, transcend social boundaries, and bring about solutions to shared socioecological challenges. One of the most pertinent socioecological challenges we face today revolves around our food system. We now have an opportunity to change our education system to reflect the current reality of our food system and reimagine a future where all communities have control over the cultivation, production, and distribution of the food on their plates all while treading …


Education For Wholeness: La Womb De Mi Labor, Ginna Malley Campos Oct 2018

Education For Wholeness: La Womb De Mi Labor, Ginna Malley Campos

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Conventional education teaches and reinforces disconnection from ourselves and disengagement from the world. This presentation considers power, privilege, and the act of listening in educational settings and identity development and explores the importance of holistic education for transforming self and society. Through a personal journey that interweaves the complexities of colonial history, heritage and identity with spirit and healing; we invite all to engage inwardly with the suffering implicit in our existence in order to reconnect with the wholeness that enables our shared journey towards healing.


Inextricably Season 1, Episode 1: “Now What”, Adam F. Bates Oct 2018

Inextricably Season 1, Episode 1: “Now What”, Adam F. Bates

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This is the transcript of a fictional weekly podcast called Inextricably, performed in front of a live audience at North Cascades Institute’s Environmental Learning Center in North Cascades National Park in March 2017. The author outlines and examines the personal themes and seasonal cycles throughout an entire graduate school residency, a Master’s of Education in Environmental Education offered in partnership with North Cascades Institute and Western Washington University. A search for the purpose in the way information and knowledge is transferred, a sense of disillusionment with traditional models of education, and the unexpected learning outcomes of this experience are the …


Uniting Passions: The Transformation Of A Teacher, Emily Baronich Oct 2018

Uniting Passions: The Transformation Of A Teacher, Emily Baronich

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This presentation explores the formulation and evolution of an educator through the lens of mathematics, formal and informal settings. It leans on personal experiences, self- evaluation, and the process of developing a dream school that exemplifies environmental and mathematical learning.


Holding The Center: Story And Community, Emma E. Ewert Oct 2018

Holding The Center: Story And Community, Emma E. Ewert

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Stories are fundamental to our experience of being human. They help us to make meaning from our lives, and to construct and understand our identities. Although we sometimes struggle to define story in words, we easily recognize when a story is present. This capstone does not present an ultimate definition of story, but rather a series of ideas and patterns that are most commonly found in story. In particular, it says that most stories contain protagonists who overcome a series of obstacles to achieve a final goal and find a meaning or moral behind a series of events. Through examining …


The Making Of A Naturalist, Joseph Loviska Oct 2018

The Making Of A Naturalist, Joseph Loviska

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

The purpose of this work is for you, the reader, to be sufficiently informed, entertained, and inspired that you find yourself reaching your own hands down into your soul, or your soil-filled gut, or the soles of your feet or your over-stuffed brain – wherever it is that you keep the meaning of your life — and press with your thumbs to make room for a new seed. Through story and poetry, I will use my own life as a site of inquiry to illuminate the educational structure and purpose of ideas around ecological identity. I see that dominant Western …


Being, Fxminist, Aly Gourd Oct 2018

Being, Fxminist, Aly Gourd

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This presentation explores various expressions of voice, arguing the importance of defining and implementing a feminist [fxminist] perspective to inform a cultural shift in how we work to communicate truthfully, resist fear and violent oppressive systems, and find hope. A variation of the following was presented as a capstone presentation in March 2017 and has been reconstructed to reflect aspects of the speech and activities as well as an analytical orientation to the capstone.


Querencia, Sasha Savoian Oct 2018

Querencia, Sasha Savoian

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Querencia, where I am are strong from. Querencia, translated literally from Spanish to mean “beloved place”. It informs identity, it gives us a place of belonging in the world, and it roots us to a particular memory experienced through landscape. It is as broad as it is narrow, but it inextricably links us to a literal or metaphorical landscape we call home. Querencia is a place where we know exactly who we are. It is often a physical location, a landscape, but it may also be a movement of music, a perfect wooden chair, a lyrical linking of words in …


Faith And Environmentalism: A Personal Reflection, Jessica T. Davis Oct 2018

Faith And Environmentalism: A Personal Reflection, Jessica T. Davis

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This paper was presented as a culminating capstone project at North Cascades Institute as required by Western Washington University’s M.Ed. program in Environmental Education. Guided by seven themes, this paper seeks to demonstrate the connection between Faith and the environment. The seven connections explored include the following: prayer and meditation, peace, food consumption, seasons, material consumption, taking care, and fellowship. While environmentally responsible decisions may not necessarily be a top priority for all people of Faith, religious beliefs and Spirituality may influence some to develop a deeper connection to the environment. Although this paper is a personal reflection, focused on …


Truth Grounding Education, Zachary Lundgren Oct 2018

Truth Grounding Education, Zachary Lundgren

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

The following is a transcript of an oral presentation delivered at the Environmental Learning Center in Diablo, Washington in March of 2017. It explores wisdom shared by personal relations to the author that relate to education and education systems. It takes a critical stance on education systems and celebrates learning as a fundamental human act.


Braiding Identities In Nature Through Preschool, Hannah E. Newell Oct 2018

Braiding Identities In Nature Through Preschool, Hannah E. Newell

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Preschool is an age when many things are yet to be discovered. This capstone presentation engages the public in what free play in nature is like. Often as adults, we lose our ability to think with our imagination first. Preschool aged children can lose this ability as well if they are not allowed the time to explore freely. More importantly, they can lose the opportunity to develop a sense of place making it less likely that they will feel connected to nature. It is also pertinent that children of this age are introduced to the many differences and similarities that …


The Greater Unconformity, Emily Ford Oct 2018

The Greater Unconformity, Emily Ford

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

In recent light of sexual harassment cases going unaddressed at Grand Canyon National Park and other public lands, there is a need to call out the persistent social, political, and economic structures that allow such acts to occur and go undocumented and unaddressed. A thorough explanation of geologic unconformities, especially the Great Unconformity in the Grand Canyon, is used as a seamless metaphor for a lack of space for women in the outdoors. This graduate capstone presentation includes an exploration of the gender binary, feminism, the geology of the Grand Canyon, the nature of unconformities, intersectionality, and ecofeminism. In conclusion, …


Un-Naming Collaboration: An Unexpected Catalyst For Understanding Participation In Critical Ethnography, Allison Anders, Joshua Diem Oct 2018

Un-Naming Collaboration: An Unexpected Catalyst For Understanding Participation In Critical Ethnography, Allison Anders, Joshua Diem

The Qualitative Report

In this article, we trace interactions with participants in two different research projects. Although the research settings were different, we focus on what the projects had in common: a commitment to collaboration, methodological training from the same faculty, and our respective decisions to turn away from labeling our work collaborative deep into each project’s development. In a narrative as chronicle, we represent ways each project unfolded and then why each of us abandoned claims of collaboration. Specifically, we share the critical positions we staked early in our research designs and the communication with participants that taught us to un-name what …


Non-Traditional Students At Public Regional Universities: A Case Study, Lizabeth Zack Oct 2018

Non-Traditional Students At Public Regional Universities: A Case Study, Lizabeth Zack

Teacher-Scholar: The Journal of the State Comprehensive University

This paper investigates the topic of non-traditional students enrolled at four-year public regional universities and addresses questions about who they are, what makes them non-traditional and how they experience college life. The analysis is based on survey data collected from 187 undergraduates at one regional public college in the southeastern United States. The study found a higher portion of non-traditional students than expected and that the non-traditional students tended to break down into two types, a younger worker-student and an older adult student, rather than conforming to a single profile. While the findings highlight other similarities with the broader population …


Editorial Board 2017-2018 Sep 2018

Editorial Board 2017-2018

International Journal of School Social Work

Editorial Board


Early Childhood Leadership: A Photovoice Exploration, Kristi Cheyney-Collante, Melissa Cheyney Sep 2018

Early Childhood Leadership: A Photovoice Exploration, Kristi Cheyney-Collante, Melissa Cheyney

The Qualitative Report

The first five years of a child’s life represent critical windows in physiological, social-emotional, and cognitive development. Administrators of early childhood (EC) programs play a pivotal role in determining the quality of experiences that unfold for young children in center-based care. Using photovoice, semi-structured administrator interviews, and participant-observation, we aimed to identify the factors contributing to one center’s atypically excellent outcomes with diverse children and families. Our textual and photographic analyses revealed three findings. First, administrators saw themselves as embedded within a larger system of barriers characterized by low positionality within an educational caste system that is marked by pervasive …


Different Choices: A Public School Community’S Responses To School Choice Reforms, Amanda U. Potterton Aug 2018

Different Choices: A Public School Community’S Responses To School Choice Reforms, Amanda U. Potterton

The Qualitative Report

In the United States, state and federal reforms increasingly encourage the expansion of school choice policies. Debates about school choice contrast various concepts of freedom and equality with concerns about equity, justice, achievement, democratic accountability, profiting management organizations, and racial and class segregation. Arizona’s “market”-based school choice programs include over 600 charter schools, and the state’s open enrollment practices, public and private school tax credit allowances, and Empowerment Scholarships, (closely related to vouchers), flourish. This qualitative analysis explores one district-run public school and its surrounding community, and I discuss socio-political and cultural tensions related to school choice reforms that exist …


Violence And Aggression In School Settings, Barbara Katic May 2018

Violence And Aggression In School Settings, Barbara Katic

Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice

Violence and aggression continue to cause harm to American schools and communities, which has been visibly illustrated by the continual perpetration of school shootings. In order to prevent these situations for occurring again, the etiology of violent and aggressive behaviors must be studied. Utilizing an ecological perspective, both the risk factors and protective factors of violence and aggression, also known as a dual strategy approach, are examined within an educational context. Specific risk factors reviewed include weapons exposure and social rejection, while protective factors reviewed include school connectedness and pro-social relationships. Implications regarding the prevention of violent and aggressive acts …


Using Random Forests To Describe Equity In Higher Education: A Critical Quantitative Analysis Of Utah’S Postsecondary Pipelines, Tyler Mcdaniel Apr 2018

Using Random Forests To Describe Equity In Higher Education: A Critical Quantitative Analysis Of Utah’S Postsecondary Pipelines, Tyler Mcdaniel

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

The following work examines the Random Forest (RF) algorithm as a tool for predicting student outcomes and interrogating the equity of postsecondary education pipelines. The RF model, created using longitudinal data of 41,303 students from Utah's 2008 high school graduation cohort, is compared to logistic and linear models, which are commonly used to predict college access and success. Substantially, this work finds High School GPA to be the best predictor of postsecondary GPA, whereas commonly used ACT and AP test scores are not nearly as important. Each model identified several demographic disparities in higher education access, most significantly the effects …


Developing And Implementing A Participatory Action Research Assistantship Program At The Community College, Mia Ocean, Kelli Tigertail, James Keller, Kathleen Woods Feb 2018

Developing And Implementing A Participatory Action Research Assistantship Program At The Community College, Mia Ocean, Kelli Tigertail, James Keller, Kathleen Woods

The Qualitative Report

Despite serving almost half of the U.S. undergraduate students, community colleges and their constituents are consistently marginalized in the research favoring external university experts to conduct research about them and on them. To counteract these top down, disempowering research practices, we piloted a Participatory Action Research Assistantship Program (PARAP). A PARAP is a modified version of a research assistantship program that is grounded in an anti-oppressive, participatory action research practice, creating change on many levels. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of practical and methodological steps to implement a PARAP at a community college including forming …


Empathy Institutionalized: Sociocultural Dialogue As A Strategic Peacebuilding Initiative, Emily Owens Jan 2018

Empathy Institutionalized: Sociocultural Dialogue As A Strategic Peacebuilding Initiative, Emily Owens

Bridge/Work

A common adage used in psychological exploration tells us that “If you want to know the end, look at the beginning.” While typically employed to emphasize the importance of upbringing and environment on personal outcomes, this phrase can be equally applicable in examining the ways in which society has developed over time to produce our polarized sociopolitical culture of today. This work explores from an integrative psychosocial perspective the potential that exists in working to define a new “end” by shaping a new “beginning,” through going directly to the institutions that comprise our own beginnings— schools. Through a combined research …