Education Commons^™

Infinite Archives, Infinite Possibilities: Learning Research And Databases With Archive Of Our Own, B. Austin Waters, Alayna Vander Veer

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This article will discuss the importance of acknowledging the information practices of subcultural groups within library instruction and fostering an inclusive learning environment with the implementation of a workshop by comparing research databases with the popular fanfiction website, Archive of Our Own. By incorporating AO3 into library instruction, students’ interests and prior experiences were engaged by utilizing the principles of subcultural capital. The workshop utilized students’ knowledge of information searching from their personal lives and their interests to highlight similarities with academic research using examples such as filters, keywords, and author searching. This allowed students to develop skills to search …

Uncovering A Natural History Mystery At The University Of Akron, Gary M. Holliday, Lara Roketenetz

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Students were engaged in a combination of detective work, biology, archives, art, and education/outreach to prepare a collection of taxidermied birds donated to the University of Akron by the Rhodes family in the early 1900s for public access and exhibition. Students had the opportunity to learn from leading experts regarding the historical significance of biological collections, proper preservation protocols, digitizing and archival practices, and the urgency of science education and communication for a public audience. Many campus and community partners were involved, including experts from local museums and nature centers.

Review Of: The Amish Incident: Rural Conflict And Compromise And The Amish Incident: Wisconsin V. Yoder—Kelly Rundle And Tammy Rundle, Jewel Yoder Kuhns

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

Award-winning documentary filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle have created two short films focusing on historical conflicts over parochial Amish education in Wisconsin and Iowa. Their first film, The Amish Incident: Rural Conflict and Compromise, released in 2019, follows the rising controversy in rural Buchanan County, Iowa, from the bitterly contested 1961 vote to merge two school districts in neighboring towns Oelwein and Hazleton to the dramatic 1965 “incident” when education officials tried to forcibly transport Amish students to the local public school. The second film, The Amish Incident: Wisconsin v. Yoder, released in 2021, picks up the story …

Symposium Review: The Teacher's Manual—Jennifer Anderson, Keri Yoder, Caleb Yoder, Jonathan Erb

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

A compilation of an experienced teacher’s advice and wisdom, The Teacher’s Manual conveys tons of information in a methodical, serious tone. The author, Jennifer Anderson, has taught in a variety of settings including parochial schools, Christian day schools, and public schools. Her pupils came from a range of Conservative Mennonites, Old Order Mennonites, Amish, Amish-Mennonites, Dunkard Brethren, and non-Anabaptists. She has taught every grade level.Her book is directed at Amish and Mennonite teachers and tackles not only the oft-heard problems and misunderstandings but also wades into the sticky stuff teachers face. She not only lists potential problems but also provides …

Symposium Review: Amish And Old Order Mennonite Schools: A Concise History—Joseph Stoll; And The School By The Cornfield—Samuel Coon, Jewel Yoder Kuhns, Daniel L. Yoder

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

Joseph Stoll, in Amish and Old Order Mennonite Schools: A Concise History, and Samuel Coon, in The School by the Cornfield, provide two very different perspectives on the struggle to establish Anabaptist schools. The books contrast primarily in their geographic and chronological scope. However, both write about parochial schools with a voice sympathetic to the vision of Amish and Mennonite school founders. They use similar sources, drawing on newspaper accounts, published Amish schools’ histories, and Amish and Mennonite periodicals, as well as personal recollections from individuals involved in school conflicts. [First paragraph.]

The Gravamen Of Wisconsin V. Yoder At Fifty, 1972-2022, Benjamin King

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

After an arduous journey of more than four years that Wallace Miller, Jonas Yoder, and Adin Yutzy began in New Glarus, WI, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Wisconsin v. Yoder , 406 U.S. 205 on May 15, 1972. In affirming the Supreme Court of Wisconsin’s decision reversing the convictions of Miller, Yoder, and Yutzy (Respondents) for violating the compulsory school attendance statute, the U.S. Supreme Court found that enforcement of the statute violated the Respondents’ rights pursuant to the free exercise of religion clause conferred by the First Amendment and made applicable to the states …

The Ramifications Of Wisconsin V. Yoder: Six Foundational Problems With A 50-Year Old Landmark Case, Torah Bontrager

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

My essay introduces the 1972 United States Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder to readers who don’t come from a legal background who want to understand the negative ramifications of the case and how it affects their individual rights. Yoder says that children of practicing Amish don’t have a right to any education and future other than one inside the Amish Church. My essay deconstructs the case from the perspective of an Amish American woman— yours truly — who escaped in the middle of the night at age 15 because of how this ruling has shaped the Amish people. I …

The Importance Of Cultural Context In Rural Education: Historical And Modern Perspectives, Devynn C. Campbell-Halfaker, Margo A. Gregor

Psychology from the Margins

This paper presents a review of the historical context and the prominent debates about rural education that occurred from 1900-1940 and connects current trends in rural education to this history. Outmigration of rural youth and the decline of rural populations spurred the development of the Country Life Commission (Danbom, 1979) which sought to address this problem through rural education reform. Outmigration of rural youth continues to be a concern for rural communities, and the continued and important role of modern education in this phenomenon is discussed. Additionally, the current paper offers a review of other historic concerns regarding rural education …

A Little More In The World: Why Amish Parents Choose To Send Their Children To Public Schools, Steve Thalheimer

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

In response to 20th-century industrialization, parents of the Amish tradition established parochial schools, segmenting away from an increasingly secular society. In the 1972 Wisconsin v. Yoder case, the Supreme Court codified the right of Amish parents to withdraw children from compulsory attendance after eighth grade, and many did withdraw. Yet, nearly a half century later, some Amish parents still send their children to public schools, but only limited research has explored why. This study identifies the factors that contribute to Amish families choosing to attend public schools. The researcher, doubling as the superintendent of a district in Elkhart County, …

Technology Of Story: Documenting Culturally Sustaining Anti-Racist Teaching, Frances Vitali

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Our education system, an extension of our society, has created a monster of historical sociocultural and linguistic inequities, traumas, structural racism, and oppressions. Culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy honor students’ funds of knowledge as their authentic power and voice. The oral family stories became vehicles to navigate and facilitate educational partnerships in becoming more culturally responsive for these teacher candidates. Oral stories, as documents, became the content within the context of the writing workshop process. These documented stories became the technological bridge that supported students’ home experiences with academic language and content to meet curricular goals.

During the writing process, …

Foregrounding Documentation Within Metaliteracy, Marc Kosciejew

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Documentation plays a central role in metaliteracy. When individuals engage in metaliterate practices of creating, sharing, and assessing information, they are, in fact, engaging in practices with documents. Yet, while the goals and objectives of metaliteracy implicitly acknowledge documentation, they do not explicitly emphasize the fundamental roles played by it in helping facilitate and enable various metaliterate practices. This article aims to make these roles explicit.

By foregrounding documentation – specifically documents and their associated practices – within metaliteracy, this article argues for the recognition of the fundamental roles played by documents and their associated practices within metaliterate practices and …

What Do College Students Have To Learn From The Amish?, Caroline Brock

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

This paper presents the results of a survey of college courses taught on the Amish. It is based on a series of interviews with instructors at other institutions of higher learning whose courses focus on the Amish, an examination of their syllabi, and analysis of student writing from the course I teach at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The survey was designed to ascertain the goals of professors who teach a class about the Amish and how they best achieve their course objectives. Secondly, the survey explored what attracts college students to a course about the Amish, and what prior knowledge, …

Schooling Across Contexts: The Educational Realities Of Old Colony Mennonite Students, Wendy Crocker

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

This paper narrates the schooling experiences of the Old Colony Mennonites (OCM) across two contexts based on my first-hand observations as a principal in a rural, southwestern Ontario school and on a research trip to the Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, area of Mexico. The OCM children described in this paper attend public school in southwestern Ontario and travel regularly to Mexico where many of the families hold property or visit family. Thus, during one calendar year, these OCM children often attend schools in two countries with important differences in the use of language(s) and literacy practices, expectations in the classroom, and even …

The Role Of The Teacher-Principal On Hutterite Colony Schools In Saskatchewan, William Rodger

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

Hutterite colony teacher-principals’ roles in their classrooms and schools were examined in this qualitative multiple-site case study. Four teacher-principals’ perceptions of how their teaching and administrative responsibilities impacted their work/life and how the relationship contributed to tension between the two roles were studied. Pre-interviews, interviews (formal and informal), and classroom participation and observation occurred over four months. Three themes emerged from the study: (1) dealing with and balancing multiple roles on a daily basis; (2) the teachers’ beliefs in the primacy of teaching; and (3) the daily impact of school division and provincial relationships. Rising educational expectations on the colonies, …

Practicality And Identity As Functions Of Education In Old Order Mennonite And Hutterite Communities, Janelle Zimmerman

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

This study is an exploration of common structures, theories, and practices among the educational systems of selected Anabaptist communities, focusing on a Midwestern Schmeideleut Hutterite community and the Groffdale Conference (Old Order) Mennonites in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Building on ideas of utopian communities, this research suggests two key foci of education as practiced in Hutterite and Old Order Mennonite communities. The first is identity, both of the community—as manifested by a common purpose and identity—and of the individual—as manifested by a belief in free will. The second is practicality, both in the physical (pragmatic) and metaphysical (idealistic) realm. Anabaptist communities tend …

An Assessment Of The Educational Choices Of Emerging Adults From A Small Mennonite Denomination And Their Later Church And Service Involvement, Daniel Ziegler

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

This study was designed to provide Rosedale Bible college, a Conservative Mennonite Conference school in Ohio, with critical information to increase its understanding of the educational choices of emerging adults from its sponsoring denomination and the way those choices correlate with church involvement and volunteerism later in life. The study also offers a glimpse into the educational and religious context of these young adults and the denomination they were part of as youth. A 16-question survey was distributed to 1,068 individuals ages 26-32 who attended one of the denomination’s churches when in high school. The survey queried respondents on personal …

“Feminists Leap Year Vol. 2:” The Portrayals Of Gender In Early 20th Century Postcards, Anthony Pankuch, Jessica Wilson

Student Projects from the Archives

The “Feminists Leap Year Vol. 2” binder of the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection contains postcards reflecting women in empowered, vulnerable, pitiful, and satirical situations. They appear in scenes of public activism, romance, and the once-mythologized American frontier. The postcards arranged by Dr. Campbell under the banner of “Feminist” reflect the stereotypes, themes, and gendered images that have remained attached to the feminist movement from its emergence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to its incarnation in the twenty-first century. Postcard images demonstrate the intersectionality of gender and feminism by juxtaposing postcards satirizing women as masculine or domestically …

Reflective Documentation As A Movement Potential: Two Digital Platforms Building A Professional Learning Community, John Taylor, Defne Erdur

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Creating dance and training dancers is a collaborative and co-creative process, and teaching has a central role in the co-creative artistic processes. Yet dance teachers, whether free-lance or working in an institution, often develop and maintain their physical teaching practice in isolation. Additionally, because of the ephemeral nature of dance and the relational nature of dance education, these practices usually do not end up being recorded or documented as a body of knowledge. In the face of such a reality the online database IDOCDE.net provides a platform for the development and maintenance of an inclusive professional learning community through a …

Deconstructing The Visa: Academic Accommodations And Self-Disclosure, Catherine A. Smith Phd

Proceedings from the Document Academy

College students living with disabilities must disclose, manage, share, and communicate their personal health information in order to receive academic accommodations. The academic gatekeepers to this process are disability services specialists who are important “third parties:” non-family members, non-friends, who work with clinical information to meet the educational needs of their student clients. The author reports the results of the first of several studies of different stakeholders in the academic accommodations process and their attitudes about Personal health records (PHRs). Semistructured interviews were conducted between January and April, 2013, with 17 Disabilities Services (DS) specialists at 2 different public 4-year …

Digital Engagement: Personality Is The Context Of The Text, Diane C. Spencer-Scarr

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper examines digital-technology as a tool and an environment with the individuals’ personality at the intersection of the two: Its impact on social memory and the unbound document. With the ubiquitous embedding of digital networked technology in society and the emergence of the unbounded document, humans increasingly obtain information by grasping snippets of decontextualized text sourced through non-human entities from globally dispersed databases that have stripped out context. Then in a Kafkian way humans’ have to build from the middle to make sense of the information snippets. The paper explores how the inherent nature of the individual can be …

Documenting The Information-Seeking Experience Of Remedial Undergraduate Students, Shelley Blundell

Proceedings from the Document Academy

As presented at DOCAM’14, this proceedings paper discusses my ongoing dissertation research: Documenting the information-seeking experience of undergraduate students enrolled in a remedial English course at a 4-year state university in Ohio, United States. Because the information behaviors, needs, and information literacy abilities of these students are understudied areas in library and information science and higher education literature; I chose to investigate these areas in my dissertation research toward contributing research to this gap, using descriptive phenomenological (qualitative) methodology to do so. Although secondary data analysis is still in progress, this paper presents findings from primary analysis (a necessary step …

Transmedial Documentation For Non-Visual Image Access, Melody J. Mccotter

Proceedings from the Document Academy

In my doctoral studies on information accessibility for the individual who is blind or visually impaired, I’ve been exploring the ways we can make image documents more accessible. This requires using an alternative sensory modality, and translating the document into a different format. The questions that arise when we consider this process are many, but among them are:

• Is it the same document once we’ve converted it to an audio narrative about the work, or a 3D topographic map of an artwork, or a musical interpretation?
• If it is not the same document, how truthful can the “trans-medial” translation be …