Educational Methods Commons^™

Seeing Writing Whole: The Revolution We Really Need, Keith Rhodes

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Composition classes have difficulty achieving the aims of the CCCC position statement entitled Students’ Right to Their Own Language, for reasons related to why we have difficulty integrating calls for building rhetorical listening more fully into our curricula. A fundamental assumption that writers alone are responsible for the success of written communication leads to results that sustain privileged discourse and upset any sense that readers, too, have an obligation in any written transaction. A field of Writing, properly constituted, needs to challenge that assumption of readerly privilege overtly so that we can shift toward teaching students better ways to manage …

Stemm-Humanities Co-Teaching And The Humusities Turn, Hella B. Cohen

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Donna Haraway calls for a new Humanities that attends to the role of this traditionally anthropocentric field on a damaged planet. The Humusities, she offers, empower us to teach at the intersections of observation, speculation, and affective reasoning. This article considers co-teaching and interdisciplinary teaching structures as part of the Humusities model. Drawing from interviews and pedagogical materials of professors who have co-taught STEMM-Humanities classes, student feedback from these sections, and current research on interdisciplinary education, I theorize the possibilities and limitations of the interdisciplinary Humusities at the undergraduate level. The article explores how we translate the tenets of Haraway …

Contemplative Wac: Testing A Mindfulness-Based Reflective Writing Assignment, Jared Featherstone

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This qualitative study examines the effects of the Mindfulness Journal Assignment (MJA), a semester-long integration implemented in five different university courses, to understand its potential for teaching and learning. Of particular interest were the patterns found in the reflective writing of students engaging in the MJA and the connection of those patterns to both classroom and Writing Across the Curriculum learning objectives. The most frequent themes occurring in the 111,906-word dataset were metacognitive awareness and self-regulation, both of which are significant for learning transfer and WAC. The findings of this study are promising in that the inclusion of a contemplative …

Connecting: On “Showing Up” In Teaching, Tutoring, And Writing: A Search For Humanity, Christy Wenger, Nicole J. Wilson, Angela Montez, Sara Y. Chung, Christina M. Lavecchia, Cristina D. Ramirez, Patricia D. Pytleski

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The pieces collected in this section of Connecting all exhibit ways of “showing up” in writing. They do so by modeling how we might claim very specific, very material conditions of learning and thinking and speak from the authority of personal experience. They are full of voice. They show up by revealing the presence of their writers and by making intentional space for readers to show up in response, as a writer’s presence begets the readers’. The writing contained within this section also offers practices that might help us think through the dynamics of a pedagogical praxis of “showing up.”

Volume 25 Of The Journal Of The Assembly For Expanded Perspectives On Learning, Wendy Ryden, Peter H. Khost

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning (AEPL), an official assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English, is open to all those interested in extending the frontiers of teaching and learning beyond the traditional disciplines and methodologies. JAEPL is especially interested in helping those teachers who experiment with new strategies for learning to share their practices and confirm their validity through publication in professional journals.

Book Reviews, Irene Papoulis, Nate Mickelson, Paul Pucccio, Erin L. Frymire, Tracy Lassiter

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

All of this year’s books circle around issues of healing, a richly faceted subject always dear to members of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning. Nate Mickelson reviews Burt Bradley’s After Following, in which the poet takes solace in writing his own meditations on the work of other poets; Paul Puccio responds to Peter Khost’s Rhetor Response: A Theory and Practice of Literary Affordance, which explores the potential connections to life that literature could provide readers in our classrooms and beyond; Erin Frymire addresses Jessica Restaino’s Surrender: Feminist Rhetoric and Ethics in Love and Illness, which combines rhetorical analysis …

Complaint As ‘Sticky Data’ For The Woman Wpa: The Intellectual Work Of A Wpa’S Emotional And Embodied Labor, Anna Sicari

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

There is rich scholarship on emotions in writing program administration, and the labor this work requires from WPAs (Holt; Micciche; McKinney et. al; Ratcliffe and Rickley; Vidali) and on the feminized nature of writing programs and the way gender informs this type of emotional work (Enos; Flynn; Miller; Schell). Many WPA scholars advocate that our administrative work is intellectual work, yet little attention has been given to the emotional and embodied labor of WPA work as intellectual and as defining components of WPA work. Drawing from Sara Ahmed’s recent work on complaint and data I collected from thirty interviews with …

Fyc Students’ Emotional Labor In The Feedback Cycle, Kelly Blewett

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This essay explores the emotions first-year composition students experience when receiving feedback on their writing. Culling data from 32 hours of interviews with students, as well as two different data streams students provided regarding their emotional reactions to feedback, I argue that students undergo what Arlie Hochschild calls transmutation as they process feedback on their writing. Two implications are suggested: first, that future studies should utilize non-alphabetic tools for capturing emotion; second, that teachers wishing to assist student reception of feedback should be attentive to building rapport in the classroom. Finally, the essay calls for additional study of the impact …

The Toil Of Feeling: Education As Emotional Labor - Teaching At The End Of Empire, Wendy Ryden

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The editor's introduction to the Special Section, The Toil of Feeling: Education as Emotional Labor.

“So, That’S Sort Of Wonderful”: The Ideology Of Commitment And The Labor Of Contingency, Sarah V. Seeley

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This article explores the emotional outcomes related to language commodification within an organizational context: the first-year writing program at Binghamton University, which is a public research university in upstate New York. In this setting, the meanings of effective writing instruction are discursively constructed in terms of a multi-faceted commitment to ‘the process.’ This entails an ideological commitment to both recursive process writing and the process of collaboratively evaluating the product that derives from it. I first offer an overview of the Binghamton context, including the details of collaborative portfolio assessment. I then analyze a specific sociolinguistic strategy: pep talking. I …

Rhetoric And Emotion Save Science: Lessons From Student Eco-Activists, Jesse Priest

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This essay is a qualitative study of the experience of undergraduate students learning how to teach issues of sustainability to their campus communities through an innovative outreach program at a large northeastern research university, while at the same time learning to navigate complex emotional labor required by their outreach and activist work. While most previous work on science writing and rhetoric focuses on disciplinary, publishing, or genre practices, I examine the holistic student experience by placing outreach, writing, and the classroom in conversation with each other, illuminating how discourses can cross institutional and contextual borders. Additionally, while most previous work …

Designing Analog Learning Games: Genre Affordances, Limitations And Multi-Game Approaches, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Articles

This chapter explores what the authors discovered about analog games and game design during the many iterative processes that have led to the Lost & Found series, and how they found certain constraints and affordances (that which an artifact assists, promotes or allows) provided by the boardgame genre. Some findings were counter-intuitive. What choices would allow for the modeling of complex systems, such as legal and economic systems? What choices would allow for gameplay within the time of a class-period? What mechanics could promote discussions of tradeoff decisions? If players are expending too much cognition on arithmetic strategizing, could that …

“But Aren’T We Extinct?”: Inhabited Reform And Instructional Visibility In An Open Space School Forty Years Later, Jeremy T. Murphy

Education Department Faculty Scholarship

The 1960s open space school removed partitions between classrooms in part to alleviate teacher isolation. The model was long ago deemed a failure. Years later, teachers in surviving open space facilities continue to navigate the reform. Despite wide dismissal of the model, components of teachers’ work that open space schools sought to normalize (collaboration, informality, proximity) are increasingly valued for improving teachers’ professional communities. In addition “open” designs are resurfacing in new school models. Picking up where earlier scholars left off, this article elevates perspectives of teachers working in a surviving open space school today using a conceptual framework of …

Covid And Clinical Practice: Now Is The Time To Engage Future Educators, April K. Buschelman

Journal of Catholic Education

After a tumultuous end to the school year, it is more important than ever to cultivate new teachers in the field of education. Combining the experience of veteran teachers with the eagerness and adaptability of students in clinical practice (student teaching) a new form of co-teaching may emerge for the fall semester that covers both in classroom and virtual classroom options. Student teachers experienced the student side of virtual learning during the spring semester and are able to offer valuable insight and knowledge for school communities. This article provides five guidelines for how teachers can mentor clinical practitioners during the …

Examining The Effects Of Reflection On Professional Identity Development In Community College Preservice Teachers, Delia Hernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Grounded in the constructivist theories of Dewey (1963) with learning situated as reflective practice, the study explored the impact of guided written reflection on levels of reflection, commitment to teaching and professional identity for community college preservice teachers enrolled in their first fieldwork course in a teacher education program.

Participants in the treatment group received instruction on levels of reflection using Nickel’s (2013) Levels of Deep and Surface Learning. Pre/posttest results were collected using three measures: Reflection Questionnaire (Kember & Leung, 2000), Professional Identity Status Questionnaire - PISQ-5d (Mancini, 2015), and Commitment to Teaching Scale (Van Huizen, 2000). Researcher-designed …

Experiencing God: Engaging Elementary-Aged Children In Corporate Worship, Laura Rushing Hancock

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The engagement of children in meaningful worship has been neglected, despite the investment of modern churches in essential safety protocols and digital media in children’s ministry. The twenty-first-century consumerist mindset is driving worship design, essentially undermining the worship leader’s role as the shepherd of a child-centered and Christ-focused approach. Many churches are neglecting the biblical instruction to cast vision and express value for children’s corporate worship. A sense of awe and wonder is notably absent in many corporate services designed for children. Drawing upon biblical principles, educational theory, and corporate worship practices throughout history, this qualitative historical study seeks to …

The Plagiarism-Proof Policy Handbook: A Multidimensional-Systems Approach To Foster Student Writing Accountability And Prevent Plagiarism In College And University Classrooms, Cynthia D. Scott

Masters Theses

Academic integrity, ethical research, and proper documentation practices are key values emphasized within most post-secondary academic communities. To support positive student outcomes, colleges and universities use honor codes, policy measures, and plagiarism detection systems to deter plagiarism, believing that the above measures promote ethical behavior from the students who graduate from their institutions. This thesis first recommends a broader, environmentally focused approach which examines the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of the post-secondary educational setting within universities and colleges using systems theory and strengths theory. It then identifies some important plagiarism barriers and plagiarism enablers students encounter within each environmental …

A Case Study Of Academic Performance In A K-8 School Model, Jamie North

Dissertations

The historical and current dispute on how to educate middle grade students continues to puzzle today’s leaders of school systems nationwide. As a result of conflicting research on academically high performing schools, scholars and school decision makers continue the discussion on the influence of grade span configurations on academic performance. The purpose of my mixed method case study was to explore how teachers and school principals perceive the role of collective efficacy as influencing academic performance for grade eight students in the school under study. My study obtained input from school principals, district leaders, and teachers guided by the following …

The Relationship Between The Next Generation Content Area Reading Professional Development Program On The Effectiveness Of Teaching Literacy Strategies In High School Biology Classes, Tia Pridgen Brown

Dissertations

The need for effective content area reading teachers have continued to increase since the introduction of one public school districts’ Content Area Reading Professional Development (CAR-PD) in 2006. In 2011, modifications were made to improve the program, and it became known as the Next Generation Content Area Reading Professional Development (NGCAR-PD). The purpose of this program evaluation is to investigate the relationship between NGCAR-PD certified Biology teachers and their ability to implement reading strategies with science content effectively. The context of this inquiry is a mid-sized public school district that has implemented the program since 2006 at the middle and …

A Plan For Democratic Public Schooling, Diana Concepcion

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project addresses concerns within inner-city public schools while restructuring how we facilitate learning in our school buildings. It provides an overview of continued research on challenges faced in public schools including reform policy (testing and curricular changes), privatization, day-to-day structures and how they impact the academic and social-emotional development of our students. By examining our current designs and policies, we are able to identify why and how these systems have not been beneficial to our students, and we are able to find basic solutions in supporting the holistic needs of our students. This project proposes a school plan which …