Education Commons^™

Teaching Students How To Make Their Dreams Come True: An Autoethnography Of Developing And Teaching The Dream Research Methods Course, E. James Baesler

The Qualitative Report

How to make students’ dreams come true is the central focus of this autoethnography that chronicles the story of the transformation of a traditional undergraduate communication research methods course into a new and creative dream research methods course. Pedagogical and institutional issues in teaching the traditional methods course join personal influences in my life story to birth the new dream research methods course. The content and format of the new course are described chronologically using personal stories, student perspectives, advice to teachers, and reflection questions. I encourage teachers, by experimenting with the ideas in the dream research methods course, to …

Intention, Questions, And Creative Expression: An Antidiscriminatory Diversity Statement, Hannah S. Bright

Scholarship and Engagement in Education

Supporting education that reflects diversity involves maintaining awareness of one’s personal positionality, creating safe and inclusive learning communities, and using creativity and choice to empower and honor student voice and individual development. When working in educational settings, teachers may involve students in selecting relevant materials, and follow their lead in creating critical dialogue about salient factors of identity.

Final Ma Portfolio, Annelise Mason

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio contains papers on Urban Education and teaching speakers of African American Language/ African American Vernacular English. As the capstone to my Masters in English with a Specialization in Teaching, I have chosen four papers to revise and resubmit: “Intertwining Narratives: Stories of the I-280 Bridge Collapse,” “Reshaping Attitudes: Tailoring Urban Education to fit the African American Student,” “The Study of Language in a Multi-Dialectical Classroom,” and “Youth Acquisition and Ownership Is Crucial Language Vitality.” "Intertwining Narratives" is a report on the I-280 bridge collapse in Toledo. "Reshaping Attitudes" is an explanation of some best practice in urban education. …

Roundtable – Teaching Human Rights: Challenges And Best Practices, Shayna Plaut, Kristi Kenyon, Joel Pruce, William Simmons

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Over the past 20 years, courses addressing human rights have grown dramatically at both the undergraduate and graduate levels worldwide. Many of these courses are housed in specific disciplines, focus on specific issues, and require practical experience in the form of internships/practicums. Amid this growth there is a need to reflect on teaching human rights including the challenges, fears, and best practices.

Recognizing that education takes place inside and outside a classroom, this roundtable brings together scholars teaching human rights in a variety of settings to examine the current state of university human rights education. This includes a discussion of …

Normalizing The Need For Help: What All Teachers Need, Nancy Gropper

Occasional Paper Series

Gropper recalls her need for support when she first joined the graduate faculty at Bank Street College as a Supervised Fieldwork advisor. She explores the connections between her own most recent experiences as a newcomer and what all new teachers need in order to succeed - teacher support. This article describes critical components of a teacher support program, referencing the methods of the New Educators Support Team (NEST).

Wrong Place, Right Time, Rachel Mazor

Occasional Paper Series

Mazor recounts working in the three distinctly different environments during her first year of teaching: sixth-grade math, pre-school social studies, and first-grade reading. Each of these experiences taught her specific skills that she later applied to assignments; additionally, each experience helped her develop her own style as a teacher.

When September Comes Again, Elizabeth Huffman

Occasional Paper Series

Huffman describes her first year teaching as extremely difficult and stressful. She reflects on her experiences and includes a log of events that she had written throughout that first year. Her stories remind her why she continues her journey as a teacher today.

Introduction: The First Years Out, Judith Leipzig

Occasional Paper Series

An introduction to a series of essays from former Bank Street advisees that reflect on their first-year teaching experiences. The essays reflect the voices of those in the midst of becoming the teachers they hope to be. They touch on important aspects of teaching such as being present, bringing one's whole self, recognizing the interdependence between students and teachers, and generosity.

Teaching My Child To Resist In Kindergarten, Christine Ferris

Occasional Paper Series

Ferris describes how she taught her son to resist in his kindergarten classroom while drawing on her own experiences as an educator. Their experience draws attention to common teaching methods that do not promote socialization or free thinking. This also highlights the issues that can arise when the value system of a school does not align with a family's own beliefs - especially when alternative schools are not a viable option.

The Power Of More Than One, Jane King

Occasional Paper Series

Jane King reflects on her experiences as a preschool teacher eager to use methods outside of the norm. She resists activities that encourage homogeneity and strives to promote autonomy and free thinking in her students. After transitioning from teacher to parent, she still uses this philosophy to make small changes in her daughter's classroom and encourage her children to engage in acts of resistance and critical thinking both in and out of school.

Roundtable – Teaching Human Rights: Challenges And Best Practices, Shayna Plaut, Kristi Kenyon, Joel Pruce, William Simmons

Joel Pruce

Over the past 20 years, courses addressing human rights have grown dramatically at both the undergraduate and graduate levels worldwide. Many of these courses are housed in specific disciplines, focus on specific issues, and require practical experience in the form of internships/practicums. Amid this growth there is a need to reflect on teaching human rights including the challenges, fears, and best practices. Recognizing that education takes place inside and outside a classroom, this roundtable brings together scholars teaching human rights in a variety of settings to examine the current state of university human rights education. This includes a discussion of …

Emphasis On Test Scores In Education, Lindsay Olson

Empowering Research for Educators

This article discusses how too much emphasis on standardized testing can affect student learning as well as teaching in the classroom. It includes a personal interview with a high school teacher as well as an article from the Washington Post regarding a study that was completed involving testing students.

Decision Making Models In 2/2 Time: Two Speakers, Two Models (Maybe), Sharon Bradley, Tim Tarvin

Presentations

Our students have to learn so many new skills to be successful in law school and law practice. Legal research, client interviewing, and case analysis just for starters. Our teaching methods have to engage our students while preparing them to “think like a lawyer.” We also have the responsibility to familiarize students in evaluating the “benefits and risks associated with relevant technology” and to develop efficient practices and processes. The speakers will look at decision making models that are practical and useable.

One speaker will discuss his experiences in a clinical setting using decision trees, teaching his students to visualize …

“Less Of The Heroine Than The Woman”: Parsing Gender In The British Novel, Susan Carlile

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This essay offers two methods that will help students resist the temptation to judge eighteenth-century novels by twenty-first-century standards. These methods prompt students to parse the question of whether female protagonists in novels—in this case, Daniel Defoe’s Roxana (1724), Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (1759), and Charlotte Lennox’s Sophia (1762)—are portrayed as perfect models or as complex humans. The first method asks them to engage with definitions of the term “heroine,” and the second method uses word clouds to extend their thinking about the complexity of embodying a mid-eighteenth-century female identity.

Stayers, Leavers, Lovers, And Dreamers: Why People Teach And Why They Stay - 2004 Barbara Biber Lecture, Marilyn Cochran-Smith

Occasional Paper Series

Marilyn Cochran-Smith delivers the Barbara Biber Lecture at Bank Street College in memorial of her legacy as a researcher, scholar, and leader in progressive education. Cochran-Smith focuses on what lies at the heart of teaching and learning on an individual level as well as what it will take to improve the current state of urban schools. Her main points address teacher retention and differences among generations of teachers.

21st Century Teaching And Learning: Teachers' Perceptions And Practices In Four High Schools Of One District, Cynthia L. Rice

Theses and Dissertations from 2017

Education needs have shifted from a focus on static skills to the ability to continuously learn in a dynamic environment as information technology rapidly transforms the workplace and classrooms. High schools are searching for instructional practices that will close the achievement gap as well as meet the challenge of ensuring that students are college and career ready upon graduation. Over 50% of jobs by 2020 will be computer oriented yet a small percent of students seek education to qualify for those jobs. Twenty first century skills are essential to prepare students for those jobs (Carnevale & Smith, 2012). The purpose …

Thinking About Students' Learning: Metacognition Across The Disciplines, Saryn R. Goldberg, Jennifer Gundlach, Amy M. Masnick, Jennifer A. Rich, Jessica R. Santangelo

Hofstra University Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series

The ability to think about one’s own thinking—metacognition—is identified as one of the keys to subject mastery in most, if not all, disciplines. It is clear that being able to be one’s own critic — assessing and reassessing one’s understanding — is of critical importance to learning. Rarely, however, is metacognition explicitly taught or discussed as a centerpiece of learning in a content-heavy classroom, even with the best intentions of the professors.

A panel of Hofstra faculty from the disciplines of psychology, biology, law, engineering and writing studies will share results from their ongoing research about the impact of integrating …

Full Issue: Journal On Empowering Teaching Excellence, Volume 1, Issue 1

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

For our inaugural issue, we reviewed the feedback from our 2016 ETE faculty conference—an event for USU faculty hosted every August on the USU main campus. We identified several of the presenters who received high marks in post-session surveys and invited them to submit a proceedings paper for their presentation. Many responded, and their papers now comprise the majority of this issue. Because most of the articles began as stand-up presentations for a conference, several adopt a first-person narrative style in which the authors share examples of things they have tried in their teaching that have worked. In the process …

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Hero's Journey And The Research Process, Mariana Regalado, Helen Georgas, Matthew J. Burgess

Publications and Research

In Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, the hero of the story embarks on an adventure and returns transformed, empowered, and enlightened. Two academic librarians and the research process itself were incorporated into the curriculum of an undergraduate composition course that was structured around the research and writing process as a hero’s journey. The experience, which was student/hero-centered, self-directed, self-defined, investigative, and exploratory, was transformative for the students and the librarians as well.

What Do Parents Really Want? Parent Perspectives On Gifted Education, Ryan Mccreary

Education Dissertations and Projects

In this research study, the correlation between the strategies that previous research had indicated as effective for gifted education and the programming sought by parents of gifted children was examined. Survey results and interviews with parents revealed several strategies that parents wanted to be implemented in gifted education as well as powerful practices that would enhance gifted education if implemented by school leaders. The problem of underachievement among gifted students is also discussed as well as strategies to reverse it.

Your Teaching Strategy Matters: How Engagement Impacts Application In Health Information Literacy Instruction, Heather A. Johnson, Laura C. Barrett

Dartmouth Scholarship

The purpose of this study was to compare two pedagogical methods, active learning and passive instruction, to determine which is more useful in helping students to achieve the learning outcomes in a one-hour research skills instructional session.