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Full-Text Articles in Education
Paradise Under The Field House Lights: When Rituals And Spectacles Suppress Female Students’ Agency, Carolyn Fortuna
Paradise Under The Field House Lights: When Rituals And Spectacles Suppress Female Students’ Agency, Carolyn Fortuna
Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research
I am a teacher-researcher. Like many teachers, I design lesson plans, implement constructivist learning events in the classroom, and grade projects and papers. But I am also a qualitative researcher. I decided to remain in the classroom after obtaining my Ph. D. in education so that I could impact students in ways that I feel are beyond the reach of an administrator. My most important data collection device has always been my low-tech teacher journal. A teacher journal allows me to create an account of classroom life where dialogic discourse, offhand remarks, lesson outlines, administrative sessions, and student social conversations …
Teaching The Harry Potter Generation, Kerr Houston
Teaching The Harry Potter Generation, Kerr Houston
Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research
What I would like to offer here, then, is a brief rumination on some of the ways in which the seven Harry Potter novels and the ensuing eight films may have influenced a number of today’s college students. Clearly, this is hardly a rigorously designed or controlled research project, and it is not a report on a project executed in a classroom. Rather, it is an informal set of reflections on a group of texts that have enjoyed an exceptional popularity among an entire generation of students. Certainly, there should always be a place for focused research into pedagogy and …
Editorial Introduction, Catherine F. Compton-Lilly
Editorial Introduction, Catherine F. Compton-Lilly
Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research
The Fall 2011 Edition of Networks highlights a rich range of articles and thoughtful teachers’ voices. Of particular interest in this current edition are the reflections of two teachers working in very different contexts. Carolyn Fortuna is an independent scholar reflecting on her experiences working in a public high school. She explores gender construction for students in what might be considered a typical American high school. In particular she explores how the athletic field house, as well as other school spaces, becomes sites for displaying particular ways of being male or female and identifies the performances that are allowed, encouraged, …
Immigrant Students And Literacy: Reading, Writing, And Remembering., Patricia Eugenia Venegas
Immigrant Students And Literacy: Reading, Writing, And Remembering., Patricia Eugenia Venegas
Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research
Campano’s book offers a one-of-a-kind invitation for teachers to partake in action research as a fertile foundation for inquiry and for the development of new selves and new literacies. Through critical inquiry and interplay between reality and diversity in a “diaspora community” (p. 73). Campano’s work inspires the construction of flexible and collaborative new knowledge—new knowledge that is embedded in the experiences of teachers and students in and out of school, family histories, and students’ cultural identities. Campano’s fifth-grade immigrant students, all from in an urban California school, engage in a collaborative endeavor that provides a framework for new kinds …
Mind The Map: How Thinking Maps Affect Student Achievement, Dan Jacob Long, David Carlson
Mind The Map: How Thinking Maps Affect Student Achievement, Dan Jacob Long, David Carlson
Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research
This action research project, conducted in an 8th grade classroom by Daniel Long, investigated how Thinking Maps could be utilized by the students to broaden critical thinking skills and enhance their understanding of the content being presented. The research data was gathered through anonymous student surveys, instructor observation notes and a post-intervention assessment. Students were taught the function and proper construction of all eight Thinking Maps and were encouraged to utilize them on multiple occasions every day. The findings by Long indicated that when students constructed Thinking Maps, they were able to achieve greater understanding than those students who used …
The Effects Of Movement In The Classroom, Carrie Jean Braniff
The Effects Of Movement In The Classroom, Carrie Jean Braniff
Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research
After teaching and substitute teaching in various classrooms, I was determined to have a classroom full of movement and energy. In order to create an active classroom, I implemented several strategies that would help students work together, have opportunities for transitions and movement, and provide a reduced-stress environment. In order to study the influence of activity in the classroom, I did an action research study. I collected data, observation notes, and journal entries from the students during classroom activities. These journal entries the students included surveys that were completed at the beginning and end of the study. Collecting articles from …
Editorial Introduction, Catherine F. Compton-Lilly
Editorial Introduction, Catherine F. Compton-Lilly
Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research
The Spring 2011 issue of Networks offers a rich variety of articles to our readers. Touching on technology, movement in classrooms and multicultural competence the three lead articles ask educator to both consider instructional practices of the future and to reflect on the cultural knowledge that we do and do not bring to classrooms. In all three articles, readers are asked to rethink some of their assumptions about what happens in classrooms and what we need to consider as we make decisions about classroom practices.
Through The Eyes Of The Other: A Preservice Teacher's Journey Towards Multicultural Competence, Elizabeth Bifuh-Ambe, Paula Burnes
Through The Eyes Of The Other: A Preservice Teacher's Journey Towards Multicultural Competence, Elizabeth Bifuh-Ambe, Paula Burnes
Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research
There is an urgent need to prepare teachers to effectively meet the needs of diverse students in classrooms across the USA today. In response to this need, many teacher preparation institutions offer multicultural education (also referred to in the literature as diversity) courses that are geared towards providing prospective teachers with the necessary skills and dispositions necessary to meet the needs of diverse learners. Evidently, multicultural education is viewed as the solution to an educational system that puts many students at risk of failure due to their race, gender, exceptionalities, ethnicity, class, religion, language and sexual orientation (Banks, 1999; King, …
Review Of Leading Lesson Study: A Practical Guide For Teachers And Facilitators, Jay Allen Babcock
Review Of Leading Lesson Study: A Practical Guide For Teachers And Facilitators, Jay Allen Babcock
Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research
Put very simply, “[l]esson study is a professional development practice in which teachers collaborate to develop a lesson plan, teach, and observe the lesson to collect data on student learning, and [in which they] use their observations to refine their lesson” (p. 2). The approach was first developed in Japan and this book is just what the title purports it to be―a guide for teachers and facilitators who would like to bring this style of continuous professional development to their own classrooms. This book is for current in-service teachers who want to be involved with Lesson Study. All teachers wishing …
Book Review - Inquiry As Stance: Practitioner Research For The Next Generation, Jen Scott Curwood
Book Review - Inquiry As Stance: Practitioner Research For The Next Generation, Jen Scott Curwood
Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research
In Inquiry as Stance: Practitioner Research for the Next Generation, the sequel to Inside/Outside, the authors note that educators now find themselves teaching and learning in “trying times” (p. 5). Marked by test-based accountability, annual school progress reports, and pay-for-performance, the era of No Child Left Behind often threatens to undermine the agency and pedagogy of educators. But at the same time, Cochran-Smith and Lytle point out that “more and more practitioners are now expected to be the gatherers and interpreters of school and classroom data as part of larger initiatives to improve school achievement” (p. 1). Rather …
Podcasting As A Means Of Improving Spanish Speaking Skills In The Foreign Language Classroom: An Action Research Study, Maggie Brennan Juana, Deniz Palak
Podcasting As A Means Of Improving Spanish Speaking Skills In The Foreign Language Classroom: An Action Research Study, Maggie Brennan Juana, Deniz Palak
Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research
Using action research as a method of inquiry, a high school Spanish teacher undertook this study to understand how podcasting could be used to help improve students’ Spanish speaking skills. Multiple sources of data collected and analyzed by the teacher-researcher in collaboration with her students and other collaborators reveal that the frequency and variety of carefully designed weekly podcasting assignments over time helped improve student speaking skills. This paper provides a framework of reference for other K-12 teachers as to how they could use new technologies successfully and understand the effects in their classrooms.