Education Commons^™

Examining The Historical Representation Of The Holocaust Within Trade Books, John H. Bickford Iii, Lieren Schuette, Cynthia W. Rich

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

State and national education initiatives provide American students with opportunities to engage in close readings of complex texts from diverse perspectives as they actively construct complicated understandings as they explore complex texts. Opportunities for interdisciplinary units emerge as the role of non-fiction in English/language arts and informational texts in history/social studies increases dramatically. Trade books are a logical curricular link between these two curricula. The initiatives, however, do not prescribe specific curricular material so teachers rely on their own discretion when selecting available trade books. Scholarship indicates that historical misrepresentations emerge within trade books to varying degrees, yet only a …

Historical Thinking, Reading, And Writing About The World’S Newest Nation, South Sudan, John Bickford, Molly Bickford

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

State and national education initiatives have significantly increased expectations of students’ non-fiction reading and writing. These initiatives provide the space for potential interdisciplinary units in English/language arts and social studies/history centered on content area reading and writing. To do so, teachers must locate age-appropriate, historically representative curricular materials and implement discipline-specific writing prompts. To guide elementary teachers’ instruction, we select a novel, underused topic: the birth of the Republic of South Sudan. Age-appropriate children’s trade books are coupled with diverse informational texts—oral histories, current event news articles, and artwork—to extend the trade books’ narratives into the realm of current events. …

History Literacy And Visual Informational Texts: Scrutinizing Photographs Beyond Their Borders, John Bickford, Molly Bickford

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

State and national initiatives prescribe, among other things, increases in students’ reading of informational texts and uses of diverse literacies. History educators must purposefully integrate informational texts with literacy strategies that facilitate historical thinking. Students are to analyze and scrutinize, not simply read or view. This paper refines previously suggested photograph analysis methods to consider a photographer’s influence both within and beyond the photograph’s borders. Our modification centers on the diverse, and hitherto unexplored, ways in which the photographer influences the viewer’s understanding of the photograph and the historical event that is captured. We offer informational texts and discipline-appropriate methods …

Historical Writing, Speaking, And Listening Using Informational Texts In Elementary Curricula, John Bickford, Dylan Dilley, Valerie Metz

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

State and national initiatives have accentuated the significance of distinct instructional procedures and content. The (re)emphasis includes a strong focus on informational texts and diverse literacies, including writing, speaking, and listening. In short, history and social studies content will likely have a more prominent position within English/reading curricula. Beginning in the elementary grades, the required cognitive tasks foster historical thinking in age-appropriate ways. Students are to evaluate multiple texts representing diverse perspectives of the same event or era. Teachers, however, are not provided with practical curricular guides. To guide elementary educators, this research scrutinizes potential curricular supplements and proffers content …

Using History-Based Trade Books As Catalysts For Historical Writing, Speaking, And Listening In Elementary Curricula, John Bickford, Dylan Dilley, Valerie Metz

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

State and national initiatives have aligned to compel change in elementary classroom curricula and instructional practice (Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2012; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers [NGA & CCSSO], 2010; Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers [PARCC], 2012). An increased focus on informational texts and content area literacy are two significant changes intended to both facilitate and integrate historical thinking and historical content. For a subject that has struggled to maintain relevancy in elementary curricula, the social studies has a new, stronger position (Center on …

Examining The Historical Representation Of The Holocaust Within Trade Books, John Bickford, Lieren Schuette, Cynthia Rich

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

State and national education initiatives provide American students with opportunities to engage in close readings of complex texts from diverse perspectives as they actively construct complicated understandings as they explore complex texts. Opportunities for interdisciplinary units emerge as the role of non-fiction in English/language arts and informational texts in history/social studies increases dramatically. Trade books are a logical curricular link between these two curricula. The initiatives, however, do not prescribe specific curricular material so teachers rely on their own discretion when selecting available trade books. Scholarship indicates that historical misrepresentations emerge within trade books to varying degrees, yet only a …

Scrutinizing And Supplementing Children’S Trade Books About Child Labor, John Bickford, Cynthia Rich

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

State and national initiatives place an increased emphasis on both students’ exposure to diverse texts and teachers’ integration of English/language arts and history/social studies. The intent is for students to critically examine diverse accounts and perspectives of the same historical event or era. Critical examination can be accomplished through teachers’ purposeful juxtaposition of age-appropriate, engaging trade books and relevant informational texts, such as primary source materials. To guide interested elementary and middle level teachers, researchers can evaluate trade books for historical representation and suggest divergent or competing narratives that compel students to scrutinize diverse perspectives. Researchers can locate germane primary …

The Historical Representation Of Thanksgiving Within Primary- And Intermediate-Level Children's Literature, John Bickford, Cynthia Rich

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

This study examines the historical representation of Thanksgiving-based children's literature. It juxtaposes findings for primary- and intermediate-level readers and balances misrepresentations with primary sources.

Understanding Immigrant Children From Muslim Backgrounds: Issues And Challenges, Shamah Md-Yunus

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

Immigrant children from Muslim communities come from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, speaking 60 different languages. Some of their religious beliefs, values, and practices created issues and challenges for teachers of these children. This article provides basic information about Muslim and Islamic practices, issues, and challenges Muslim immigrant children face in new country and in the school and offers some suggestions for teachers on how to understand Muslim immigrants.

Library Annual Report

Library Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Stem Education And Sexual Minority Youth: Examining Math And Science Course Taking Patterns Among High School Students, Fernando Estrada

Education Faculty Works

Sexual minority students such as those identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, as well as those identifying with emerging self-labels (e.g., queer) face a host of risk factors in high school that can potentially compromise educational excellence, particularly in rigorous academic disciplines. The current study advances the area of diversity within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education by empirically exploring the question: Is there a gap in STEM education participation based on sexual minority status? After reviewing the relevant research, we employed hierarchical linear modeling to explore advanced math and science course-taking patterns among a nationally representative sample of …

Understanding And Creating The First-Year Seminar, Dan Gianoutsos

Academic Success Center Faculty Research

Although students in higher education are increasingly becoming more diverse, one thing that students of all types have in common is that they struggle adjusting to college life (Keup & Petschauer, 2011 ). These struggles are most prominent during their first year of college (American College Testing, 2014). While many co-curricular programs have been deemed valuable in helping address first-year student challenges, a renewed and surging interest has emerged in an over-century old practice of providing face-to-face seminars geared toward helping students transition from high school to college (Keup & Petschauer, 2011). Today, first-year seminars are very common and exist …

Unruly Raccoons And Troubled Educators: Nature/Culture Divides In A Childcare Centre, Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Fikile Nxumalo

Education Publications

Current times of anthropogenically damaged landscapes call us to re-think human and nonhuman relations and consider multiple possibilities for alternative and more sustainable futures. As many environmental and Indigenous humanities scholars have noted, central to this re-thinking is unsettling the colonial nature/culture divide in Western epistemology. In this paper, through a series of situated, small, everyday stories from childcare centres, we relate raccoon-child-educator encounters in order to consider how raccoons’ repeated boundary-crossing and their apprehension as unruly subjects might reveal the impossibility of the nature/culture divide. We tell these stories, not to offer a final fixed solution to the asymmetrical, …

Special Education Professional Standards: How Important Are They In The Context Of Teacher Performance Evaluation?, Sara B. Woolf

Publications and Research

Teacher performance evaluation represents a high stakes issue as evidenced by its pivotal emphasis in national and local education reform initiatives and federal policy levers. National, state, and local education leaders continue to experience unprecedented pressure to adopt standardized benchmarks to reflect and link student achievement data to formal teacher performance evaluations. No teacher performance evaluation measures have been developed for use with special education teachers or the settings in which they teach. Dedicated focus is needed to ensure that adopted evaluation measures are sensitive to the specific expertise reflected in the practices of specialty teachers and valid for use. …

Second Language Vocabulary Learning Through Extensive Reading With Audio Support: How Do Frequency And Distribution Of Occurrence Affect Learning?, Stuart Webb, Anna C-S Chang

Education Publications

This study investigated (1) the extent of vocabulary learning through reading and listening to 10 graded readers, and (2) the relationship between vocabulary gain and the frequency and distribution of occurrence of 100 target words in the graded readers. The experimental design expanded on earlier studies that have typically examined incidental vocabulary learning from individual texts. Sixty-one Taiwanese participants studied English as a foreign language (EFL) in an extensive reading program or in a more traditional approach structured around a global English course book. A pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest were administered to all participants. The results indicated that vocabulary …

Nothing For Money And Your Work For Free: Internships And The Marketing Of Higher Education, Mara Einstein

Publications and Research

American universities have significantly increased their marketing expenditures over the last decade. The high cost of education, reductions in government funding, and precipitous declines in the traditional college-aged population (18-21 year olds) are some of the key factors forcing universities to be more aggressive with the promotional techniques they use to attract prospective students. In this competitive marketplace, schools promote the attributes they believe will be most compelling to high schoolers and their parents, including academics, sports, campus life, and careers. Tied into this last factor is the promotion of internship opportunities. While some of these hands-on experiences lead to …

Extensive Viewing: Language Learning Through Watching Television, Stuart Webb

Education Publications

Television is a source of information and entertainment, and for many people it is an integral part of daily life. A survey of the average household television viewing time in 13 countries revealed that television was watched from 2.43 hours per day in Sweden to 8.18 hours per day in the United States (OECD, 2007). In fact, television might be the greatest source of first language input. Canadians and Americans watch television five times more than they read (Statistics Canada, 1998, United States Department of Labor, 2006).

Studying Treatment Intensity: Lessons From Two Preliminary Studies, Nicole Neil, Emily A. Jones

Education Publications

Determining how best to meet the needs of learners with Down syndrome requires an approach to intervention delivered at some level of intensity. How treatment intensity affects learner acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of skills can help optimize the efficiency and cost effectiveness of interventions. There is a growing body of research on the effects of treatment intensity but almost no systematic study of it with children with Down syndrome, providing little guidance about how to approach the study of intensity. In two preliminary studies we manipulated different aspects of the dose of treatment intensity and measured effects on skill acquisition …

A Comparative Study Of Competency-Based Courses Demonstrating A Potential Measure Of Course Quality And Student Success, Jackie Krause, Laura Portolese, Christopher Schedler

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Education and Professional Studies

While competency-based education is growing, standardized tools for evaluating the unique characteristics of course design in this domain are still under development. This preliminary research study evaluated the effectiveness of a rubric developed for assessing course design of competency-based courses in an undergraduate Information Technology and Administrative Management program. The rubric, which consisted of twenty-six individual measures, was used to evaluate twelve new courses. Additionally, the final assessment scores of nine students who completed nine courses in the program were evaluated to determine if a correlation exists between student success and specific indicators of quality in the course design. The …

Using Simulated Virtual Interactivity In Construction Education, Saeed Rokooei, James D. Goedert

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Faculty Publications

This paper briefly illustrates the design procedure, implementation and findings of a three year research project. Virtual Interactive Construction Education (VICE) is a project-based pedagogical model that uses a simulated environment to alter traditional subject-based lectures into virtual project-based interactive learning methods in construction education. For this purpose, the context of construction engineering and management curricula were aggregated into six construction project prototypes. VICE-Bridge is the first of these six prototypes that exposes players to experiential problem solving activities toward achieving a goal situation (construct the bridge) from an initial situation (start of construction). It was designed for students with …

South Korean Teachers’ Perceptions Of Integrating Information And Communication Technologies Into Literacy Instruction, Sangho Pang, David Reinking, Amy Hutchison, Deanna Ramey

Publications

We investigated South Korean literacy and language arts teachers’ perceptions about integrating interactive communication technologies (ICTs) into instruction. The survey addressed their access to various applications and technologies associated with ICTs, access to technological support, frequency and importance of use, and obstacles to and conceptions of integrating ICTs. Descriptive and correlational data are reported suggesting that although classroom use of ICTs is mandated at the national level, South Korean teachers perceive access to some tools and applications, as well as the availability of technical assistance at both the school and district level, to be limited. We compare data from this …

A Look At Summer Reading Programs Across Iowa, Salli Forbes, Amy Hutchison, Kristen Missall

Documents

The purpose of this document is to report on the state of summer reading programs in Iowa. This report was commissioned by the Iowa Reading Research Center to better understand the types of current summer reading programming and how summer programs are conducted and supported.

Special Speciation, Lyn L. Countryman, Jill D. Maroo

Faculty Publications

Considerable anecdotal evidence indicates that some of the most difficult concepts that both high school and undergraduate elementary-education students struggle with are those surrounding evolutionary principles, especially speciation. It’s no wonder that entry-level biology students are confused, when biologists have multiple definitions of “species.” We developed this speciation activity to provide clarity and allow students a hands-on experience with a speciation model.

Creating A Foundation For The Causal Relationship Between Libraries And Learning: A Proposed Application Of Nursing And Public Health Research Methods, Marcia A. Mardis, Sylvia K. Norton, Gail K. Dickinson, Shana Pribesh, Allison Cline, Sue Kimmel, Jody Howard

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Thomas Cook, a renowned causal research expert and professor of sociology, psychology, education, and social policy at Northwestern University (USA), called for school library researchers to parallel causality determination efforts in health-related fields. In this paper, we respond to Dr. Cook’s challenge with a proposed research design centered on Mixed Research Synthesis (MRS) as part of process validated by the U.S. Department of Education and National Science Foundation’s Common Guidelines for Education Research and Development. MRS studies, often used in nursing and public health research to develop causal theories, enable researchers to develop evidence summaries; identify and adjudicate rival and …

What's The Sense In Nonsense Word Fluency Probes?, Maggie M. Habershaw

Honors Projects

A major focus of education in the United States has been for “optimal” literacy instruction for all students. To accomplish this goal, major initiatives have centered upon the early identification and prevention of reading difficulties. To this end, professionals in the field are using numerous literacy programs and assessments to promote optimal literacy instruction. One of these assessment programs is the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS). Across the United States, over 2,000,000 students are administered the DIBELS Nonsense Word Fluency probe each year. The purpose of this study is to reflect on teacher perceptions and experiences with …

Predictors Of Enrolling In Online Courses: An Exploratory Study Of Students In Undergraduate Marketing Courses, Renee J. Fontenot, Richard E. Mathisen, Susan S. Carley, Randy S. Stuart

Faculty and Research Publications

An exploratory study of undergraduate students enrolled in marketing courses at a Southeastern regional university was conducted to determine the motivations and characteristics of marketing students who plan to be online learners and examined for differences between those who have taken and those who have not taken online classes. An online survey of Likert scales, openended questions and demographic questions was sent via class learning management websites. A total of 165 students of the 438 invited to participate completed the survey. A structural model was developed using SMART-PLS to estimate the relationships of constructs that predict taking online courses. Results …

Teacher Research In Reggio Emilia, Italy: Essence Of A Dynamic, Evolving Role., Carolyn P. Edwards, Lella Gandini

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Many aspects of the Reggio Emilia experience are fascinating to American educators, but perhaps none more than the role of the teacher. How do teachers (infant-toddler and preschool) support, facilitate, and guide children to the complex levels seen in classroom interactions as well as the creative works children produce? Certainly, the teacher’s role has intrigued both of us ever since we began our studies there, even before we began collaborating on the three successive editions of The Hundred Languages of Children (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1993, 1998, and 2012). In each of those volumes, one of us (Carolyn) contributed a …

Service-Learning With Young Students: Validating The Introduction Of Service-Learning In Pre-Service Teacher Education, Nancy M. Arrington

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

Founded on experience as a practitioner and teacher action-researcher in an elementary school setting, the author shares this study as a validation for introducing the methodology of service-learning in teacher preparation programs. Multiple methods were used in this action research to analyze the effects of participating in a service-learning experience on the self-effi cacy for self-regulated learning of a class of third-grade music students as they participated in an intergenerational project—sharing music and writing with residents in a local nursing home.

The quantitative data included the results from the Children’s Self-Effi cacy Scale (Bandura, 2006) and progress rating scales administered …

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'Mergens V. Westside Community Schools' At Twenty-Five And 'Christian Legal Society V. Martinez': From Live And Let Live To My Way Or The Highway?, Charles J. Russo

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

The United States Congress passed the Equal Access Act (EAA)¹ and forwarded it to President Ronald W. Reagan, who signed it into law on August 11, 1984.² The EAA was enacted in response to Widmar v. Vincent, ³ a 1980 Supreme Court case from higher education where the Justices ushered in a renaissance of sorts in religious liberty. In Widmar, treating religious expression as a subset of free speech,⁴ the Court ruled that officials at a state university in Missouri could not deny a Christian group access to institutional facilities so long as the university permitted other …