Education Commons^™

Experientiallearning@Socialmedia.Edu: Using The Tech Start-Up Concept To Train, Engage, And Inform Students, Stephanie J. Coopman, Ted Coopman

Faculty Publications

Undergraduate and graduate students were enrolled in an upper-division online experiential learning course organized as a technology company start up at a public university in the US. Students participated in an academic department’s social media team, publishing a weekly newsletter and producing and curating content for multiple social media outlets designed for public and university audiences, a website for the department’s students, and a career portal. Responses to survey questions provided support for Experiential Learning Theory’s cyclical learning model. In addition, students viewed the entrepreneurial approach to the team as both liberating and challenging as they engaged with each other …

White Religious Educators Resisting White Fragility: Lessons From Mystics, Mary E. Hess

Faculty Publications

Decades of work in dismantling racism have not yielded the kind of results for which religious educators have hoped. One primary reason has been what scholars term “white fragility,” a symptom of the structural racism which confers systemic privilege upon White people. Lessons learned from Christian mystics point to powerful ways to confront and resist the siren call of such formation and instead to make resisting racism an integral part of Christian identity for White people.

I Took This Picture Because…’: Accessing Teachers' Depictions Of Change [Abstract], Melissa Parker, Kevin Patton, Christina Sinclair

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Teacher-Student Writing Conference Reimaged: Entangled Becoming-Writingconferencing, Donna Kalmbach Phillips, Mindy Legard Larson

Faculty Publications

This analysis is experimental: we attempt to read data with the work of Karen Barad and in doing so ‘see’ teacher-student writing conferences (a common pedagogy of US elementary school writing) as intra-activity. Data were gathered during teacher-student writing conferences in a grade five US classroom over a six week period. One conference between a researcher and a male Latino student, a Student of Labels, is diffracted. Reading and writing and thinking with Barad disrupts our habitual ways of privileging language as representational. Rather, we consider the material-discursive practices of schooling that produce what comes to matter, leading …

Integrated Or Isolated Experiences? Considering The Role Of Service-Learning In The Spanish Language Curriculum, Gabriel Ignacio Barreneche, Héctor Ramos-Flores

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Teaching English Language Learner Students In Us Mainstream Schools: Intersections Of Language, Pedagogy, And Power, Katya A. Karathanos

Faculty Publications

This study explored to what extent two groups of mainstream teachers in the midwestern region of the USA with differing degrees of English Language Learner (ELL) specific universitypreparation reportedly engaged in practises that incorporated the native languages (L1) of ELL students in instruction. The study further examined specific strategies reported by mainstream teachers in promoting L1 use in instruction as well as challenges identified in implementing this practise. The study utilized a mixed-method design that included analyses of survey data from a quantitative study (n=227) and qualitative analyses of teacher discourse from course documents and open-ended survey questions. Findings indicated …

The Creation And Use Of Open Educational Resources In Christian Higher Education, John L. Hilton Iii, David Wiley

Faculty Publications

A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources (OERs). By “open” it is generally meant that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts. These resources could include books, lesson plans, syllabi, slide shows, etc. There are several examples of individuals and institutions providing open educational resources; this openness is also specifically manifest in the field of religious education. I discuss different levels in which OERs can be “open” and the implications of these levels when creating OERs. Common motivations and obstacles to creating OERs are discussed. A particularly significant issue regarding …

Becoming A Teacher Of Literacy: The Struggle Between Authoritative Discourses, Mindy Legard Larson, Donna Kalmbach Phillips

Faculty Publications

This study describes and analyzes the influence of an ideological conflict between a teacher education program and a school district upon one pre-service teacher’s emerging identity as a teacher of literacy. Using poststructural feminism as the theoretical framework and a single case study analysis, the study illustrates how the discourse of the school district’s scripted reading program and the discourse of the university’s comprehensive literacy positions Claire, the pre-service teacher. The data analysis demonstrates how being positioned between these two competing and authoritative discourses conflicts with her understanding of reading and reading instruction. Reflecting upon the data, the research becomes …

Let's Surf-The-Net! World-Wide Web (Www) Sites In Italy, Or: How/Why Include A Web-Browser Component In Culture And Civilization Classes, Ilona Klein

Faculty Publications

First, this essay details the technical elements required to set up a computer for Web-surfing, then it discusses the rationale for a Web-browser component in Culture and Civilization courses. The first part of this study (the technical portion) is geared specifically toward teachers with little or no familiarity with the Internet and the World-Wide Web. In the second part of the article, the applied-pedagogy aspects of Web-browsing are provided for all colleagues in the profession, proficient or not in cyberspace surfing. This article argues that the internet and the World-Wide Web are here to stay and that, within certain limitations, …

Presenting Italian Comparative And Superlative Forms Of Adjectives To College L2 Beginners, Ilona Klein

Faculty Publications

This study treats the necessity to de-emphasize the focus on grammar teaching alone in L2, and to introduce methods which are not teacher-centered, so as to enable students to interact more among each other.

By using comparative and superlative forms of adjectives – but in reality using a sequence of teaching techniques that could be applied to other grammatical situations – this article presents the use of sea shells as a visual and tactile aid which allows students to shift their L2 efforts from an abstract notion to a concrete usage.

This study offers a tool to attempt a balance …