Disability and Equity in Education Commons^™

Unshackling Our Youth Through Love And Mutual Recognition: Notes From An Undergraduate Class On School Discipline Inspired By Ta-Nehisi Coates And Bell Hooks, Gene Fellner, Mark Comesañas, Tahjuan Ferrell

Publications and Research

This research essay challenges educators to embrace mutual recognition when interacting with students. Our data are the words of the young people who participated with us in one particular undergraduate class on school discipline at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, in the United States in the fall of 2022. Tahjuan, who had been our student in the 7th grade in 2011, co-taught the class with us. In writing this essay and in teaching the class, we were inspired by a short passage fromTa-Nehisi Coates about the shackling young people of color endure and another, by bell hooks, that proposes …

The ‘Ezel Project’ Inquiry: Mesotransformative Praxis To Decenter Whiteness In Racialized Organizations And Schools, Justin Gerald

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, a Black scholar in the midst of understanding his neurodivergence and his identity as someone who has been dis/abled reacts to the prodding of white peers by creating a course on decentering whiteness. The scholar then interviews ten of the participants in said class to understand how they came to select such a course and what they might have accomplished in attempting to challenge the structure of whiteness in their institutions. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, Dis/Crit, and in particular the work of Victor Ray, this work seeks to examine the narratives that brought …

Coalition And Creativity On The Bridges And Fringes With Immigrant Student-Contributors In Nonprofit Adult Education, Katherine E. Entigar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The nonprofit education of adult immigrants is an under-researched aspect of U.S. education. Adult immigrants, often perceived as passive and quiescent, bring voices and contributions to learning in powerful yet unheard ways. This research agenda invokes a new critical lens in education scholarship to uplift and center these contributions as a coalitional, dialogical project. Drawing upon critical sociocultural, women of color feminist, and poststructual theories, critical intersectional epistemology, and Bakhtinian dialogical thinking, this research project pursues inductive, recursive meaning making as an innovative exploration. A multiphase, sequential study including surveys and two focus groups foregrounds the complex, fluid ways adult …

Taking Your Teaching To The Next Level Through The Use Of Oer, Nicole N. Williams

Publications and Research

Faculty creation, adaptation, and adoption of open educational resources (OER) can be used to enrich every aspect of the professor-student teaching relationship. Adding to the body of OER available allows faculty to rethink every aspect of what they teach and refine how they present that information. Having the ability to edit and adapt existing OER provides faculty with the benefits of collaboration, but without the scheduling concerns that often plague collaborative efforts. OER creation can be as simple as licensing handouts and presentation slides for sharing, or as involved as redesigning an entire course. Putting one’s own stamp on OER …

Reimagining The Flute Masterclass: Case Studies Exploring Artistry, Authority, And Embodiment, Sarah Carrier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work explores the flute masterclass as an aesthetic, ritualized, and historically reimagined cultural practice. Based on fieldwork that took place between 2017 and 2019 in the United States, in Italy, and on the social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, I argue that the masterclass—an extension of the master/apprentice system that dominates learning in the classical music tradition—is characterized by embodied qualities of artistry and authority. These qualities are not inherent, but are perceived through subjective, social, familied, and affective bodies.

Chapter One outlines the main themes and the research design. Chapter Two is a case study that analyzes …

Morpho-Phonemic Analysis Boosts Word Reading For Adult Struggling Readers, Susan H. Gray, Linnea C. Ehri, John C. Locke

Publications and Research

A randomized control trial compared the effects of two kinds of vocabulary instruction on component reading skills of adult struggling readers. Participants seeking alternative high school diplomas received 8 h of scripted tutoring to learn forty academic vocabulary words embedded within a civics curriculum. They were matched for language background and reading levels, then randomly assigned to either morpho-phonemic analysis teaching word origins, morpheme and syllable structures, or traditional whole word study teaching multiple sentence contexts, meaningful connections, and spellings. Both groups made comparable gains in learning the target words, but the morpho-phonemic group showed greater gains in reading unfamiliar …

Open Source Micro Diplomas: New Credentials For New Learning, Jack F. Powers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The standard model for college in America—a four-year bachelor’s degree that teaches critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and written communication skills—is unaffordable and unattainable for most Americans. Only about a third of citizens aged 25 and over have achieved a baccalaureate degree or better. Two-thirds are left behind in precarious jobs that pay substantially less and that are losing ground. Everyone from politicians to parents repeats the mantra of “college for all”, but the reality is more like “college for the socio-economically gifted.”

At the same time, the modern world of work is evolving into a more complex, technical, and computerized …