Education Commons^™

Editor's Note, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

District-Wide Instructional Initiative Framework, Jessica Charles, Tracy Fray Oliver, Doug Knecht, Emily Sharrock

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Describes the Bank Street Education Center's District-wide Instructional Initiative Framework, a tool that guides the Center's partnership work with school districts who are engaged in a process of instructional improvement. The Framework was developed out of research on district improvement, organizational development, school leadership, and professional learning, as well as the Center's own experience implementing large-scale district reform in the largest school district in the nation: New York City.

Learning To Teach: Observing And Reflecting, Nancy Nager

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

This video series, “Learning to Teach,” provides a platform for professional development in early childhood education. It introduces viewers to compelling early childhood classroom footage accompanied by facilitated discussions about observations and teaching practices. You will get a hands-on look at how beginning teachers learn to closely observe children and engage in reflective conversations about children, materials, the classroom environment and themselves.

Descriptive Inquiry At Bank Street: Building Intellectual Community While Responding To Accreditation, Jessica Charles

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Over the 2016-17 academic year, Bank Street Graduate School faculty and staff participated in a school-wide Descriptive Inquiry process to examine their programs and pedagogy. As part of the process, faculty met regularly to share their practices and to strengthen their well-established programs in teacher and leader preparation, museum education, and child life. Dean Cecelia Traugh initiated this process, drawing on her extensive experience implementing Descriptive Inquiry in higher education settings, in order to help faculty reflect on their practice, improve program quality, and build organizational coherence.

The Role Of The Principal In School Reform, Michael Fullan

Occasional Paper Series

Fullan examines the principal's role in school improvement and reform. He describes where principals are and what they do and don't do in relation to change. He then talks about the complexity of leadership and offers guidelines for how principals might lead change more effectively.

Introduction: A Principaled Approach, Patricia A. Wasley, Judith Rizzo

Occasional Paper Series

This introduction highlights the collaboration between Bank Street College and the New York City Board of Education who developed an approach to preparing principals that has proved highly effective. Wasley and Rizzo briefly describe the program's history and its evolution, and concludes by analyzing why it has worked so well and what they would do to further strengthen the approach.

An Inquiry Into Creating And Supporting Engagement In Online Courses, Robin Hummel, Genevieve Lowry, Troy Pinkney, Laura Zadoff

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

In this chapter, authors offer what they have discovered about creating and facilitating structures that support active engagement that promote social construction of knowledge in online interactions.

The Restaurant Study, Jessica Charles

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Bank Street faculty and staff regularly work in partnership with public schools to support teachers and leaders sustain and strengthen their progressive educational practice. At Midtown West, a public elementary school founded in 1992 as a collaboration between parents in New York City’s District 2 and Bank Street faculty, Peggy McNamara has worked as a coach and thought partner with teachers across every grade.

Over the course of developing and teaching one signature Midtown West curriculum unit called The Restaurant, we followed Peggy and the teachers as they made teaching decisions to engage and educate students through a study of …

Small Schools And The Issue Of Race, Linda C. Powell

Occasional Paper Series

Bank Street College of Education, in conjunction with the Consortium on Chicago School Research did a study of small schools in Chicago. This paper examines one element of the findings in depth - the interaction of race and school size. Powell argues that small schools are by their very nature an anti-racist intervention.

Historical Perspectives On Large Schools In America, Robert L. Hampel

Occasional Paper Series

Hampel evaluates the large school versus small school debate from a historical perspective. Until the 1970's, the small school was seen as the problem, not the answer. This essay will look at five beliefs, each firmly held for a long time by most educators.

Small Schools And The Issue Of Scale, Patricia A. Wasley, Michelle Fine

Occasional Paper Series

Wasley and Fine write this essay to respond to the oft-heard claim that small schools are not a systemic reform strategy. They argue, instead, that there is now a broad professional and community consensus for small schools; major policy moves within urban, suburban, and rural communities are being advanced to create and maintain small schools, and substantial social science evidence documents the efficiency and equity potential of small schools .

Small Schools: What's Small?, Matt Gladden

Occasional Paper Series

Essay examining the question of what constitutes a small school through the Chicago Small Schools Study. It explores why educators are founding new small schools and documents the diverse range of small schools that flourish throughout Chicago. Building from these observations, it then seeks to identify characteristics that delineate small schools and provide them the opportunity to improve students' educational experiences.

Black Girls Are More Than Magic, Gloria J. Ladson-Billings

Occasional Paper Series

Despite the current interest in "Black Girl Magic" this essay argues that what Black women have accomplished and endured is more than mere magic. Instead, they reflect a dogged determinism to work toward liberation of all people. That determination has been in the forefront of human liberation for centuries.

Untying The Knot, Charisse Jones

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Where Our Girls At? The Misrecognition Of Black And Brown Girls In Schools, Amanda E. Lewis, Deana G. Lewis

Occasional Paper Series

Black and brown girls remain too often at the margins not only in society at large and in our schools but also in our research and writing about schools. Herein we argue for careful consideration of the specific ways that their raced and gendered identities render these girls vulnerable and put them in jeopardy so that educators and scholars do not become complicit in their marginalization. We focus on dynamics of invisibility and hypervisibility. While these dynamics may seem to be diametrically opposite, both involve the process of what scholar Nancy Fraser (2000) calls “misrecognition” (p. 113).

Not Only A Pipeline: Schools As Carceral Sites, Connie Wun

Occasional Paper Series

Conversations surrounding school discipline have largely focused on the ways that schools and their punitive policies have funneled students into the criminal justice system through the school to prison pipeline. Recently, there has been an increase in scholarship from scholars who argue that schools are not only funneling students into prisons, but that schools and prisons operate as a nexus – the two working symbiotically to discipline and punish students of color, predominantly Black male students (Meiners, 2010; Sojoyner, 2013). Drawing from these analyses, I argue that schools are characterized by multi-layered disciplinary landscapes that operate as carceral sites onto …

Introduction: Reading And Writing The T/Terror Narratives Of Black And Brown Girls And Women: Storying Lived Experiences To Inform And Advance Early Childhood Through Higher Education, Jeannine Staples, Uma M. Jayakumar

Occasional Paper Series

Staples and Jayakumar introduce this issue of the Occasional Paper Series that speaks to the #SayHerName social justice initiative. The movement aims to expose the experiences of Black and Brown girls and women who are subject to police violence in society and various violences in schools. In response to this movement, this issue includes stories of Black and Brown women from early childhood education through higher education.

Kids Make Sense... And They Vote: The Importance Of Child Study In Learning To Teach Responsively, Frederick Erickson

Occasional Paper Series

A lecture that discusses the "developmental-interaction" perspective and practice that has become the hallmark of Bank Street. Erickson builds upon the relations of mutual influence among students, teachers, and learning environments, and taking account of the relations between local practice within the small-scale "here and now" interactional ecosystems of immediate learning environments and the workings of culture, language, and society across more distal connections in social space and time.

The Developmental-Interaction Approach To Education: Retrospect And Prospect, Nancy Nager, Edna K. Shapiro

Occasional Paper Series

This paper analyzes the past, present, and future of the developmental-interaction approach to education: human development and the interaction between thought and emotion as well as the interaction between learners and their environment. Shapiro and Nager review the history of the developmental-interaction approach, outlining its essential features and tracing Bank Street College's distinctive role in its evolution. They then reassess key assumptions, address criticisms of developmental theory and its place in education, and suggest possible new directions.

Steady Work, Tom Roderick

Occasional Paper Series

Roderick's remarks made on the occasion of receiving an honorary doctorate from Bank Street College of Education in 1999. He speaks about his steady work in conflict resolution programs, because there is always a need for conflict resolution in a world where conflict is natural but violence is taught.

Introduction: Steady Work And "Noise Level Zero", Frank Pignatelli

Occasional Paper Series

Pignatelli introduces two narratives by Tom Roderick and John Wolfe that test our belief in public education as a special space where American society holds fast to its promise to vanquish inequity, to assure equal opportunity, and to nurture a kinder, more just citizenry.

It Should Not Be Left To Chance: Ensuring A Good Education For All Our Children, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann

Occasional Paper Series

This essay suggests that progressive education is equivalent to good education. Condliffe Lagemann poses the question: What do we need to do to ensure that good education becomes more universally available than it is today? The answer lies in developing a new science of education, one that better integrates research, practice, and policy, and does a better job of educating the public about education.

Structures & Supports: Building A Throughline Approach To District Partnerships, Jessica Charles

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Bank Street College is committed to collaborative, systematic district reform that supports every layer of the school system so that districts are able to thoughtfully plan and implement large-scale instructional improvement initiatives to achieve maximum impact on student learning. The Bank Street Education Center “Education Center,” has developed a “Throughline” approach to district reform, designed to support districts across the system to foster conditions that enable schools to act as units of change and embed strong instructional practices through teacher leaders and teams.

Licensing Family, Friend And Neighbor Caregivers: Paradoxes And Possibilities, Pamela Jakwerth Drake, Bayla Greenspoon, Sarah Neville-Morgan

Occasional Paper Series

Many family, friend and neighbor caregivers are “hidden” and receive little support and limited monitoring. Small group size, extended relationships with the children, and similar cultural backgrounds are associated with higher quality care. But these caregivers typically have little or no formal training in child development or child safety. One potential solution to this problem is to help caregivers navigate the procedures to become licensed family child care providers. This paper identifies issues related to licensing family, friend and neighbor caregivers and explores the relationship between licensing and child care quality.

The Arizona Kith And Kin Project, Sarah Ocampo-Schlesinger, Vicki Mccarty

Occasional Paper Series

In 1999, soon after the federal welfare reform was enacted, many people in Pheonix, Arizona were transitioning off of welfare and into the workforce. When considering job development in any any community, the focus shifts to child care needs. A study of child care needs in the area revealed that most parents were relying on family, friends, and neighbors for care. The Association for Supportive Child Care (ASCC) became committed to reaching out to the underserved population of kith and kin caregivers in their communities to provide training and support.

Ways Of Caring: How Relative Caregivers Support Children And Parents, Juliet Bromer

Occasional Paper Series

Reports on a subset of findings from a study that explored the support roles of African American child care providers in poor Chicago neighborhoods. Based on ten in-depth interviews with relative caregivers, Bromer discusses five themes: caregiver's adult-focused and child-focused motivations for caring, daily work with children, childrearing advice to parents, and caregiver-parent conflict. Caregivers’ motivations to provide child care and the meanings they ascribe to this daily work suggest new ways of defining a child-focused approach to caregiving.

Family, Friend, And Neighbor Care: Crib Notes On A Complex Issue, Toni Porter, Shannon Kearns

Occasional Paper Series

Before the 1996 federal welfare reform, home-based childcare was either overlooked or looked down upon. Since then, there has been a flurry of research investigating kith and kin childcare - which makes up approximately 73% of child care in the U.S. This essay provides insight into who provides home-based care and the quality of that care.

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.

Public Schools, And Health Care: A Strategy To Promote Social Inclusion, Jana Sladkova, Anahi Viladrich, Nicholas Freudenberg

Occasional Paper Series

Sladkova, Viladrich, and Freudenberg refer to “social inclusion” as the process through which the newly arrived find their voice in an already complex, cacophonous society. They describe an approach to social inclusion for adult immigrants that melds learning English at the same time as learning to negotiate our often-Byzantine health care system. They highlight programs that work and a new perspective on how to maximize the effectiveness of limited adult education opportunities.

Introduction: Welcoming The Stranger, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

Jonathan G. Silin introduces the 17th issue of Occasional Papers with the concept of "strangers" - people of all ages who perceive themselves or have been perceived by others as outsiders. The ability to welcome the stranger - or groups of strangers - into the classroom is essential to building a productive, caring community of learners. This philosophy sets the tone for the following essays that illustrate the importance of creating a healthy learning environment for immigrants.