Education Commons^™

Integrating Aesthetics Within Professional Development For Eeachers Of English Learners, Audrey Figueroa Murphy

Curriculum & Instruction Faculty Publications

The emphasis on testing in curricular content areas has left little room in most U.S. schools for education in the arts. Yet research supports the pedagogical value of aesthetic education, particularly for English learners (ELs), whose representation in schools continues to increase. This article presents a qualitative action research study intended to contribute to the understanding of the impact of incorporating aesthetic education into the training protocol for teachers of ELs. Twenty‐three graduate education students at a private university in Queens, New York, participated in an artist‐led workshop rooted in the aesthetic education theories of Maxine Greene (1995, 2011, 2007) …

Teachers As Informal Learners: Workplace Professional Learning In The United States And Lithuania, Elena Jurasaite-O'Keefe, Lesley A. Rex

Curriculum & Instruction Faculty Publications

Historically, formal directive approaches to teacher learning, based upon a developmental expert-to-learner model, have dominated policy and research, with limited success. This study is based on a learner-centered view of teachers learning from the problems of their own teaching. It demonstrates the understandings that can result from teachers’ explanations of what they do and why when they encounter everyday situations that evoke their learning. Further, the microethnographic study renders these explanations as a framework for further research on teacher learning in informal school-related settings. The framework emerged from a constant-comparative analysis of the structure, language and content of a years’ …

Creativity And Thinking Skills Integrated Into A Science Enrichment Unit On Flooding, Audrey C. Rule, Jean Suchsland Schneider, Denise A. Tallakson, Diane Highnam

Curriculum & Instruction Faculty Publications

Floods that used to happen every hundred years are now occurring more frequently. Human influences on the damage inflicted by flooding need to be well-understood by future voters and property-owners. Therefore, the timely topic of flooding was used as the focus of a special multi-grade enrichment short course taught by two university education professors for 26 preK-8th grade high-achieving and creative students. During the course, students listened to guest speakers (city council member, meteorologist, and environmentalist), watched two flood-related videos, read books on floods, viewed electronic presentations related to dams and recent floods, discussed causes, effects, and mitigations of flooding, …

Second Graders’ Recycled/Craft Item Products Demonstrate Life Cycle Content Knowledge And Creativity Skills, Angela Naomi Webb, Audrey C. Rule

Curriculum & Instruction Faculty Publications

Creativity is a necessary skill for students to become problem solvers in the rapidly changing 21^st century. This study’s main activity allowed students to demonstrate their content knowledge in an engaging way while also exhibiting creative strengths. Twenty-two second grade students (15 female, 7 male) of mixed ability levels at a Title 1 school produced projects using identical sets of recycled and craft items. They incorporated vocabulary words and images associated with the life cycles of four organisms: horse, dragonfly, sea turtle, and bean plant. Projects were analyzed for creative strengths as well as science concept integration. Student-made products …

Keyboarding Camp!: Identifying The Effects Of 4th-Grader Characteristics On Keyboarding Proficiency, Amy Lockhart, Leigh E. Zeitz

Curriculum & Instruction Faculty Publications

This study evaluated the effectiveness of using the Almena Method keyboarding program to teach keyboarding to 4th grade students. Student characteristics were evaluated to measure their effect upon keyboarding success. Seventeen Midwestern fourth grade students of a mixed sex, ethnic, and racial orientation were involved. Students participated in daily 30-minute keyboarding lessons for four weeks. Students tended to increase their keyboarding speed by 33%. Age affected success inversely. Younger students improved more than older students. Music Experience had a positive effect. Larger-handed students improved the most. Gender and athletic background didn’t have any effect upon keyboarding improvement. The specific student …

The Status Of Statewide Subscription Databases, Karla Steege Krueger

Curriculum & Instruction Faculty Publications

This qualitative content analysis presents subscription databases available to school libraries through statewide purchases. The results may help school librarians evaluate grade and subject-area coverage, make comparisons to recommended databases, and note potential suggestions for their states to include in future contracts or for local purchase. All states had similar periodicals‘ indexing vendors; therefore, this study‘s focus was online subject reference databases. Results portrayed seventy-nine unique databases across thirty-three states analyzed. Most states studied (81 percent) had a wide variety of online reference subject content; twenty states (61 percent) included one or more general reference databases; seven states with no …

Editorial: Implementing The Teacher Education Initiative, Glen Bull, Marshall George, Melanie Shoffner, Cheryl Bolick, John Lee, Janice Anderson, David Slykhuis, Joe Garofalo, Robin Angotti, Michael Mckenna, Elizabeth West, Sara Dexter, Mary Herring, Mark Hofer, Abbie Brown

Curriculum & Instruction Faculty Publications

Representatives from ten specialty professional associations affiliated with the National Technology Leadership Coalition (NTLC) are collaborating with Microsoft Corporation to develop an innovative professional development opportunity for teacher educators—the Teacher Education Initiative (TEI). The goal of the initiative is to enhance preparation of future teachers to use technology in effective ways to teach students across grades and academic disciplines. This effort builds upon initiatives such as Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) and Microsoft’s Partners in Learning (PIL) program.

The goals of TEI are described in more detail in a previously published overview, “Preparing Teachers for Tomorrow’s Technologies” (Dilworth …

Editorial: Technology Leadership For The Teacher Education Initiative, Sara Dexter, Mary Herring, Tommye Thomas

Curriculum & Instruction Faculty Publications

Teacher education leaders must attend to leadership practices that set direction, develop people, and redesign their programs of teacher education in order to develop technology, pedagogy, and technology knowledge and skills in preservice teachers. A planning framework to be used at the 2012 National Technology Leadership Summit is presented here. It highlights focus group results from deans and other college of education leaders as to the context-specific products and processes they would need to create at the local level.

Using A Thinking Skills System To Guide Discussions During A Working Conference On Students With Disabilities Pursuing Stem Fields, Audrey C. Rule, Greg P. Stefanich

Curriculum & Instruction Faculty Publications

Students with sensory or motor disabilities are often dissuaded from pursuing science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) careers. They are frequently underprepared to succeed in post-secondary STEM coursework because of inadequate high school preparation and limited post-secondary accommodations. A two-day working conference stimulated dialogue to improve attitudes toward, to better support, and to plan accommodations for students with physical disabilities in STEM areas. Discussion questions during the five small group dialogue sessions that followed panels of speaker presentations were based on Edward de Bono’s (2000) CoRT ten Breadth thinking skills. These thinking skills broaden perception so that thinkers might see …