Education Commons^™

Systems Thinking In A Second Grade Curriculum: Students Engaged To Address A Statewide Drought, Margaret Sauceda Curwen, Amy Ardell, Laurie Macgillivray, Rachel Lambert

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Faced with issues, such as drought and climate change, educators around the world acknowledge the need for developing students’ ability to solve problems within and across contexts. A systems thinking pedagogy, which recognizes interdependence and interconnected relationships among concrete elements and abstract concepts (Meadows, 2008; Senge et al., 2012), has potential to transform the classroom into a space of observing, theorizing, discovering, and analyzing, thus linking academic learning to the real world. In a qualitative case study in one school located in a major metropolitan area in California, USA teachers and their 7- and 8-year-old students used systems thinking in …

Latent Class Analysis Of Children With Math Difficulties And/Or Math Learning Disabilities: Are There Cognitive Differences?, H. Lee Swanson, Andres F. Olide, Jennifer E. Kong

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This study investigated whether a latent class of children with math difficulties (MD) or math learning disabilities (MLD) emerged within a heterogeneous sample of learners. A latent class analysis was computed on children (N = 447) in Grade 3 who were administered a battery of math, reading, and cognitive measures. The analysis yielded four important findings. First, a discrete latent class of children with MD (15% of the sample) or MLD (10% of the sample) emerged when setting cut-off scores at or below the 25th and 11th percentile, respectively. Second, model testing yielded a high probability of finding children with …

From “Turning The Page” To Getting Our Noses Out Of The Book: How Ncte Can Translate Its Words Into Activism, Noah Asher Golden, Deborah Bieler

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This article raises questions about the role of NCTE in an era of widespread education reform that often runs counter to a wide body of scholarship and members’ understandings of ways to build strong, equitable educational systems. The authors call on NCTE to reinvent itself primarily as a space from which to take action toward equity and justice. This provocateur piece offers a loving critique of NCTE’s notion of advocacy at a time when neoliberal education reforms limit educators’ capacity to carry out our collective responsibilities to marginalized and vulnerable youth.

Culturally Responsive Interviewing Practices, Michael Hass, Annmary S. Abdou

Education Faculty Articles and Research

As communities and school populations continue to become more culturally, economically, and linguistically diverse, the need for comprehensive training and explicit guidelines for culturally responsive school mental health practices also grows. School Psychologists are both expected and ethically responsible to competently assess and serve diverse student and family populations, regardless of potential language or cultural barriers. The current article is focused on describing background and rationale for culturally responsive interviewing practices as they pertain to the roles and responsibilities of School Psychologists. Building on the guidelines and principles of the Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI), developed by the American Psychiatric Association, …

Sources Of Students’ Difficulties In Learning Chemistry, David F. Treagust, Reinders Duit, Martina Nieswandt

Administration and Staff Articles and Research

Chemistry is a difficult subject to teach and to learn at both secondary and tertiary levels. Major learning difficulties are due to the particular views of chemistry phenomena that in many ways contradict intuitive and everyday views of the learners. As a result, major misunderstandings occur when students try to comprehend chemical explanations within the framework of their pre-instructional conceptions. This paper describes research findings on students’ pre-instructional conceptions in the domain of chemistry and on attempts to guide students from their conceptions to the core ideas of chemistry. Rather than providing an overview of students’ conceptions in various topics, …

An Analysis Of Mentoring And Job Satisfaction In Public And Private College And University Academic Libraries In California, Kevin M. Ross

Education (PhD) Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study is to determine how mentoring correlates with job satisfaction for library employees in academic college and university libraries throughout California. A secondary purpose is to determine if mentoring predicts job satisfaction in library employees who participate in this study. A tertiary purpose measures the relationship between mentoring, job satisfaction and the demographic variables of gender, age range, ethnicity, longevity, and level of position.

The library related literature includes an abundance of secondary resources on the individual concepts of mentoring and job satisfaction, but the association between these two concepts has not been discussed in …

Flipping The Flipped: The Co-Creational Classroom, Vuk Uskoković

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

The flip teaching model is being increasingly adopted by higher education institutions as an active learning alternative to traditional lecturing. However, the flip model shares a number of critical premises with the classical didactics. The further flips of the flip are thus advocated and the fear of returning the method to its initial state, prior to the flip, via such flips of the flipped dispelled. Proposed here is a seminal variation to the flip model based on the active involvement of students in searching, finding, selecting, and assembling knowledge from various literature sources into the learning material for the entire …

Designed Cultural Adaptation And Delivery Quality In Rural Substance Use Prevention: An Effectiveness Trial For The Keepin’ It Real Curriculum, Michael L. Hecht, Youngju Shin, Jonathan Pettigrew, Michelle Miller-Day, Janice L. Krieger

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

This study examined how cultural adaptation and delivery quality of the school-based intervention keepin’ it REAL (kiR) influenced adolescent substance use. The goal of the study was to compare the effectiveness of the multi-cultural, urban (non-adapted) kiR intervention, a re-grounded (adapted) rural version of the kiR intervention and control condition in a new, rural setting. A total of 39 middle schools in rural communities of two states in the USA were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (i.e., control, non-adapted urban kiR, and adapted rural kiR). Data included adolescent self-reported lifetime substance use and observers’ ratings of delivery quality …

Cultivating A Professional Culture Of Peace And Inclusion: Conceptualizing Practical Applications Of Peace Leadership In Schools, Whitney Mcintyre Miller, Annmary S. Abdou

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Beyond the role of educating students across all academic domains, school leaders are tasked with the monumental responsibility of creating positive, engaged systems and cultures that embrace the growing cultural, economic, linguistic, and cognitive diversity in the United States landscape. With collective goals to create peaceful learning environments with capacity to serve diverse learners, many school leaders have embraced school-wide prevention and intervention efforts, such as Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) for social-emotional and behavioral development of students. Unfortunately, due to the inherent complexities and fragmentation of such efforts, many school leaders have continued to experience significant barriers to sustainable …

Practitioner Research In Schools: Revealing The Efficacy Agency Cycle, Edward Resnick

Educational Studies Dissertations

Years of high stakes testing and managerial directives to improve student test scores created a trend of teachers’ declining sense of efficacy and agency. Researchers have yet to examine the perceptions of teachers following requirements to improve student engagement and school climate in an effort to improve academic performance following the authorization of local and national educational accountability reforms. The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers perceive their efficacy and agency in response to the addition of nonacademic measures and the requirement of documented input from teachers and other stakeholders into educational policy planning procedures. Veteran K-12 …

Using Wikipedia In Israel Studies Courses, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

Instructors of Israeli history or literature, like professors in other areas, complain about students’ use of Wikipedia—and with good reason. Unlike peer-reviewed scholarship, many Wikipedia articles contain information that is both incomplete and wrong. Most instructors will warn their students that relying on Wikipedia is a sure recipe for failing assignments. Yet there is a way to mobilize this giant encyclopedia for pedagogical purposes. When students in Israel Studies classes are assigned to edit Wikipedia articles, they achieve multiple goals: they gain critical reading skills, shape public knowledge about Israel, and engage in active learning. This article explains how to …

Preparing Elementary School Teachers To Learn From Teaching: A Comparison Of Two Approaches To Mathematics Methods Instruction, Rossella Santagata, Cathery Yeh, Janet Mercado

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Teacher preparation programs face a significant challenge in determining how to design learning experiences that develop the combination of knowledge, practices, and dispositions needed for effective classroom teaching. Time constraints and the theory-practice divide are two well-documented concerns. We introduce the conceptual framework and design elements of a video-enhanced mathematics methods course that targets these concerns. The course centers on systematic reflection and analysis of practice intended to foster career-long learning. We then examine the impact of this course on several facets of learning-from-teaching competencies, including teacher knowledge, beliefs, and practices. Sixty-two pre-service teachers, enrolled in a one-year post-bachelor elementary …

Four Years Vs. One Semester: Music Information Literacy Delivered In Different Time Frames, Taylor Greene

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

How much does the time elapsed between instruction sessions affect retention of music information literacy concepts? This poster will demonstrate the two methods of delivering the Music Information Literacy course at Chapman University and discuss the benefits and pitfalls of each model. Starting in 2014, music students have been required to take four courses in Music Information Literacy which were delivered in 90-minute sessions over the course of four academic years. The Performing Arts Librarian, who has taught the course since its inception, noticed a lack of retention from some students and hypothesized that the timespan of delivery was a …

Counseling Gifted Students: School-Based Considerations And Strategies, Kelly Kennedy, Jessica Farley

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Gifted students are a heterogeneous group, inclusive of those of all cultures, backgrounds, interests, and achievements. Gifted students may not display any more or worse psychological, social, or developmental challenges than their peers, but they also are not immune from these challenges. Moreover, the nature of their giftedness may impact both how they experience a challenge and how a counselor might best support them. This article provides information regarding some developmental, emotional, and social challenges faced by gifted youth, as well as some suggestions for appropriate school-based counseling strategies.

Examining The Variability In General Education Placements For Students With Intellectual Disability, Meghan Cosier, Julia M. White, Qiu Wang

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Despite the overwhelming body of research suggesting that students with intellectual disability benefit from access to general education placements, students with intellectual disability continue to be educated primarily in segregated settings. Furthermore, the percentage of students with intellectual disability included in general education classrooms varies greatly among and within states across the United States. In an effort to explore such variability in New York State, we examined trends in general education placement rates of students with intellectual disability across districts and possible predictors of placement in regular classes. Results suggest that although descriptive patterns of placement exist, a more definitive …

Leveraging Analysis Of Students’ Disciplinary Thinking In A Video Club To Promote Student- Centered Science Instruction, Tara Barnhart, Elizabeth Van Es

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Recent policy reports and standards documents advocate for science teachers to adopt more student-centered instructional practices. Four secondary science teachers from one school district participated in a semester-long video club focused on honing attention to students’ evidence-based reasoning and creating opportunities to make students’ reasoning visible in practice. Although all participants expressed value in attending to students’ ideas and shifting autonomy to students in the classroom, they experienced varying levels and types of integration in their practice. Analysis revealed that teachers’ goals and commitments influenced the incremental ways in which participants integrated learning from the video club. Sustained and substantial …

Possibility And Play: Ludonarratology As Liberating Praxis, Morgan Read-Davidson

English Faculty Articles and Research

Studying and composing ergodic media like interactive fiction can be one way of liberating students from the constraints of linear textual composition, encouraging them to explore and experiment with multimodality and remediation. A pedagogy that incorporates narratology and ludology teaches awareness of the remediation of narrative into digital, ludic media, and creates opportunities for the transfer of nonlinear, interactive writing practices back into more conventional writing. This paper describes an example of this pedagogical approach in a Writing for Video Games course, and the preliminary steps toward understanding how such praxis might transfer to writing in new contexts.

Paulo Freire And Liberation Theology: The Christian Consciousness Of Critical Pedagogy, Peter Mclaren, Petar Jandrić

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"In this article we expand our work towards intersections and relationships between liberation theology and Paulo Freire. While Freire addressed liberation theology in his writings fairly sporadically (e.g. »The Politics of Education« [1985]), there is no doubt that he »lived a liberating Christian faith« and »significantly contributed to the thinking of liberation theology« (Kyrilo 2011, p. 167). Now that Paulo Freire is no longer with us, arguably the best way to reinvent his works for the present moment is through dialogue with Peter McLaren: Freire’s close friend, »intellectual relative« (Freire 1995, p. x), and one of the key contemporary thinkers …