Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

A Theory/Practice Divide: Exploring Perceptions Of Inclusion In Schools, Christine L. Cho

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

This article explores the theory-practice divide with respect to actualizing how diversity and inclusion can be explicitly addressed in schools. This paper contributes important insights for teacher educators in terms of recognizing and challenging problematic assumptions teacher candidates (TCs) may hold. This research presses TCs to examine the structure of schools through a critical lens, as teachers, particularly those from the dominant group, tend to act in surface ways, avoiding conflict by using seemingly inclusive language and ideas, and either ignoring or not seeing the real challenges many historically marginalized students face. The assignment upon which this study was based …

Behavioral Health Issues Among War Veterans, Michelle Guzman

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The Monterey County Military & Veterans Affairs Office is a government agency that helps Veterans and their dependents with Military services that are offered in the Monterey County area. Some of the main problems that returning veterans are facing from coming back from OEF and OIF are behavioral health issues as far as PTSD, substance abuse and many more different health issues. Behaviors required to outlive in a war zone, such as keeping up a consistent state of alertness, may at first decipher into troublesome behaviors in civilian life, such as feeling tense or unsteady and being easily startled. Some …

Availability And Perceived Effectiveness Of High School Programs, Services, And Approaches To Address Trauma-Related Outcomes In The Upper Peninsula Of Michigan, Jaime Vanenkevort

All NMU Master's Theses

Twelve administrators at Michigan Upper Peninsula (U.P.) high schools participated in 12 separate structured interviews to identify programs, services, and approaches to address trauma-related outcomes. Participants were three U.P. superintendents, eight principals, and one Intermediate School District (ISD) social worker who described a convergence of factors affecting assessment measures of programs, services, and approaches to address student trauma-related outcomes in U.P. high schools. The interviews addressed the identification of programs, services, and approaches to address trauma-related outcomes at U.P. high schools and the assessment measures in use to evaluate available programs, services, and approaches. A systems theory approach and understanding …

A Mixed Methods Study Of Middle School Teachers’ Perceptions Of Schoolwide Positive Behavior Interventions And Supports And Its Influence On Effective Implementation, Tiffany J. Baskin-Downs

Theses and Dissertations

The use of a multi-tiered system of supports framework has been of growing interest in addressing issues related to disruptive behaviors and school suspensions. The purpose of this mixed-methods sequential, explanatory study was to examine middle school teachers’ perceptions (behavioral expectations defined, behavioral expectations taught, and an ongoing system for rewarding behavioral expectations) of their efforts toward implementing Schoolwide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports with fidelity in two middle schools within an urban school district located in Georgia. Data analyses included descriptive statistics, homogeneity of variance Levene’s test, t-tests, factorial analysis, a one-way analysis of variance, post-hoc tests, frequencies and …

Culturally Responsive Science Education And Teaching: Current Literature, Preservice Elementary Science Teachers And Lesson Planning, Lundon Pinneo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

First, a meta-analysis of Culturally Responsive (CR) science teaching characteristics and practices was conducted. Findings revealed that there are a limited number of CR teaching studies at the elementary science level. When studies conducted at the middle, secondary and postsecondary level were included, six themes which encompassed the characteristics and pedagogical practices of effective CR science teachers and teacher development emerged. These themes were academics, cultural competency, social inequities, CR learning environment, rejection of the deficit lens and pedagogical strategies.

Next, the impact of curriculum and practices designed to reflect these six themes on preservice elementary science teachers was explored. …

Introduction: Perspectives On Ignatian Leadership, Thomas M. Kelly, Bridget Keegan Ph.D.

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

No abstract provided.

Using The Critical Mathematics Pedagogical Framework To Teach Adult Basic Education Learners: A Transformative Convergent Parallel Mixed Methods Study, Matthew D. Gromlich

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The goal of this study was to design and implement curricula in the Adult Basic Education classroom that aligned to the Critical Mathematics Pedagogical Framework. Specifically, this study assessed if ABE students’ mathematics anxiety and mathematics self-efficacy ware affected by curricula that aligns to the Critical Mathematics Pedagogical Framework. Using a transformative convergent parallel mixed methods study, this study showed that students taught using CMPF-based lessons specifically reflected on their own attitudes towards mathematics self-efficacy, mathematics anxiety, number positioning, and the need for societal change around mathematical concepts. Both quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed to highlight student reflections and …

Contextualizing Our Leadership Education Approach To Complex Problem Solving: Shifting Paradigms And Evolving Knowledge: Priority 5 Of The National Leadership Education Research Agenda 2020–2025, Rian Satterwhite, Ariel Sarid, Carolyn M. Cunningham, Elizabeth Goryunova, Heather M. Crandall, James L. Morrison, Kate Sheridan, Whitney Mcintyre Miller

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"Complex problems characterized by uncertainty, interconnectedness, poorly defined goals, and high risk are not new to the human experience. Yet humanity is increasingly faced with multifaceted and pervasive global challenges, and leadership education must adapt accordingly. These complex problems transcend borders and require a collective, adaptive, and iterative learning response. Complex problems such as failure to act on climate change, unemployment, food crises, governance failures, pandemics, cyberattacks, and involuntary migration are interrelated challenges that require paradigm shifts in responses and leadership (Global Risk Report, 2020). "

Collective Teacher-Researcher Inquiry: Localizing School-Based Curriculum Development In Diversified Hong Kong Schooling Contexts, Zheng Zhang, Sally Wai-Yan Wan, Lai Ha Chan, Pui-Ying Lorelei Kwan, Lai-Ling Sandy Tam, Eunice Wai-Po Wan

Journal of Practitioner Research

Responding to a recent call for turning a focus on advancing practices in curriculum studies, this paper reports collective memory work that disrupted academics’ hegemonic voices in School-Based Curriculum Development (SBCD) studies and elicited teachers’ stories about their school-based curriculum development (SBCD) practices. With post-colonialism as the theoretical underpinning, we explored how the Western-centric construct of SBCD was recontextualized in various Hong Kong school contexts. Findings revealed teachers’ struggles with hegemonic discourses that constrained their autonomy in SBCD projects to benefit diverse learners, such as the accountability mechanism, linguistic imperialism, Western-centrism, and top-down curriculum decision-making. Situated in the local realities …

Racism In Education, Kevin M. Donton

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

Racism in Education has been a huge problem in the United States today, and it still is. The presence of racism in the education system is quite controversial and many people have strong opinions on it. Its roots date all the way back to slavery in the United States to the Brown vs. the Board of Education case to the Reagan Revolution to present day in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Throughout this essay, I will discuss the origins, how it is still happening today, the effects it has on students of color, and ways to dismantle …

Using Monuments To Teach About Racism, Colonialism, And Sexism, Susan Phillip

Publications and Research

This chapter examines how an interdisciplinary high-impact practice approach to teaching and learning using selected contested monuments can reveal intersections of racism, colonialism, and sexism, and lay the foundation for students’ civic engagement. In place-based and virtual experiences, students observe and investigate local and national monuments, integrating knowledge from multiple disciplines, including history, psychology, art, culture, and tourism. Students make critical analyses about how monuments reveal power relationships in our society. Students from various disciplines explore the origin of contested monuments, the evolving national and local debates around them, and their effect on students’ learning to evaluate historical, contemporary, and …

Facilitating Conversations On Difficult Topics In The Classroom: Teachers’ Stories Of Opening Spaces Using Children’S Literature

Occasional Paper Series

For this edition of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, we invited educators to share stories from their practice: times when they utilized children’s literature and conversations to address real life; the difficult topics that children experience through the mirror of their own experiences or the windows of their peers, communities, or world.

Conversations About Death That Are Provoked By Literature, Cara E. Furman

Occasional Paper Series

How do teachers have conversations about death with young children? In this paper, I focus specifically on how teachers might support unplanned conversations that were provoked by children’s literature. In analyzing a series of events in which such conversations occurred, I argue that to do so required going against three conventions in literacy education: close reading, staying on task, and appropriate school talk. I then speak to how teacher educators might prepare teachers for these unexpected but important digressions.

If I Knew Then What I Do Now: Fostering Pre-Service Teachers’ Capacity To Promote Expansive And Critical Conversations With Children’S Literature, Stephen Adam Crawley

Occasional Paper Series

In this article, I reflect on my practices as a teacher educator and respond to the following questions: How do I foster the capacity of pre-service teachers to use children’s literature to promote expansive and critical conversations in the classroom? How do pre-service teachers report their stances and sense of preparedness when reflecting on the course? To address these questions, I share two strategies I employed in my undergraduate course for elementary education majors: 1) emphasizing children's literature as windows and mirrors and 2) considering stakeholder responses. For each strategy, I include preservice teachers’ (PTs’) statements that reflect how the …

Shattering, Healing And Dreaming: Lessons From Middle-Grade Literacies And Lives, Carla España

Occasional Paper Series

In the summer of 2018, I had the opportunity to read the words of Renée Watson, Jewell Parker-Rhodes, Jacqueline Woodson and Nikki Grimes alongside seventh and eighth graders. Our conversations were grounded in the students’ lives and in stories and poems crafted by Black women. I had the responsibility and honor to select the texts, develop the curriculum and co-create a space with students. The authors’ words helped students process not only the authors’ craft but also how students navigated issues from microaggressions to tensions in friendships, from the oppression experienced at the intersections of their identities to the role …

Choosing Difficult, Choosing Important In Fifth-Grade Read-Aloud, Chiara Dilello

Occasional Paper Series

In this essay, I share my critical reflections and pedagogical choices (some more successful than others) while using a whole-class chapter book read-aloud to engage my students in conversation about complex topics, including racism and gender, which we might not have discussed otherwise. It is my hope to model one small way I as a White teacher have tried to disrupt Whiteness in my classroom as part of a larger commitment to anti-racist teaching, and help teachers feel more prepared to undertake similar work in their own settings.

What Do You Do When You Don't Know How To Respond? Supporting Pre-Service Teachers To Use Picture Books To Facilitate Difficult Conversations, Kathryn Struthers Ahmed, Nida Ali

Occasional Paper Series

In this paper, the authors – a preservice teacher (PST) and a teacher educator – consider how teacher education might better prepare PSTs to use picture books to facilitate difficult conversations in elementary classrooms. They share missed opportunities from their own experiences in a fourth-grade fieldwork classroom and in a graduate-level elementary literacy methods course where they felt unprepared to respond to students’ comments about “controversial” topics. They reimagine how these experiences might have been transformed to be more educative for PSTs, first by considering how they could have responded more thoughtfully in the moment and then by thinking about …

Gender-Inclusive Children’S Literature As A Preventative Measure: Moving Beyond A Reactive Approach To Lgbtq+ Topics In The Classroom, Shelby Brody

Occasional Paper Series

This article addresses the common perception of gender non-conforming and gender-expansive identities as difficult classroom topics. The lack of gender-inclusive curricula in American schools results in a reactive approach to teaching about queerness, specifically about people who identify as transgender and/or gender non-conforming. Teachers need to adopt a proactive approach to teaching about queerness in order to prevent gender-based discrimination, harassment, and violence in schools and in the world. Trans-inclusive children’s literature has become more available in recent years. However, teachers need to be conscious of popular narratives that offer a limited perspective on people who identify as transgender and …

Focus On Friendship Or Fights For Civil Rights? Teaching The Difficult History Of Japanese American Incarceration Through The Bracelet, Noreen N. Rodríguez

Occasional Paper Series

Japanese American incarceration is one of few Asian American historical topics addressed in P-12 curriculum. A dearth of children’s literature is available about Japanese American incarceration, yet given young learners’ limited exposure to World War II historical narratives, simply reading a picturebook about the topic does not ensure that students and teachers will address the injustices involved in the event. This study contrasts the distinct pedagogical approaches taken up by two Texas elementary educators who read aloud Yoshiko Uchida’s The Bracelet, a picturebook that details a young Japanese American girl’s forced removal from her home.

Taking A Journey To The Land Of All: Using Children’S Literature To Explore Gender Identity And Expression With Young Children, Kerry Elson, Kindel Nash

Occasional Paper Series

Children’s literature is a powerful tool that helps shape young children’s understandings of themselves and the world. As such, children’s literature can help young children develop deeper and more nuanced understandings about gender, gender identity, and gender expression. This article shares how teacher Kerry Elson planned and implemented a curriculum with first-grade students that focused on gender identity and expression. In this curriculum, she carefully selected children’s literature to explore gender identity and expression with young children.