Education Commons^™

Trauma And Academic Impact: Stories From At-Risk Youth, Brenda Morton, Edd.

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Youth continue to leave school prior to earning a high school diploma, despite focused attention and resources on this population of students (Porche, et al., 2011), leaving unanswered questions as to what support this group of students need. Researchers identified attendance, disciplinary issues, and low grade point average, as prevalent in dropouts, but few have explored the story behind the statistics. This study sought to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the role of trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in the lives of students at risk for academic failure, by examining their lived experiences. To that end, …

Sowing Hope Where There Is Despair (Chapter 4 Of Practicing The Prayer Of St. Francis), Patrick Allen

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Excerpt from the Introduction:

So, how do we sow hope where there is despair? That is the major question we will address in this chapter. First, we’ll look a bit more at despair and why it troubles our spirits so deeply before turning to the subject of hope, something we all can embrace. Then, we’ll pick up the story of Elijah once more. I believe that it is a textbook example for how to sow hope in the wilderness of despair. Before closing, I will offer a few practical steps we can take when we despair or walk with those …

Middle School Students' Types Of Mathematical Personifications, Nicole Enzinger, Clara Stilwell

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Unpacking middle school students' mathematical relationships is important as a step towards improving mathematical relationships. ln this study, 500 middle school students drew personifications of mathematics. We examined these personifications of mathematics for insight into their relationships with mathematics. Using constant comparative methods, we present various ways the middle school students personified mathematics. Negative relationships were personified with terrible beasts, abusers, authoritarians, and pests/nuisances. Positive relationships were personified with best friends and nature. Some personifications supported both positive and negative relationships or were neutral relationships. Reflecting on these personifications point to components of positive relationships with mathematics that we should …

Introduction And Invitation (Chapter One Of Generating Tact And Flow For Effective Teaching And Learning), Susanna M. Steeg Thornhill, Ken Badley

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Extract: "This book is for teachers, written by teachers, about the magic days. The days when things go so well you imagine that although teaching is a severely underpaid gig, you loved your work so much you might consider teaching for free. Maybe your most challenging students joined you on the learning journey in a new way, or a slightly under-planned lesson went much better than you anticipated, generating clear direction for the following week. Maybe things took a completely unexpected turn, and a teachable moment turned into a power hour fueled by excited and engaged students. These are the …

Revolutionizing Our Assessment Processes To Match Our Assessment Realities, Dane C. Joseph

Faculty Publications - College of Education

As assessment professionals we are challenged to be critical, analytical, creative, and realistic about what we either do or do not know, and to mine data to support our epistemic limitations. When assessment is done well, it transforms data into information into knowledge that aids good judgment and decision-making. These judgments are used on smaller scales to solve every day operational tasks or on larger scales to determine the fate of academic programs. Both usages provide accountability to our stakeholders. But too often assessment is stuck in a rut and becomes mechanical to a point where the value of assessment …

Not For The Faint Of Heart: An Informal Review Of The Literature On Stress Among School Administrators, Gary F. Sehorn Dr.

Faculty Publications - College of Education

School administrators face intensifying work demands and increased scrutiny. The role is challenging and isolating. For women, minorities, rural school leaders, and those new to administration, there are additional challenges to face.

It is essential for those shaping programs to prepare future school administrators and support leaders in the field to have a thorough understanding of the many challenges that can make it difficult for school leaders to simply survive, let alone thrive. Some challenges are common to nearly all school leaders, but challenges unique to individual leaders are shaped by circumstance, personal characteristics, and choices made along the way. …

Faith And Experience In Education: Essays From Quaker Perspectives (Book Review), Linda Samek

Faculty Publications - College of Education

"In Faith and Experience in Education: Essays from Quaker Perspectives, we find essays emerging from conversations conducted by the Quaker Values in Education Group in Britain."

Prospective Teachers’ Attention To Realism And Consistency With Negative Integers, Addition, And Temperature, Nicole Enzinger, Jennifer Tobias, Dana Olanoff

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Writing and evaluating contextual problems is an important task in the work of teaching, and thus is part of the knowledge that prospective teachers must develop. In dealing with word problems posed both by children and themselves, prospective teachers will need to attend to the realism of the context and the consistency between the operation and context with integer operations. This study describes an examination of the ways in which 100 prospective teachers responded to a child’s temperature story for an integer addition number sentence (i.e., 9 þ 􀀁 6 ¼ ☐). The child’s story, which was an actual story …

Art Therapy In The Time Of Covid-19, Mallory Braus, Brenda Morton

Faculty Publications - College of Education

We are fighting two invisible enemies: COVID-19 and mental health challenges due to unmitigated stress and trauma as we follow directions to avoid the spread of the virus. To address the mental health challenges, art therapy is offered as a tool to support individuals during periods of isolation. Art therapy is a wonderful self-care activity that can benefit individuals throughout the life span.

Game-Based Teaching Methodology And Empathy (Chapter In How Shall We Then Care? : A Christian Educator’S Guide To Caring For Self, Learners, Colleagues, And Community), Angel Krause, Scot Headley, Danielle Bryant, Alicia Watkin, Charity-Mika Woodard, Sherri Sinicki

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Excerpt: "While ethics instruction in initial teacher education and advanced preparation in education fields is fairly common,1 less common is the particular curriculum and teaching methodology described herein. Professional educators make many daily decisions regarding curriculum, instruction, and assessment.2 A number of those decisions reflect a need for and commitment to ethical frameworks that inform professional decisionmaking. Indeed, as Shapiro and Gross point out, “The most difficult decisions to solve are ethical ones that require dealing with paradoxes and complexities.”3 Often, educators find themselves at decision points in which ethical systems seem to clash."

Improving Educational Attainment For Girls: A Case Study Of One Rural Kenyan School, Eloise Hockett

Faculty Publications - College of Education

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine one rural Kenyan community’s attempts to improve the educational attainment for primary school girls in the region. Data were gathered through field notes; school artifacts; and interviews with teachers, community members, and grade eight girls. The asset-building theory of change (social, human, physical, and economic) was used to analyze the barriers to education, solutions to those barriers, and results from those solutions. Although some research studies of school improvements in Kenya exist, this research addresses a critical gap in understanding how even small improvements in a school can positively impact educational …

Mathematics Education Communities: Crossing Virtual Boundaries, Joshua T. Hertel,, Nicole M. Enzinger, Justin K. Dimmel

Faculty Publications - College of Education

The growth of social media has yielded a range of virtual communities focused on issues related to education (Carpenter & Krutka, 2014; Hur & Brush, 2009). These communities, which operate across a range of different platforms, create an evolving landscape for users to navigate. Moreover, interactions within and across virtual communities has become a norm within society at large as well as within mathematics education. The Math Twitter Blog-o-Sphere (MTBoS), Mathematics Stack Exchange, specialized Facebook groups, and myNCTM are just a few examples of communities that are currently popular with mathematics teachers and educators in North America. Similarly, students of …

Conceptual Models For Integer Addition And Subtraction, Nicole M. Wessman-Enzinger, Edward S. Mooney

Faculty Publications - College of Education

In this article, we report the findings of a study conducted with 6 Grade 8 students in the United States. The students posed stories for open number sentences involving addition and subtraction of integers. We analysed the stories posed by the students to build models that describe the conceptual structures behind these posed stories – the conceptual models for integer addition and subtraction. These four conceptual models for thinking about and using integer addition and subtraction include Bookkeeping, Counterbalance, Relativity, and Translation, and are generated from the students’ posed stories. We also provide profiles of conceptual model use for two …

Grade 5 Children’S Drawings For Integer Addition And Subtraction Open Number Sentences, Nicole Enzinger

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Three Grade 5 children participated in a microgenetic study embedded in 12-week teaching experiment on integer addition and subtraction. They solved open number sentences in four individual sessions across the 12-weeks and produced drawings. Through the lens of learner-generated drawings and qualitative analysis, these drawings provide perspective into the children’s thinking about integer addition and subtraction. The following categories are described: Single and Double Set of Objects, Number Sequences, Empty Number Lines, Number Lines, Number Sentences, Sign Emphasis, and Answer in Box Only. One student drew sets of objects frequently and the other students drew number lines more. Descriptions of …

The Angle Of Repose, Or Don’T Try To Change The World During Your Placement (Chapter In So You Have A Teaching Practicum?: A Preservice Guide From Those Who Survived), Ken Badley

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Excerpt: "Most teachers enter the profession for noble reasons. We may word it in various ways but our answers to the “Why teach?” question usually run along the lines of “making the world a better place,” “helping children,” or “wanting to see my students’ eyes shine.” Those of us who worked on this book share these reasons for entering the profession. We expect that one or more of the three phrases above may resonate with you. In short, most teachers ultimately teach for humanistic reasons; we want to do some good. However, once in their school placements, many pre-service teachers …

Randomize It: Fair Procedures When Constructing Multiple-Choice Test-Keys, Dane C. Joseph

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Multiple-choice testing is a staple within the U.S. higher education system. From classroom assessments to standardized entrance exams such as the GRE, GMAT, or LSAT, test developers utilize a variety of validated and heuristicdriven item-writing guidelines. One such guideline that has been given recent attention is to randomize the position of the correct answer throughout the entire answer key. Doing this theoretically limits the number of correct guesses that testtakers can make and thus reduces the amount of construct-irrelevant variance in test score interpretations. This study empirically tested the strategy to randomize the answer-key. Specifically, a factorial ANOVA was conducted …

There’S More (To Research Methods) Than Meets The Eye, Dane C. Joseph

Faculty Publications - College of Education

“Research shows that by doing this, you’ll look and feel more beautiful, improve your health and happiness, and live longer.” Such fallacious conclusions are becoming pervasive. As technology increases our capacity for connectivity and access to information – such as through social media – an abundance of false science claims has arisen. The messages target an unprecedented number of information consumers. Psychological research findings can play a positive role in human flourishing, and provide the knowledge, skills, and abilities to navigate our mental, social, and physical worlds. Unchecked and not vetted, the same results can have disastrous consequences. The purpose …

Preparing Teacher Candidates To Collaborate With Families And Communities: Standards, Research, And Practice, Karen S. Buchanan, Thomas D. Buchanan

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Preparing teacher candidates to engage with family and community in ways that align with the reality of today’s classroom is a critically important aspect of fostering student academic success and well-being. This paper examines how a set of professional preparation standards, the teacher preparation literature, and a qualitative inquiry into the practices and challenges of kindergarten teachers working with family and community converge to inform the work of teacher educators. Implications of these three sources of expert knowledge are instructive for teacher educator practice. Implications for the preparation of teacher candidates around family/community engagement include: the shaping of teacher candidate …

What Does It Take To Be A Fox? New Horizons For Communities Of Practice, Nicole M. Wessman-Enzinger, Joshua T. Hertel, Justin K. Dimmel

Faculty Publications - College of Education

In this theoretical research report we reflect on the challenges of becoming more fox-like in mathematics education work. Using a communities of practice motivating theoretical lens, we compare and discuss the differences in defining, creating, and accessing knowledge between virtual and scholarly communities of practice in mathematics education. We present four claims that virtual communities of practice in mathematics education are inherently foxy work. As part of our claims, we discuss how scholarly communities of practices are inherently hedgehog work. We conclude with a list of recommendations of those within the scholarly communities of practice in mathematics education. These recommendations …

Integers As Directed Quantities (Chapter 13 In Constructing Number), Nicole Enzinger

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Mathematics education researchers have long pursued—and many still pursue—an ideal instructional model for operations on integers. In this chapter, I argue that such a pursuit may be futile. Additionally, I highlight that ideas of relativity have been overlooked; and, I contend that current uses of translation within current integer instructional models do not align with learners’ inventions. Yet, conceptions of relativity and translation are essential for making sense of integers as directed quantities. I advocate for drawing on learners’ unique conceptions and actions about directed number in developing instructional models. Providing evidence of student work from my research, I illustrate …

Kuidas Trauma Mõjutab Käitumist Klassis Ja Akadeemilist Edukust? (How Trauma Affects Class Conduct And Academic Success?) Estonian Translation, Brenda Morton

Faculty Publications - College of Education

No abstract provided.

Teaching For A Multifaith World; From Bubble To Bridge: Educating Christians For A Multifaith World, Debra S. Espinor

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Similar but different is the metaphor to describe both multifaith books reviewed here—similar in that both are exploring the many facets of how to live in our multifaith world today, and different because the books are written for different audiences and ages. Teaching for a Multifaith World, edited by Eleazar S Fernandez, is written for an audience of seminarians. The language is pastoral and the book is a compilation from writers from many well-respected seminaries across the United States. The title of the book implies that this might be a textbook in a course within a religious studies program. From …

Computer Programming Effects In Elementary: Perceptions And Career Aspirations In Stem, Yune Tran

Faculty Publications - College of Education

The development of elementary-aged students’ STEM and computer science (CS) literacy is critical in this evolving technological landscape, thus, promoting success for college, career, and STEM/CS professional paths. Research has suggested that elementary- aged students need developmentally appropriate STEM integrated opportunities in the classroom; however, little is known about the potential impact of CS programming and how these opportunities engender positive perceptions, foster confidence, and promote perseverance to nurture students’ early career aspirations related to STEM/CS. The main purpose of this mixed-method study was to examine elementary-aged students’ (N = 132) perceptions of STEM, career choices, and effects from pre- …

Computational Thinking Equity In Elementary Classrooms: What Third-Grade Students Know And Can Do, Yune Tran

Faculty Publications - College of Education

The Computer Science Teachers Association has asserted that computational thinking equips students with essential critical thinking which allows them to conceptualize, analyze, and solve more complex problems. These skills are applicable to all content area as students learn to use strategies, ideas, and technological practices more effectively as digital natives. This research examined over 200 elementary students’ pre- and posttest changes in computational thinking from a 10-week coding program using adapted lessons from code.org’s Blockly programming language and CSUnplugged that were delivered as part of the regular school day. Participants benefited from early access to computer science (CS) lessons with …

The Grip Of Trauma: How Trauma Disrupts The Academic Aspirations Of Foster Youth, Brenda Morton

Faculty Publications - College of Education

The academic challenges foster youth encounter during their P-12 education have been widely reported. Yet, despite these challenges, the majority of foster youth desire postsecondary education. What is less known is the reason why so few foster youth alumni who desire a four-year college degree, achieve this goal. For the participants in this four-year longitudinal study, maltreatment, resulting in foster care placement, and the ensuing exposure to the foster care system, resulted in trauma histories and mental health diagnoses. Anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), were the most common diagnosis. The participants shared the ways in which these mental …

Tribal Strengths And American Indian Students (Chapter Three Of Tribal Strengths And Native Education), Terry Huffman

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Excerpt: "It takes no small amount of courage to teach middle school students. Tammy has the necessary courage and a lot more too. On one of my visits to her class, I wanted to know what her students believe it means to be American Indian. So I asked. When you ask a group of middle school kids a question, it is hard to tell what answers you might get in return. In this case most of the responses revealed just how important the question was for this class of young Native students. They generally appeared to deeply consider what to …

Keeping A Clean Heart (Chapter 7 Of For Today: A Prayer When Life Gets Messy), Patrick Allen

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Excerpt: "When I heard that some of the kids at school received an allowance, money their parents actually gave to them for no particular reason other than to do a few chores around the house, I could hardly believe it. It seemed too good to be true. I never received an allowance, and the idea of having some spending money of any kind was usually out of the question. Once in a while, my mother would give my brothers and me a quarter each to go to the municipal swimming pool if we hoed five rows of corn in the …

Book Review: Eastern Orthodox Christianity And American Higher Education: Theological, Historical, And Contemporary Reflections, Patrick Allen

Faculty Publications - College of Education

‘‘Over the last two decades the American academy has engaged in a wide-ranging discourse on faith and learning, Christianity and higher education. Among the Christian voices that have weighed in on these topics, Orthodox Christians are not merely underrepresented; they are not even represented at all. This is not because no one has cared to listen but because scholars of the Orthodox tradition have rarely participated in these conversations’’ (p. 1). So begins the introduction to this significant book, the culmination of a decade-long conversation first initiated with the support of the Lilly Endowment’s Program for the Theological Exploration of …

Culture War Skirmishes In Public Schools: The Experiences Of Evangelical Christian Administrators, Gary F. Sehorn

Faculty Publications - College of Education

The intent of this exploratory, descriptive narrative inquiry was to understand the experiences of evangelicals serving as public school administrators leading in the midst of culture war skirmishes involving conservative Christians and public schools. The stories of leaders from Texas, Southern California, and the South, the Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest were gathered. Each participant shared a skirmish narrative that included rich descriptions of the cultural and geographic context. In the process, work–faith relationships and the inner worlds of each administrator were also illuminated. Themes were identified within each narrative and across all narratives.

Teaching And Learning In Kenya: Examining The Shifts In Cultural Learning Of Experienced Educators, Eloise Hockett

Faculty Publications - College of Education

This qualitative case study examined the cultural learning insights of four educators during and after an immersion experience in Kenya. During this experience the participants delivered professional development sessions to teachers in two rural Kenyan schools, and stayed with Kenyan families. Mezirow’s transformational learning theory, self-reflection, and cultural humility were utilized as a framework to examine the educators’ learning experiences. Data were collected through pre-trip planning sessions, journals, debriefing sessions, field notes, and a 6-month follow-up interview. Results of the data produced five main themes: (1) general observations; (2) recognizing biases and assumptions; (3) cultural insights; (4) cultural humility; and …