Education Commons^™

Summer Camp As A Force For 21st Century Learning: Exploring Divergent Thinking And Activity Selection In A Residential Camp Setting, Myles Lynch, Jonathan A. Plucker, C Boyd Hegarty, Nate Trauntvein

Education

This study investigated change in divergent thinking (DT), an indicator of creative potential, at two gender-specific residential summer camps. Additionally, this study examined whether the change in DT varied by gender and by the type of activities campers self-select. Quantitative methods, using a quasi-experimental design was used in order to understand differences in camper scores. A total of 189 youth, 100 girls, 89 boys, between the ages of 9 and 14 years participated in the current study. Participants were administered a modified version of Guilford's (1967) alternate uses task, a measure of DT, in which respondents were asked questions such …

Resisting Punitive School Discipline: Perspectives And Practices Of Exemplary Urban Elementary Teachers, Elyse Hambacher

Education

Drawing on the literature related to classroom management, and culturally relevant critical teacher care, and effective teaching for students of color, this paper uses interview and observation data to explore the perspectives and practices of two exemplary fifth-grade teachers who refuse to rely on punitive discipline with their students of color. Findings revealed that the teachers did not view students’ behavior as challenging-- they viewed behavior simply as one of the many areas they believed it was their responsibility to teach. Their instructional practices focused on coaching students to reach their potential and liberating them from barriers that limit their …

Creating Communities Of Culturally Relevant Critical Teacher Care, Elyse Hambacher, Elizabeth Bondy

Education

This article draws on the literature on effective African American teachers of African American students to investigate the enactments of culturally relevant critical teacher care (CRCTC) in two fifth-grade teachers’ (one White and one Black) classrooms in a large, urban school district. Using interview and observation data, the findings illustrate the teachers’ knowledge of potential constraints upon their students’ futures. This knowledge catalyzed their enactment of a particular kind of care designed to prepare their students with the dispositions, knowledge, and skills to construct what Carl Grant has called “flourishing lives.” The teachers’ practices illustrate classroom spaces ripe for high …

Let Care Shine Through, Elizabeth Bondy, Elyse Hambacher

Education

Care is in the eyes of the receiver; it doesn't exist unless those being cared for experience it. The authors describe culturally relevant critical teacher care, an approach that considers the effects of students' cultural and socioeconomic conditions and that helps teachers find ways to show care to every learner—especially those from oppressed groups. Bondy and Hambacher describe three principles of this care for students (having political clarity, embodying critical hope, and sticking to asset-based thinking). They describe four helpful practices that they observed in a long-term study of two effective 5th grade teachers. These teachers embodied a culturally relevant …

Zero Tolerance, Threats Of Harm, And The Imaginary Gun: Good Intentions Run Amuck, Todd A. Demitchell, Elyse Hambacher

Education

No abstract provided.

Elementary Preservice Teachers As Warm Demanders In An African American School, Elyse Hambacher, Melanie M. Acosta, Elizabeth Bondy, Dorene D. Ross

Education

The literature related to warm demanding describes teachers who balance care and authority to create a learning environment that supports a culture of achievement for African American students. Embedded in this stance is sociopolitical consciousness that explicitly links teachers’ care and authority with a larger social justice agenda. Drawing on interviews and online course assignments, we describe two preservice teachers’ conceptions and enactments of warm demanding in full-time elementary school internships in an African American elementary school. Findings reveal that although the preservice teachers communicated similar commitments to warm demanding, they enacted the stance differently, suggesting that while warm demanders …

Culturally Responsive Classroom Management: Going Beyond Behavioral Learning, Elyse Hambacher

Education

No abstract provided.

Developing Critical Social Justice Literacy In An Online Seminar, Elizabeth Bondy, Elyse Hambacher, Amy S. Murphy, Rachel Wolkenhauer, Desirae Eva Krell

Education

The purpose of this article is to report on an effort to cultivate a critical social justice perspective and critical social justice praxis among educators enrolled in an online graduate program. Although the entire program was organized around themes of equity, collaboration, and leadership, this study focused on educators’ perspectives of the purposes, pedagogy, and outcomes of one course, Critical Pedagogy. Fourteen of the 19 students enrolled in the online course participated in one of six online focus groups following the conclusion of the course. Using constructivist grounded theory methods, the researchers identified the different ways in which students responded …

Breaking The Mold: Thinking Beyond Deficits, Elyse Hambacher, Winston Charles Thompson

Education

In an attempt to understand widespread school failure among children of color and children from low-income backgrounds, dominant discourse points to pervasive deficit ideologies that blame a student’s family structure, cultural and linguistic background, and community (Dudley-Marling, 2007; Valencia, 2010; Weiner, 2006). By accepting such a simplistic explanation of blaming the child for a lack of success without examining systemic inequities, deficit thinkers ignore real and complex issues of structural inequity. We agree with Pearl (1997) who argues that deficit thinking ignores “external forces— [i.e.], the complex makeup of macro- and micro-level mechanisms that help structure schools as inequitable and …

Authenticity In Constructivist Inquiry: Assessing An Elusive Construct, Patrick Shannon, Elyse Hambacher

Education

Methodological rigor in constructivist inquiry is established through an assessment of trustworthiness and authenticity. Trustworthiness parallels the positivistic concepts of internal and external validity, focusing on an assessment of the inquiry process. Authenticity, however, is unique to constructivist inquiry and has no parallel in the positivistic paradigm. Authenticity involves an assessment of the meaningfulness and usefulness of interactive inquiry processes and social change that results from these processes. However, the techniques for ascertaining authenticity are in the early stages of development. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to describe a process for assessing authenticity in a constructivist inquiry. A …

Becoming Warm Demanders: Perspectives And Practices Of First-Year Teachers, Elizabeth Bondy, Dorene D. Ross, Elyse Hambacher, Melanie M. Acosta

Education

In the literature on culturally responsive pedagogy warm demanders are teachers who embrace values and enact practices that are central to their students’ success. Few scholars have examined the experience of novice teachers who attempt to enact this stance. In this study of two first-year, female, European American teachers who attempted to be warm demanders for their predominantly African American elementary school students, the authors answer the question, “How do the teachers think about and enact warm demanding?” The teachers’ contrasting experiences have implications for administrators and teacher educators.

A Review Of Healing The Heart Of Democracy: The Courage To Create A Politics Worthy Of The Human Spirit, Bruce L. Mallory

Education

A review of the book Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit, by Parker J. Palmer (Jossey-Bass, 2011).

Reviving Social Hope And Pragmatism In Troubled Times., Sarah M. Stitzlein

Education

Review of:

Pragmatism and Social Hope: Deepening Democracy in Global Contexts. Judith M. Green. New York, Columbia University Press, 2008. Pp. x 1 292. Hbk. $34.50, d24.00.

This article commends Judith Green for reviving pragmatism as a persuasive basis for deepening democracy in her latest book Pragmatism and Social Hope. It highlights her criticisms of neopragmatist Richard Rorty and describes the useful directives she provides for developing a unifying and mobilizing hopeful vision for the future. Finally, it spells out the educational implications resulting from Green’s inspiring call to participatory democracy.

Performing Life Stories: Getting By In Teaching For Social Justice, Sarah M. Stitzlein

Education

Response to Philosophy and the Art of Teaching for Social Justice by Kathy Hyttenn. Philosophy of Education, 2006. pp 441-449.

Examination Of Eco-Behavioral Assessments Designed For Understanding Complex Behaviors And Environments., Kristie L. Pretti-Frontczak, Sarah M. Stitzlein, Laura Vilardo, Melody Tankersley

Education

Second-generation intervention research requires methods for overcoming challenges to understanding complex learning ecologies and interactions of students. Eco-behavioral assessments (EBAs) are one solution to past intervention research challenges. EBAs record the effects of ecological variables in students’ behavior and daily interactions. The utility of EBAs in second-generation research has increased substantially. Numerous EBAs now exist for use with all ages of learners and provide a valid, reliable, and cost effective method for intervention research. This paper examines 18 EBAs as well as software systems designed to support and enhance the use of EBAs. The examination serves as a comprehensive resource …

Higher Education Collaboratives For Community Engagement And Improvement, Penny A. Pasque, Bruce L. Mallory, Ryan E. Smerek, Brighid Dwyer, Nick Bowman

Education

Our society is in a period of dramatic change with the transition from an industrial-based to a knowledge-based economy, as well as technological advances, fiscal challenges of higher education, and cultural shifts in society as a whole. Increasing collaborations between communities and universities in order to influence the public good becomes paramount during this time of dramatic change. As frustratingly slow as the movement to strengthen the relationship between higher education and society sometimes seems to be, few social institutions are better situated than colleges and universities to stimulate significant community improvement. Individually and collectively, institutions of higher education possess …

The National Research Council Recommendations: Education As Intervention?, Sarah M. Stitzlein

Education

The National Research Council’s (NRC) recent report, Scientific Research in Education, issues an important call for increased scientific rigor within educational research. There is more at stake in the question of how to achieve good, scientific educational research than just science and how it can best be done in a community of educational researchers, however. The meaning and aims of education itself are at issue. I set out here to delineate the implicit conception of education underlying the NRC report, namely education as intervention. I will show how the committee conceives education as an instrumental intervention for solving social problems …

Political Agency And The Classroom: Reading John Dewey And Judith Butler Together., Sarah M. Stitzlein

Education

In Toronto last year, several PES members joined a panel session to discuss “agency after Foucault.” Many philosophers of education, in the wake of Foucault and other recent poststructuralists, often struggle to make sense of agency, intention, and the individual subject, particularly within social justice education. Some participants in this session and others challenged certain assumptions about human subjects as autonomous, self-made, efficacious agents of social and political change, many of which were held by the pragmatists whose work largely began and continues to influence our field. In many cases, the views of pragmatists and poststructuralists are stubbornly opposed to …

Replacing The ‘View From Nowhere’: A Pragmatist-Feminist Science Classroom., Sarah M. Stitzlein

Education

ABSTRACT

Flexible Habits: Explosive Transactions Across Raced And Gendered Selves., Sarah M. Stitzlein

Education

No abstract provided.

Reflections On The Wingspread Experience, Bruce L. Mallory

Education

No abstract provided.

Fifty Years Of Equality?, Sarah M. Stitzlein

Education

Fifty years after the Brown decision monumentally drew issues of equality to the fore, equality continues to occupy the theorizing of educational philosophers, the practice of teachers, and the decisions of judges. Within the past year, questions regarding race and schooling, including the intention to eliminate racial inequality, were raised once again in Grutter v Bollinger, the case of a disgruntled white law school applicant who suspected that she was denied admission based upon the criteria of race. In this article, I will trace the history of equality as a concept, a working goal, and an educational right over the …

Living Across And Through Skins: Transactional Bodies, Pragmatism, And Feminism. [Review], Sarah M. Stitzlein

Education

Review of:

Shannon Sullivan, Living across and through Skins: Transactional Bodies, Pragmatism and Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001. 204 pp.

The Demands Of Liberal Education. [Review], Sarah M. Stitzlein

Education

Oxford-trained liberal theorist and practicing teacher, Meira Levinson, offers a well-articulated argument for her vision of the ideal liberal education in The Demands of Liberal Education. Particularly helpful for those of us who struggle to convey the aims of liberal education to our children and students, she provides an eloquent explanation as she describes her ideal school and the steps necessary for its realization:

The aim of liberal education is to teach children the skills, habits, knowledge, and dispositions for them to be thoughtful, mature, self-assured individuals who map their path in the world with care and confidence, take responsibility …

Play And Imagination In Children With Autism, By Pamela J. Wolfberg., Bruce L. Mallory, Karen Erickson

Education

Play and Imagination in Children with Autism, by Pamela J. Wolfberg. Teachers College Press, 1999; 208 pp. $22.95 paperback

Reviewed by: Bruce L. Mallory, Ph.D. and Karen Erickson, Ph.D., University of New Hampshire

Consequences Of Categorical Labeling Of Preschool Children, Bruce L. Mallory, Georgia M. Kerns

Education

The use of categorical diagnostic labels prescribed in P.L. 94--142 with children below school age is examined in this article. National practices relative to categorical labeling are reviewed, and questions are posed concerning the consequences of categorical labeling for children from 3 to 6 years old. Data from the state of New Hampshire concerning the frequency of usage for specific categorical labels are presented and are found to be consistent with national trends. Data are presented on the number of children who transition from non-categorical early intervention programs serving children birth to 3 years into categorical preschool programs for children …