Education Commons^™

Zombies In The Academy: Living Death In Higher Education, Ruth Walker, Christopher Moore, Andrew Whelan

Christopher L Moore Dr

No abstract provided.

Integrating Instructional Technology Into A Teacher Education Program: A Three Tiered Approach, Elizabeth Truesdell, Rebecca Birch

Elizabeth Truesdell

This project description examines how a teacher education program integrated new instructional technology through the creation of a Technology Facilitator position in the department. The project proceeded through a three-tiered system of learning "literacy" to establish a knowledge base amongst faculty members, "augmenting" required courses to model the use of instructional technology, and finally the "transformation" of the credential program where the activity of learning can only be accomplished through leveraging technology. As a professional program housed in a liberal arts institution, this project combines aspects of the essential learning outcomes of the 21st century with the professional skills required …

Research On Second Language Teacher Motivation: From A Vygotskian Activity Theory Perspective, Tae-Young Kim, Qian-Mei Zhang

Dr. Tae-Young Kim (김태영, 金兌英)

Second language (L2) teachers’ motivation has considerable influence on their students’ L2 learning motivation, personal satisfaction, and fulfillment. It has important influence on national educational reform and development. Although a number of studies have examined teachers’ motivation to teach, to date, few have focused on L2 teacher motivation. Based on the limitations identified in previous research, this paper articulates the inherent complexities of L2 teacher motivation and identifies its dynamic characteristics from the perspective of Vygotskian Activity Theory (AT). With a concise overview of AT, this paper elaborates on the applicability and relevance of AT to L2 teachers’ motivation by …

Autobiographies In Preservice Teacher Education: A Snapshot Tool For Building A Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, Annmarie Gunn, Susan Bennett, Linda Evans, Barbara Peterson, James Welsh

Linda S. Evans

Many scholars have made the call for teacher educators to provide experiences that can lead preservice teachers to embrace a culturally responsive pedagogy. We investigated the use of brief autobiographies during an internship as a tool (a) for preservice teachers to examine their multidimensional culture; and (b) for teacher educators to assess preservice teachers' developing understandings about cultural responsive pedagogy and then further design curriculum to enhance these understandings. Using qualitative methods, we analyzed the preservice teachers' (N=24) autobiographies and an interview with the professor of this course. Based on the findings of this study, we suggest teacher educators need …

La Diversidad De Los Analisis De Diversidad [The Diversity Of Diversity Analyses], Victor D. Carmona

Victor D. Carmona-Galindo

There is a lack of consistency with respect to the use of the terms like species richness, diversity and biodiversity, which extends to the analysis of diversity indices and the merit of using diversity indices in the evaluation (comparison and contrast) of biological communities. The purpose of this article is to provide working definitions for these terms and cite examples from the primary literature that demonstrate the utility of estimating richness, evaluating proportional abundance patterns, as well as comparing indices of diversity and similarity to study patterns of biological organization at different ecological scales. Additionally, we provide a manual in …

The Case, Glenn W. "Max" Mcgee, Christopher Kolar

Christopher G. Kolar

The internationally recognized Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy® (IMSA) was created by the State of Illinois to develop talent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. IMSA enrolls a diverse pool of academically talented Illinois students (grades 10-12) in its advanced, residential college preparatory program. It also serves thousands of educators and students in Illinois and beyond through innovative instructional programs designed to foster imagination and inquiry (see www.imsa.edu).

Using Learning Walks To Improve Collaboration And Charter School Performance (A University/ P–12 School Partnership): Year One, Paul Thomas Bole, Kenneth Paul Farizo

Paul Thomas Bole

Many universities exist apart from their community’s public schools. A New Orleans area public university took measures to facilitate collaborative partnerships with four public schools. Those schools were taken over and converted to charter schools by state officials for poor performance. The partnerships created simultaneous opportunities and challenges, especially in the aftermath Hurricane Katrina. One challenge involved replacing damaged school buildings. Another challenge involved forging productive relationships. This article explains how the university utilized “Learning Walks” (Resnick, 1996) to facilitate stakeholder collaboration, which blossomed into partnerships facilitating school and student improvement and professional development opportunities for both entities.

Making Histories: Developing An Oral History Of All In Australia, Alisa Percy, Bronwyn James, Tim Beaumont, Reem Al-Mahmood

Alisa Percy, PhD

How might our present understandings of our professional identities, our struggles, our achievements and our capacities for agency be better understood through the memories and accounts of those who championed our emergence? What might oral accounts of the emergence of our field offer beyond what can be gathered from its existing literature? Indeed, why look at the history of a professional field at all?

This session approaches such questions by reporting on oral accounts of the emergence and evolution of ALL in Australia. As we note some of the insights and lived experiences of those engaged in the formative years …

Living Among Guatemalan Mayans Is Fascinating Experience, Irene Scharf

Irene Scharf

I have just lived a dream. Five years ago I learned of a school where students of all ages could study Spanish intensively while living among the Guatemalan Mayans. Peace Accords had been signed in 1996, the government was encouraging tourism, and it was, finally, safe to visit.

Why a dream? Because, 25 years ago, when I traveled through Central and South America, I promised my family I would avoid Guatemala because of the perceived was dangers. During that trip, as I met my Europeans and other who had visited, remained safe, and found it a fascinating country, I vowed …

The Persona Doll Project: Promoting Diversity Awareness Among Preservice Teachers Through Storytelling, Mary Ellin Logue, V. Susan Bennett-Armistead, Soojoung Kim

Mary Ellin Logue

The Persona Doll Project describes an experiential intervention with undergraduate preservice teachers designed to increase awareness about diversity and apply this awareness to curriculum planning and advocacy for children. Sixty-three undergraduate students in a social studies methods class were each assigned a persona doll for the semester whose background differed from their own. Each was charged with becoming the advocate for the child, represented by the doll, by telling informed stories that would help other students better understand a level of diversity beyond what they knew from their own lives. Students heightened awareness of their own assumptions through narrative, inquiry …

Hybrid Learning: How Do I Get To Know My Students?, Meghan Eliason

Meghan Eliason

In this presentation, Hybrid Learning: How do I get to know my students?, Attendees will be exposed to one instructor’s methods for forming meaningful relationships with students via technology

The Teacher Researcher Premise, David Lynch

Professor David Lynch

This article is about a phenomenon playing out in modern day classroom under the guise of ‘teaching’. This phenomena we term ‘knowledge broadcasting’ and while it has the hallmarks of what people have come to expect happens in classrooms, its continuance as a mainstay ‘teaching’ approach is reflective of how teachers have failed to act on increasing understandings about how people learn and how teachers can best teach. This is not so much a criticism of teachers individually but a reflection of how organised / systemic teaching systems have failed to keep pace with increasing understandings about teaching and learning. …

Theory Guided Professional Development In Early Childhood Science Education, Soo-Young Hong, Julia Torquati, Victoria J. Molfese

Soo-Young Hong

The importance of early and developmentally appropriate science education is increasingly recognized. Consequently, creation of common guidelines and standards in early childhood science education has begun (National Research Council (NRC), 2012), and researchers, practitioners, and policy makers have shown great interest in aligning professional development with the new guidelines and standard. There are some important issues that need to be addressed in order to successfully implement guidelines and make progress toward accomplishing standards. Early childhood teachers have expressed a lack of confidence in teaching science and nature (Torquati, Cutler, Gilkerson, & Sarver, in press) and have limited science and pedagogical …

Context Influences Preschool Children's Decisions To Include A Peer With A Physical Disability In Play, Karen E. Diamond, Soo-Young Hong, Huifang Tu

Soo-Young Hong

Understanding children’s decisions to include a child with a disability in activities is an important component of the social environment of children with disabilities. We examined preschool children’s understanding of the motor and social competence of hypothetical children with a physical disability, children’s decisions to include or exclude a peer with a physical disability in play activities, and children’s justifications of their inclusion/exclusion decisions. Children understood that a peer with a physical disability would have more difficulty with activities requiring motor skills than social skills and were more likely to include a peer with a physical disability when the activities …

Head Start Classrooms And Children’S School Readiness Benefit From Teachers’ Qualifications And Ongoing Training, Seung-Hee Claire Son, Kyong-Ah Kwon, Hyun-Joo Jeon, Soo-Young Hong

Soo-Young Hong

Background Teacher qualifications have been emphasized as a basis of professional development to improve classroom practices for at-risk children’s school readiness. However, teacher qualifications have often not been compared to another form of professional development, in-service training. Objective The current study attempts to investigate contributions of multiple types of professional development to school readiness skills of low-income preschoolers. Specifically, we examined the significance of teachers’ education level, degree, teaching certificate, teaching experiences as well as specialized in-service training and coaching support as these teacher trainings are linked to preschoolers’ school readiness through proximal classroom practices. Method We used a multi-level …

Two Approaches To Teaching Young Children Science Concepts/Vocabulary And Scientific Problem-Solving Skills, Soo-Young Hong

Soo-Young Hong

This study examined the effectiveness of two different approaches to teaching designed to facilitate children’s learning about science concepts/vocabulary related to objects’ floating and sinking and scientific problem-solving skills: responsive teaching (RT) and the combination of responsive teaching and explicit instruction (RT+EI). Participants included 104 children (51 boys) aged 4 to 5 years. Small groups of children were randomly assigned to one of the two intervention groups (RT, RT+EI) or to a control group. Responsive teaching (RT) reflects a common approach to teaching young children, and the combination approach (RT+EI) includes Explicit Instruction as well as responsive teaching. The two …

Two Approaches To Teaching Young Children Science Concepts, Vocabulary, And Scientific Problem-Solving Skills, Soo-Young Hong, Karen E. Diamond

Soo-Young Hong

The present study examined the efficacy of two different approaches to teaching designed to facilitate children’s learning about science concepts and vocabulary related to objects’ floating and sinking and scientific problem-solving skills: responsive teaching (RT) and the combination of responsive teaching and explicit instruction (RT + EI). Participants included 104 children (51 boys) aged four to five years.Small groups of children were randomly assigned to one of the two intervention groups (RT, RT + EI) or to a control group. Responsive teaching (RT) reflects a common approach to teaching young children, and the combination approach (RT + EI) includes explicit …

Child Care For Working Poor Families: Child Development And Parent Employment Outcomes: Community Child Care Research Project, Final Report, James Elicker, Carolyn Clawson, Soo-Young Hong, Tae-Eun Kim, Demetra Evangelou, Susan J. Kontos

Soo-Young Hong

The results of the Community Child Care Research Project provide new data describing the child care experiences of low income working families in 4 communities in Indiana. Because the study participants were volunteers rather than randomly selected, and because the research design was correlational rather than experimental, conclusions drawn from these fi ndings necessarily have limitations. The fi ndings cannot be confi dently generalized to other low income working families and child care providers, nor can the links between child care quality and children’s development be assumed to be causal. For example, while it is quite possible that higher quality …

Young Children’S Decisions To Include Peers With Physical Disabilities In Play, Karen E. Diamond, Soo-Young Hong

Soo-Young Hong

The authors examined factors related to preschool children’s reasoning about including a hypothetical peer with a physical disability in different play activities. They hypothesized that children’s inclusion decisions would be influenced by features of the physical environment, attention to issues of fairness and equity, and individual child characteristics. Participants comprised 72 children enrolled in inclusive preschool classrooms. Children’s ideas about inclusion and their inclusion decisions were gathered in response to vignettes reflecting experiences that children are likely to encounter in preschool. The authors found that children were significantly more likely to say that they would include a child with a …

The Influence Of A Collaborative Doctoral Seminar On Emerging Teacher Educator-Researchers, Todd Dinkelman, Alexander Cuenca, Brandon Butler, Charles Elfer, Jason Ritter, Dave Powell, Todd Hawley

Dave Powell

This paper explored the impact of a doctoral induction seminar taken over several years on the emergence of each author’s identity as a teacher educator and researcher. We concluded that the seminar was pivotal in our development, both collectively and as individuals.

Improving Consistency In Teacher Judgements : An Investigation For The Department Of Education, Victoria, Marion Meiers, Clare Ozolins, Phillip Mckenzie

Marion Meiers (1941-2018)

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) was commissioned by the Department of Education in Victoria to undertake an investigation of current best-practice approaches to ensuring consistency of teacher judgements against P-10 state-wide standards. The investigation encompassed national and international approaches that had been implemented or were under development. A key objective of the investigation was that the approaches identified should be based on current information, research and best practice, and that they should be supportive of the continued development of a learning and assessment culture in Victorian schools. The report of the investigation was required to provide key baseline …

The Politics Media Equation:Exposing Two Faces Of Old Nexus Through Study Of General Elections,Wikileaks And Radia Tapes, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

The important identity of a responsible media is playing an unbiased role in reporting a matter without giving unnecessary hype to attract the attention of the gullible public with the object of making money and money only.After reporting properly the media can educate the public to form their own opinion in the matters of public interest. Throughout the centuries, the world has never existed without information and communication, hence the inexhaustible essence of mass media. The government has the power to either make or reject whatever that will exist within its environment. It also determines how free the mass media …

The Academic Impact Of Research: Current And The Future Citation Trends In Developing Countries, Nader Ale Ebrahim

Nader Ale Ebrahim

Writing an article for online distribution in a way that maximized the chances of citation hits, is different from preparing one for print journals in some small, but important, respects. To be cited, articles have to be visible in an electronic environment. Therefore, publishing a high quality paper in scientific journals will be a halfway of receiving citation in the future. The rest of the way is advertising and disseminating the publications by using the proper “Research Tools”. Familiarity with the tools allows the researcher to increase his/her h-index in the short time. The number of citations has over 30% …

Making A Difference In Developing Countries, David Tout

David (Dave) Tout

The work of ACER in education is making the difference in educational outcomes for students across the world, particularly in developing countries.

Does The "Negro" Still Need Separate Schools? Single-Sex Educational Spaces As Critical Race Counterspaces, La Mont Terry

Clarence "La Mont" Terry, Sr.

This article explores whether contemporary educators should consider single-sex educational settings as viable interventions in educating African American males. Using qualitative data from a 2-year study of single-sex educational spaces in two Los Angeles County high schools, the authors argue that when all-male spaces effectively function as Critical Race Theory counterspaces, the educational experiences of high school–aged Black males are positively transformed. These co-curricular, single-sex counterspaces can effectively shield Black males from the marginalizing effects of urban schooling while serving as platforms for productive reengagement in positive school trajectories. Research-based principles for designing effective single-sex educational settings are discussed.

The Intersection Of Preservice Teachers’ Confidence, Perceptions, And Ideas For Using Instructional Technology For Teaching And Learning, Louis Nadelson, Darcie Bennett, Ezra Gwilliam, Catherine Howlett, Steve Oswalt, Jaime Sand

Jaime Sand

The evolving landscape of instructional technology is influenced by access to a wide range of technology tools that can be accessed to enhance teaching and learning. Technological tools such as smart phones, apps, tablets, social media, and YouTube exemplify the kinds of resources that are readily availabl e for teaching and learning. Further, the development of different course delivery systems and the exposure to concepts such as flipped classrooms and electronic portfolios have extended the use of mainstream technology into new instructional applications. The ongoing evolution of technology hardware, software, and instructional applications has numerous educational implications. In an effort …

Irresistable: How An Ir (Institutional Repository) Can Improve Library Collections While Preserving The Past, Monica Brooks, David Evans, Tim Tamminga, Jingping Zhang, Gretchen Beach, Nat Debruin, Larry Sheret, Thomas L. Walker Ii, Paris E. Webb

Larry Sheret

Marshall University’s IR team will discuss the creation, progress, and benefits of the Marshall Digital Scholar, an online institutional repository. There will be time for libraries, large and small, to ask questions about digital collecting and digital projects.

Information Literacy Assessment: Keep It Simple, Keep It Going, Larry Sheret, John A. Steele

Larry Sheret

Is it possible to administer an information literacy assessment in only a few classes that would provide essential, adequate, data from semester to semester? In a college with a student body of about 2,000, would it be possible to obtain actionable assessment results if only 150 to 200 students were assessed each semester? This article is the result of the creation and implementation of the information literacy assessment that was launched in the fall of 2009 by Savage Library at Western State College of Colorado (WSC). WSC changed its name to Western State Colorado University on August 1, 2012. The …

The Knowledge Base As An Extension Of Distance Learning Reference Service, Anne Marie Casey

Anne Marie Casey

This study explores knowledge bases as extension of reference services for distance learners. Through a survey and follow-up interviews with distance learning librarians, this paper discusses their interest in creating and maintaining a knowledge base as a resource for reference services to distance learners. It also investigates their perceptions about the feasibility and practicality of a reference knowledge base. Primary findings indicate that the majority of participants view a knowledge base as an extension of distance learning reference services positively but see issues related to workload and quality control, in particular, which might hinder the development and maintenance of this …

A Brief Examination Of Professional Development Models, Imran Chaudary

Imran Anjum Chaudary

This paper aims to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the major professional development models by examining their underpinning assumptions in the light of the particular bodies of scholarship from the field of education. For this purpose, nine professional development models have been chosen from the Kennedy (2005) and a framework of analysis has been constructed by modifying the criteria of effective professional development reported in the Fraser, Kennedy, Reid, and Mickinney (2007) and the Piggot-Irvine (2006). There is no ‘one right answer’! No one particular form or model of professional development is better than others to be adopted; rather, …