Education Commons^™

Multicultural Literature That Brings People Together, Stan Steiner, Claudia Peralta Nash, Maggie Chase

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

Over the past ten years we have been tracking a specific type of multicultural literature. We diligently look for literature for youth that reflects multiple cultures within the story line or images projected through illustrations. The books we focused on in this theme depict multiple characters reflecting a variety of ethnic backgrounds because this mosaic of characters is what we see to be more of a reflection of our changing world. The interaction of young people today across ethnic lines is more prevalent and we believe will continue to become common place as long as adults allow and encourage this …

Toward A Transformative Teaching Practice: Criticity, Pedagogy And Praxis, Arturo Rodriguez

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

One method to teach a multicultural class: a teacher walks in to a room calls the class to order, steps to the lectern and begins to deliver knowledge. Socially acquired information is disseminated; that gained over years of study and experience. Another view: I walk into a class where my students are sitting quietly at their desks pen and paper at the ready and quietly ask: shall we form a circle? The students agree and after having done so I follow up with a generative (Freire, 1970): what are your current understandings of Diversity? In following the work of Paulo …

Teaching About Peace Through Children’S Literature, Stan F. Steiner

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

Historically children's literature has always been used as a teaching tool with children, but today the choices of literature has grown and the audience expanded. Teaching moral messages was an underlying foundation for making books available for children. Early children's books were often tied to religious teachings and folklore that had implied messages of staying close to home, listening to elders, caring for others over oneself, and traditional gender roles to name a few. Many adults have identified other subliminal messages as they critically analyzed some of the literature from the past. Some messages you will find are passive women …

As Is The Sapling, So Grows The Tree: The Importance Of Early Care, Roberto E. Bahruth

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

All education is political and the ways children are educated early in life has a strong influence on them throughout their adult experience. Examples of these influences are provided from past generations with an argument to address the speed-of-light living of the generation of the microchip world of today's modern society. Children growing up with electronics and with little tolerance for down time crave constant stimulation. They are living a fundamentally different childhood, disconnected from nature's metaphors. Reflective time, quiet time, time spent getting lost in a book are being replaced by microtexting, emails, instant messaging, and cell phone conversations …

Persistence Of Vision: Hegemony And Counterhegemony In The Everyday, Roberto E. Bahruth

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

A gathering of subjects of history, activists who are engaging in the struggle for humanization, provides the ideal circumstance for pedagogical explorations that are generative and organic. Contrary to state-sponsored schooling, where inductees are treated as objects, receptacles of what Gabbard³ refers to as "the secular gospel," participants in the International Institute of Peace Education (IIPE) 2008 held in Haifa, Israel demonstrated the power of critical pedagogical encounters to move people to act not only with clarity and determination in, but also if necessary, against the everyday. After years of cultural work in a variety of terrains of engagement, …

Learning How To Speak Human, Roberto E. Bahruth

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

Pearl S. Buck suggested so many years ago, through her character Ling Tan, the possibility of mutual understanding between people who could not speak each other's language. This is the essence of speaking human. Spoken through actions louder than words, ways of being that represent kindness, gentleness, peacefulness, a smile, eye contact, all deeply human gestures toward the other, they convey meanings that need not be translated.

Teaching Language As A Political Act, Roberto E. Bahruth

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

"The most powerful act in the world is to name something" Noam Chomsky "Any way of seeing the world is also a way of not seeing the world." Gregory Bateson

An important dimension of critical pedagogy includes the questioning of traditional terminology used to explain reality. In the process of schooling people often learn language which supports the thinking of the dominant paradigm. Many become fluent in the language of impossibility as they are schooled. In response to this, I always try to keep in mind two central points as I teach languages: One is to undo the damage of …

Curriculum Materials For Elementary Reading: Shackles And Scaffolds For Four Beginning Teachers, Sheila W. Valencia, Nancy A. Place, Susan D. Martin, Pamela L. Grossman

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to learn how beginning elementary teachers understood and used curriculum materials for teaching reading, and how, in turn, these materials shaped teachers' instruction. We followed 4 teachers who worked in markedly different school situations and were provided a variety of curriculum materials, ranging from scripted reading programs to supplemental materials without teaching guides. Data were gathered through classroom observations, interviews, and curriculum artifacts over the teachers' first 3 years on the job. Our analysis suggested that curriculum materials interacted with teachers' knowledge of reading and reading instruction, and with the contexts in which …

Leisure Reading: Impacting The Affective Domain Across Borders, Stan Steiner, Dong Ro Shin, Diane Boothe

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

Comparison of literacy in South Korea and the United States through the lens of a ten-year old exemplifies a comparative survey study conducted in both the United States and South Korea. The ongoing study measures students' reading habits and their perceptions of the adults in their lives as readers over a seven-year period. Some questions that have driven the study include, "What affective filters influence development of students' reading skills? Do teachers model leisure reading interests and habits through example? Do teachers share books with students or parts of books they are reading? Do teachers generate frequent discourse with their …

Critical Literacy Vs. Reading Programs: Schooling As A Form Of Control, Roberto E. Bahruth

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the United States, despite years of educational research demonstrating the ineffectiveness and harm caused by reading programs based upon a behaviorist paradigm, political mandates of state and federal programs insist upon their continued use. One might conclude that this insistence is born out of ignorance, however, it seems clear that the populations most harmed by these programs are the poor and minorities. Privileged class students are also harmed because of the "literalcy" (shallow "literacy") these programs produce. I discuss the politics of literacy and language programs in the United States and how they serve to oppress as they reproduce …

El "Pentagonismo": Idioma Del Neoliberalismo, Roberto E. Bahruth

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

Las escuelas represenran instiruciones con un incuestionable potencial progresivo. Sin embargo, en los EUU los centros escolares del Estado están organizados para facilitar un alfabetismo superficial en los ciudadanos, de manera que no estén en condiciones de cuestionar la terminología de la educación, ni eI program a imperialista que se sustenta. Para quicnes, dentro de ese país, estamos comprometidos con una pedagogía crítica, capaz de frenar y revertir la enajenacíon de nuestro pueblo, se hace imprescindible en primer lugar retar Ia terminología tradicional y reemplazarla con un idioma realmenre critico. EI idioma demuestra mucho de las orientaciones ideológicas de los …

The Debate On Literacy Teaching, From Phonetics To Whole Language, Through The Lens Of Critical Pedagogy, Roberto E. Bahruth, Haggith Gor Ziv

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Developing A Culture Of Reclamation: Integrating History, Poetry And Video, James Armstrong, Peter Lutze, Laura Woodworth-Ney

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

Culture of Reclamation (Armstrong, Lutze, & Woodworth-Ney, in progress) is a sequence of "videopoems" about Idaho, integrating poetry, historical photographs, music and videography in a video presentation, which also includes historical narrative. Three Idaho scholars in the fields of history, literacy education, and communication—the historian (Laura), poet (Jamie), and videographer (Peter)—collaborated on this cross-disciplinary project to reclaim a portion of the history of this state in a creative and engaging medium. Culture of Reclamation expresses a response to the culture of the early irrigated settlement communities along the Snake and Boise rivers. Between 1894 and 1920, a land rush to …