Education Commons^™

Bringing Female Scientists Into The Elementary Classroom: Confronting The Strength Of Elementary Students' Stereotypical Images Of Scientists, Gayle A. Buck, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, Susan K. Kirby

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study explored the effectiveness of bringing female scientists into the elementary classrooms on promoting changes in the stereotypical images of scientists. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed to illuminate changes in stereotypical images of scientists. Results indicate that despite the efforts of the scientists to encourage the students to question their image of a scientist, the students held on to stereotypical images. Instead, the students questioned the true identity of the scientists, categorizing them as teachers. The results led to questions of the strength of the image and the extent of efforts needed for students to question …

Expecting, Accepting, And Respecting Difference In Middle School, Lori Olafson, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The curriculum need not fight young adolescents’ need to engage in identity formation. It can assist that process when students are given the opportunity to address issues that matter to them through their school work.

Adolescence is a time when key questions of identity assume central importance in the lives of children (Brumberg, 1997). It is often a particularly traumatic time for girls as they negotiate through the quagmire of adolescent experience (Harper, 1997). During the time we spent researching and teaching in middle schools, we found that the voices of adolescent girls echoed this fragile and vulnerable sense of …

Four Criteria For Engaging Girls In The Middle Level Classroom, Gayle A. Buck, Nancy Ehlers

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Authenticity, choice, conceptual understanding, and motivation all play a role in engaging middle level learners. This article shows how these criteria apply to designing lessons for girls.

Listening to young adolescent girls has greatly altered my ideas of what it means to teach at the middle level. Using the ideas and attitudes that these girls bring with them to the science classroom, I now select what happens in that classroom. Others are encouraged to use this rubric to select activities as they attempt to engage the adolescent girls in the middle level curriculum. No longer looking upon girls to see …

From Neologisms To Social Practice: An Analysis Of The Wanding Of America, Loukia K. Sarroub

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In this article I discuss how individuals and communities in the United States re-present themselves in the context of the September 11 tragedy and its complex aftermath. My aim is to explore the "American" discourse on inclusion and discrimination by examining the neologisms and social practices that were amplified by the attack in local and national debates.

This document file contains both a page-image version and a text version of the essay.

Achieving Behavior Change Goals And Strengthening Home-School Partnerships Through Conjoint Behavioral Consultation: A Case Study, Richard J. Cowan, Brandy L. Clarke, Susan M. Sheridan

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools: Posters, Addresses, and Presentations

Conjoint behavioral consultation (CBC; Sheridan, Kratochwill, & Bergan, 1996) is an indirect, structured model of service-delivery whereby parents, teachers, and support staff are joined to work together to address the academic, social, or behavioral needs of an individual for whom all parties bear some responsibility (Sheridan & Kratochwill, 1992). Conceptually and in practice, CBC is couched within the broader frameworks of home-school partnerships, collaborative problem-solving, ecological theory, and behavioral consultation. Through the CBC process, parents and teachers (i.e., consultees) work closely together with the guidance and support of the school psychologist to identify, analyze, and develop interventions for academic, social, …

In-Betweenness: Religion And Conflicting Visions Of Literacy, Loukia K. Sarroub

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In this article, I examine the multiple uses of religious and secular text at school, home, and in the community. Specifically, I focus on how Yemeni American high school girls employ religious, Arabic, and secular texts as a means for negotiating home and school worlds. The frame of reference—in-betweenness—is a powerful heuristic with which the contextual uses of texts and language among the Yemeni American students can be delineated. In-betweenness signifies the immediate adaptation of one’s performance or identity to one’s textual, social, cultural, and physical surroundings. During 1997–1999, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Yemeni and Arab community in …

Arab American Youth In Perspective, Loukia K. Sarroub

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States brought new attention to Muslim Arab American communities and highlighted how little we know about these communities, the Middle East, our own foreign policy, and national and local security. Although these issues are beyond the scope of our scholarly activities, many of us conduct research in schools that include Arab American students, or deal with issues of diversity in our work. Drawing on my experience as an educational anthropologist whose research centers on youth cultures and literacy studies, I provide in this column a brief overview of Arab immigration from the …

Supporting The Development And External Review Of Course Portfolios, Paul Savory, Dan Bernstein, John Comer, Jennifer Robinson

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

This presentation introduces the Peer Review of Teaching project for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The faculty fellowship program is described and the process by which faculty create course portfolios is explained. How portfolios are used for formative and summative assessment are discussed.

Book Review: Learning And Not Learning English: Latino Students In American Schools, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In this poignant short volume, Valdés is adamant: Latino students, specifically the thousands of Latino newcomer students who start their U.S. schooling at the secondary level, deserve a chance to learn English and to continue their development of other academic skills. She is also blunt: typical U.S. schooling of Latino newcomers is multiply inadequate and inappropriate. Thus the goal of promoting English mastery is compromised, as are these students’ overall academic opportunity horizons. Though her initial problem diagnosis—that current ESL programs poorly serve most students in them—may superficially agree with the problem diagnosis of neoconservative crusaders such as Ron Unz, …

"We're From The State And We're Here To Help": State-Level Innovations In Support Of High School Improvement, Edmund T. Hamann, Brett Lane

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

As any good Maine educator knows, the idea in the title of this paper, that "we're from the state and we're here to help" is an oxymoron. In a part of the United States that defiantly prides itself on perpetuating traditions like town meetings and other versions of direct or almost-direct democracy, being told what to do by someone else, particularly by someone pulling rank, is viewed skeptically-- to put it mildly (Ruff, Smith, & Miller, 2000). Yet on school visit after school visit, we heard a staffer of the Center for Inquiry on Secondary Education (CISE), which is centrally …

Education And Policy In The New Latino Diaspora, Edmund T. Hamann, Stanton Wortham, Enrique G. Murillo Jr.

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Increasing numbers of Latinos (many immigrant, and some from elsewhere in the United States) are settling both temporarily and permanently in areas of the United States that have not traditionally been home to Latinos-for example, North Carolina, Maine, Georgia, Indiana, Arkansas, rural Illinois, and near resort communities in Colorado.' Enrique Murillo and Sofia Villenas have called this the New Latino Diaspora (Murillo and Vienas, 1997). Newcomer Latinos are confronted with novel challenges to their senses of identity, status, and community. Instead of arriving in settings, like the Southwest, where Latinos have lived for centuries, those in the New Latino Diaspora …

Book Review - Schooling- The Symbolic Animal: Social And Cultural Dimensions Of Education, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This is an excellent book that brings together under one cover many of the most important ideas of the fields of anthropology and qualitative sociology of education or, to use the editor Bradley Levinson's more expansive phrase, of "the interpretive social sciences" (p. 1). The book is divided into five sections, plus an introduction and an afterword. Each section begins with an introductory essay authored by the section editor. Bradley Levinson is the author of the book's introduction and editor of the first section ("Section I: The Symbolic Animal: Foundations of Education in Cultural Transmission and Acquisition"). Section 11, "Culture, …

¿Un Paso Adelante? The Politics Of Bilingual Education, Latino Student Accommodation, And School District Management In Southern Appalachia, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Latino educational policy. More specifically, it describes how a broad but vague consensus regarding the goals of a novel binational partnership hid the differences in various partners' interests and understandings. Looking at both a Georgia superintendent's initial letter to his prospective partners at a Mexican university and then at the experiences of a Mexican university-affiliated bilingual education coordinator, the chapter highlights the interface between culture, policy, and power, illuminating how and why only certain portions of the formal binational accord were enacted and then only in certain ways. The chapter describes the political posturing, advocacy, and maneuvering that shaped the …

The National Honors Report Vol. Xxiii, No. 3, Fall 2002

The National Honors Report

Peaks & Valleys

Those Pesky Parents

1. "Parent to Parent" by P.K.Weston ... 1 Let those parents know what they need to know: inevitable changes in their sons and daughters; practical issues; the program's responsibilities in their children's education. Includes letter to parents & copy of the program outline with notes. Weston says to borrow freely.

2. "From Fred's Mother" ... 5 This letter has been reprinted several times to remind us what honors is all about. Fred's mother says "teach my son." Introduction by Freddye Davy, Hampton University. As always, thanks for sharing this letter, Freddye.

Those Irksome Issues …

The National Honors Report Vol. Xxiii, No. 1, Spring 2002

The National Honors Report

THE THREE R’S & MORE

RECRUITING

1. "Selling People on Honors Education" by Lydia Daniel & Joan Digby … l A challenge to honors folks to promote the value of honors education on the local level. With a generic press release that can be adapted to fit particular honors programs' or honors colleges' needs. How to promote honors as well as a specific program or college. How to buy the new third edition of Peterson's Honors Programs and Colleges. From the co-chairs of the NCHC's External Relations Committee.

1. A. PRE-COLLEGE PROGRAMS

2. "A Summer of Excellence" by Gerald T. Szymanski …

The National Honors Report Vol. Xxiii, No.2 Summer 2002

The National Honors Report

What do they mean?

1. "Numbers, Mountains, and the Supersonic Fly" by Len Zane ... 1 Zane in his Presidential Address (San Francisco, 1996) told us about Mount Whitney, height 14496.811 feet-as Zane says, that's 14496 and 811 thousands of a foot. How do they know, he asks. How? He reminds us to be skeptical of the beguiling effect of numbers. Originally appeared in Winter 1997 issue.

2. "Number Theory" by Margaret Brown ... 6 What can we do with all the reports from NCHC committees, with all of the reports from the NCHC office?

What kind of numbers are …

Seeking Fragility’S Presence: The Power Of Aesthetic Play In Teaching And Learning, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Aesthetic play requires all participants to remain faithful to the intricacies and intensities of human experience. Teachers and students continually improvised within relations, adapting, building, and changing meaning. The indeterminate nature of aesthetic play assumes teaching/learning is complex and individual. All involved are oriented toward a sensitivity to the many relations present in teaching/ learning situations and deliberately seek out fragility’s presence in order to honor the existing complexity and individuality. Eisner explains, “What is mediated through thought are qualities, what is managed in process are qualities, and what terminates at the end is a qualitative whole.” Discerning these qualitative …

Technology Knowledge And Use: A Survey Of Science Educators, A. Louis Odom, John Settlage, Jon E. Pedersen

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to determine the current state of technology use and know-how among members of the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science. A web-based survey site and an e-mail merge invited members to participate in the study. The survey examined the differences between current and desired levels of knowledge about using technology as an instructional tool, to support research, to enhance productivity in classroom applications, and to enhance data collection and analysis. Large mean differences about using technology as an instructional tool were found, including: (1) teaching students at a distance, (2) database applications, …

Teaching Discourses: Science Teachers' Responses To The Voices Of Adolescent Girls, Gayle A. Buck

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to provide an opportunity for science teachers to ‘listen’ to adolescent girls discuss their ideas and feelings about the contemporary structure of middle-level science education. The reflections of these teachers were then analyzed to capture how the teachers interpreted what adolescent girls had to say and the action that they will take in the classroom as a result of those interpretations. This qualitative study investigated 11 teachers and 51 Grade 7 and 8 girls from various states across the continental USA. The girls discussed such things as their favorite science topics, comfort level in …

Collaborating To Study Science Teaching: A Case Study, Frank E. Crawley, Jon E. Pedersen

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to form a science teacher and graduate-student researcher team in which its members engaged in a study of science teaching, and to examine the progress of the team's work through the creation of a case study. A graduate student and science teacher team was formed in one high school, and used collaborative action research methods to investigate students' learning in a general education biology course. As well, the action research project was used to examine the attempt of the research team (graduate student and teacher) to change instructional patterns in the teacher's classroom. Records …

Could It Be That It Does Make Sense? A Program Review Process For Integrating Activities, Terrel Rhodes

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter presents a model for a comprehensive program review process that can be used on any campus. Faculty developers maintain a critical role in a campus-wide program review initiative. This model is based upon the development of institutional priorities that guide the development of goals and objectives far academic units across the campus. The program review process is based on a core of regularly produced institutional data that can be used by all units to inform decision-making. The review process is conducted on an annual or biannual basis with periodic major review coinciding with accreditation visits. The ultimate success …

Harnessing The Potential Of Online Faculty Development: Challenges And Opportunities, Timothy P. Shea, Pamela D. Sherer, Eric V. Kristensen

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter explores several issues regarding the current state of online faculty development resources. First, it describes the breadth and depth of today’s online teaching and learning resources. Then, it explains the benefits of designing an institutional teaching and learning center portal as a means for organizing and focusing resources. Finally, it discusses the importance of the faculty developer’s role in harnessing these resources for individual and institutional advantage. The online portal provides a powerful tool for institutional change on a scale heretofore impossible for most, and puts faculty development at the center of an institution’s mission.

Getting Started With Faculty Development, Nadia Cordero De Figueroa, Pedro A. Sandín-Fremaint

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

As a result of an academic senate decision to reconceptualize the baccalaureate, the Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico began, in late 1994, a major transformational process that has led it to rethink itself as a community of learners. One of the principal instruments of change has been our Center for Academic Excellence, created in early 1998 as a result of the transformational process. This chapter discusses the process that led to the creation of the center, as well as its structure, activities, and vision for the future. We hope that our experience will be useful to …

Mandatory Faculty Development Works, Mona B. Kreaden

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter tells the story of a successful, ongoing, mandatory faculty development program. It explains the historical reasons why a business school in a large, urban Research I institution felt the need to make their program mandatory, examines how it was developed, and the university faculty development program’s role in the process. The author makes the case that mandatory programs can be successful in faculty development when they are administered by an outside credible entity, are faculty driven, and guarantee confidentiality.

The Millennial Learner: Challenges And Opportunities, Suandra Y. Mcguire, Dennis A. Williams

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Students enrolled in college today are, in many respects, quite different from students enrolled a few decades ago. Learners today seem more focused on being credentialed, and less concerned with obtaining a broad-based, liberal arts education. Today’s faculty may find it challenging to provide engaging learning activities for this generation of students. Millennial educators must instill in students a desire to think critically and provide them with strategies that will make them more efficient learners. Campus learning centers and faculty development centers can work together to foster an academic climate that helps all students to realize their full academic potential.

A Modified Microteaching Model: A Cross–Disciplinary Approach To Faculty Development, John P. Hertel, Barbara J. Millis, Robert K. Noyd

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Three departments at the United States Air Force Academy successfully used a microteaching model to train new faculty. Like other models, its structured approach used videotaping and peer coaching. The model also contained several unique features, including a cross-disciplinary approach to supplement feedback from department members and focused small group feedback with built-in preparation time. Thus, this model results not only in enhanced teaching performance, but also in departmental and institutional collegiality.

Operational Diversity: Saying What We Mean, Doing What We Say, Wayne Jacobson, Jim Borgford-Parnell, Katherine Frank, Michael Peck, Lois Reddick

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Diversity issues, ranging from individual learning styles to institutional equity, are central to teaching and learning, but identifying and addressing these issues is a formidable task. At the Center for Instructional Development and Research (CIDR), our staff is gaining ground on this work through the Inclusive Practices Portfolio, a collaborative forum for documenting, sharing, and supporting our individual and organizational diversity initiatives. The process of developing the center’s portfolio and the portfolio itself are mechanisms for change within the center and a model far change at our institution and beyond.

The Graphic Syllabus: Shedding A Visual Light On Course Organization, Linda B. Nilson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Students rarely understand how a course is organized from the week-by-week topical listing in traditional syllabi. This chapter explains a teaching tool called a graphic syllabus, which elucidates (and may improve) course design/organization and increases student retention of the material. It may resemble a flow chart or diagram or be designed around a graphic metaphor with another object. Included here are materials, experiences, and graphic syllabi from a workshop conducted several times on how to compose one (involving about 115 faculty and faculty developers). Graphic representations of text-based material appeal to the visual learning preferences of today’s students and complement …

A Brief History Of Educational Development: Implications For Teachers And Developers, Richard G. Tiberius

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

An historical review of the practice of educational development identified four belief systems about teaching and learning that shape the practice. Each system is characterized by an assumption about the teacher’s role: content expert; performer, who makes learning happen; facilitator, who encourages learning through interaction; and helper, whose relationship with learners is a vehicle for learning. The good news is that even teachers who are limited to only one of these belief systems can be successful. On the other hand, developers must have an appreciation for more than one belief system if they are to be successful at helping teachers.

Linking Change Initiatives: The Carnegie Academy For The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning In The Company Of Other National Projects, Barbara Cambridge

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The scholarship of teaching and learning provides an overarching framework for progress on a number of important educational issues today. The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning encourages connections with other national projects that deal with issues such as defining student learning outcomes, building an infrastructure of support, and establishing evidence for purposes of accountability in mutually supportive ways. Connecting such efforts honors faculty time in the midst of multiple demands and raises the likelihood of significant, lasting impact on the quality of teaching and learning.