Digital Commons Network^™

Connecting North And South: Engaging Latin American English Learners, Kenyan Intercultural Communications And American Undergraduate Students Through Reciprocal Service Learning, Laureen Fregeau, Ukaiko A. Bitrus-Ojiambo, Suhana Chikatla, William Cornejo

ECTESOL Review

Reciprocal Service Learning through videoconferencing is an efficient tool for connecting native English speakers of various world Englishes and ELs in other nations for the benefit of all. The authors of this study recognize the reciprocal nature of teaching and learning and the social justice of equalizing power structures through the inclusion of participants and researchers from both North and South as members of a project and research team. Through participant observation and document review the authors examine the experiences of educators and learners in the phenomenon of reciprocal service learning through videoconferencing focused on cultural competence and English language …

Employing Word Study With Spanish-Speaking Els, Timothy Rodriquez

ECTESOL Review

Phonics Instruction has had a controversial history. How to teach phonics to Spanish-speaking ELs is also controversial. Understanding the differences between Spanish and English and how phonics instruction occurs in each language would be insightful. Also, knowing how the nature of the two languages affects instruction would be beneficial. Furthermore, exploiting similarities between English and Spanish and examining differences will bolster instruction. This paper will discuss the reasons for word study and how it may be utilized to teach spelling and decoding to Spanish-speaking ELLs.

Context-Focused Grammar Teaching: A Comparison Between English Present Perfect And Past Tenses And Affects On Korean English Learning, Seungheui (Ellie) Lee

ECTESOL Review

Despite massive amounts of time Korean English Learners (KLL) study English grammar, they continue to have problems becoming proficient in verb tenses, especially the present perfect. This study examines this problem through a linguistic comparative analysis of Korean and English present perfect and past tenses. Two possible reasons for KLL difficulty with verb tenses could be mode of instruction and L1 interference.

Investigating Nce Preservice Candidates And Graduates’ Visual Literacy Practices In Middle And High School Science And Social Studies Classrooms, Xiaoning Chen, Mark Newman, Vito M. Dipinto

NCE Research Residencies

The study investigates whether secondary education science and social studies candidates transferred what they learned about visual literacy in their teacher preparation program to their practicum/student teaching classrooms. The study included qualitative and quantitative methods to document the candidates’ visual literacy knowledge and practices. The findings indicate that the candidates did employ visual literacy strategies as visuals had already been regularly used in their classrooms. But, they had limited success in implementing the strategies learned in their methods courses. In addition, they showed a good working knowledge of what visual literacy is and acknowledged its value in the classroom. They …

Proposal For Implementing The Flipped Learning Method In Dentistry English, Zumrut Cassidy

MA TESOL Collection

In traditional teaching, the information is given to the students in the class by the lecturer through different sources. The digestion of the information is done by the students at home. Therefore, the time that is allocated for the production and the practice of the taught subject becomes limited. Yes, "flipped learning" changes that totally. The idea behind it is schoolwork at home and homework in class. This study seeks to find out what flipped learning contributes to learning and how it deals with boosting the students' autonomy. In the flipped learning way of teaching, students are supposed to take …

Building A Curriculum For The English Language Learning Program At A New University, Michael Cassidy

MA TESOL Collection

Turkish learners entering university for the first time have high expectations that a university education will be vastly different in its approach from their previous educational experiences. The hope is that learners will learn the skills needed to become independent, lifelong learners. While this may be true in their faculties, it is often not the case for learners attending English language preparatory programs (ELPP) where the course content is often dictated by textbooks. This use of the course books illustrates Krahnke's (1987) concern that while course books are not intended to be syllabi, they often become so. Many current English …

Revisiting The Rural Superintendency: Rethinking Guiding Theories For Contemporary Practice, Erin Mchenry-Sorber, Kathleen Budge

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This conceptual article challenges researchers and practitioners to reconsider the utility of current constructs used to understand the rural school superintendency. We evaluate the rural leadership literature through two waves of scholarship: insider/outsider conceptions and place-conscious/critical place-conscious constructs. We assert critical place-conscious leadership as potentially responsive to contemporary rural realities, but we provide a number of revisions for theoretical development to increase applicability to the realities of the rural superintendency in practice in the early part of the twenty-first century.

Curricular Agency: Contemplating Curriculum As A Process To Empower Teachers, Matthew L. Spurlin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using the qualitative method of Educational Connoisseurship and Criticism (Eisner, 1991) and an interview structure based on the commonplaces (Schwab, 1969), this study involved working with four exemplary teacher educators to externalize their internal process of curricular decision-making. Contemplating their own curricula as a dynamic process rather than a finished product, the study identifies where in that process their curricular agency—their educational agency, and their human agency (Bandura, 2006)—is found. This operationalization of curricular agency within curricular theory provides an empowering perspective of teacher-centered education as a response to teacher burnout.

Study Abroad In The Neoliberal Academy: Shifting Geographies, Terri Carney

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

Fostering Eabcd: Asset-Based Community Development In Digital Service-Learning, Rachael W. Shah, Jennifer M. Troester, Robert Brooke, Lauren Gatti, Sarah Thomas, Jessica E. Masterson

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

The continuing expansion of digital service-learning is bringing emergent dynamics to the field of community engagement, including the challenge of fostering asset-based views of community partners in online spaces. “Online disinhibition” (Suler, 2004) can prompt harsh critique or insensitive language that would not have occurred during face-to-face relationships. Traditionally, the field of community engagement has drawn on asset-based community development (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993), which calls for relationship-driven, asset-based, and internally focused partnerships, to encourage ethical and positive interactions with community members. However, this theory was not originally intended for digital, text-based interactions. This article explores how aspects of asset-based …

Language Ideologies And Epistemic Exclusion, Lydiah Kananu Kiramba

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

Research in educational linguistics is now challenging the efficacy of monolingual approaches that often dominate educational practices in multilingual settings. In most African nations where multilingualism is the norm, there remains a persistent reluctance by educational stakeholders (principals, teachers, parents, and students) to embrace multilingualism in education or to reposition local languages as resources in classrooms. This article draws on qualitative data from a multilingual, rural, fourth-grade classroom in Kenya to interrogate the articulated ideologies and their effects on communicative practices as voiced by the participants and by observing actual classroom practices. Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, legitimate language, and symbolic …

Where Should My Child Go To School? Parent And Child Considerations In Binational Families, Edmund T. Hamann, Víctor Zúñiga, Juan Sánchez García

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

Using examples encountered from our multi-year study of students encountered in Mexican schools with prior experience in US schools, we look at transnationally-tied families’ decision-making regarding where to send their children to school and ask whether parents should ‘parent from afar’. We don’t pose that as a question about ideals— what would be best if parents had economic security and unambiguous legal residential status— but rather as a more pragmatic one. Given some parents’ and children’s limited agency in real- world circumstances, what is their best path forward?

Effect Of X-Word Grammar And Traditional Grammar Instruction On Grammatical Accuracy, Sue Livingston, Andi Toce, Cyndi Casey, Fernando Montoya, Bonny R. Hart, Carmela O'Flaherty

Publications and Research

This study first briefly describes an instructional approach to teaching grammar known as X-Word Grammar and then compares its effectiveness in assisting students in achieving grammatical accuracy with traditionally taught grammar. Two groups of L2 pre-college students were taught using curricula and practice procedures in two different grammar texts over a three-month period of time for 20% of their class time. Essays written at three different times were analyzed for the correct and incorrect use of sentence patterns and verb constructs. Results demonstrated that improvement (writing with less error) was larger in both categories for the X-Word Grammar group and …

The Effect Of Project-Based Poetry Writing Intervention On Writing Attitudes Among Students With Severe Learning Disabilities, John M. Bonanni

The Graduate Review

Writing attitudes of three learners with severe disabilities were surveyed in a substantially separate special education classroom within a public school in Massachusetts in order to determine the effect on learners’ writing attitudes after a project-based creative writing intervention in poetry. Writing skills were measured using teacher-created rubrics and attitudes were measured using pre and post survey data. Primary diagnoses of students involved included Intellectual Impairment, Autism, and Traumatic Brain Injury. Findings indicated that the intervention was most successful for the student with autism, moderately successful for the student with Traumatic Brain Injury, and not successful for the student with …

Toward Learning And Justice, Through Love, Isis Artze-Vega

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter responds to the call for educational developers to isolate the one perspective that guides our work. It retraces the author’s career steps, seeking the origin of love as a guiding principle, and describes its evolution and application during her career. To do so, the piece includes a theoretical perspective on love and argues that its utility as a characterizing perspective for our profession stems from its significance to learning and justice. It suggests the timeliness and urgency of elevating the role of love in our field, notes associated risks and rewards, and suggests resources for doing so.

Bursting The Filter Bubble: Information Literacy And Questions Of Valuation, Navigation, And Control In A Digital Landscape, Komysha Hassan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The evolution of social media platforms and other public forums in the digital realm has created an explosion of user-generated content and data as a component of the already content-saturated digital landscape. The distributed, horizontal nature of the internet as a platform makes it difficult to ascertain value and differentiate between texts of varying validity, bias, and purpose. In addition, the internet is not an inanimate interface. As Pariser (2011) argues, content aggregators, such as Google, actively filter, personalize, and therefore limit each individual's access to information, in both range and type. This has created a crisis of information valuation …

Focused Video Reflections In Concert With Practice-Based Structures To Support Elementary Teacher Candidates In Learning To Teach Science, Julianne A. Wenner, Julie Kittleson

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recommendations for science education, including elementary education, highlight instructional practices such as using discussion to promote deep understandings of science. A task facing science teacher educators is to craft instruction to support teacher candidates (TCs) to develop skills that will encourage such practices in classrooms. In 2011, we developed and implemented a class activity —the Supported, Collaborative Teaching Model (SCTM)—to focus TCs’ attention on key aspects of science teaching. The SCTM, which is designed around the idea that practical experience is critically important to teacher education, involves having TCs teach science to elementary students in three different grade levels three …

Possibility And Play: Ludonarratology As Liberating Praxis, Morgan Read-Davidson

English Faculty Articles and Research

Studying and composing ergodic media like interactive fiction can be one way of liberating students from the constraints of linear textual composition, encouraging them to explore and experiment with multimodality and remediation. A pedagogy that incorporates narratology and ludology teaches awareness of the remediation of narrative into digital, ludic media, and creates opportunities for the transfer of nonlinear, interactive writing practices back into more conventional writing. This paper describes an example of this pedagogical approach in a Writing for Video Games course, and the preliminary steps toward understanding how such praxis might transfer to writing in new contexts.

Shared Landscapes, Contested Borders: Locating Disciplinarity In An Ma Program Revision, Whitney Douglas, Heidi Estrem, Kelly Myers, Dawn Shepherd

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

It is not unusual to consider a discipline spatially as a "space defined or touched by a particular characteristic or force" (Wardle and Downs, this collection, emphasis added). This conceptualization makes visible the metaphor at play here: territories are demarcated and differentiated from neighboring environments by borders that can be more or less visible. In this chapter, we use our experience as faculty members invested in a substantive revision of an MA program revision to explore how that process of delineation opens up new questions about disciplinarity. We sought to create a generous curricular space within an MA degree, …

Strategy Group Differentiation: The Effect On Literacy Development Of Accuracy, Fluency, And Comprehension, Megan Deweese

Theses and Dissertations

The problem of practice described in this paper was identified from the varying reading levels of first-grade students and the difficulty faced by teachers to meet the literacy needs of individual students within a diverse classroom. The identified problem guided the researcher to the following research question: what effect does strategy group differentiation during literacy have on accuracy, fluency, and comprehension development? The purpose of the current study is to determine if strategy group differentiation influences the academic success of students in the literacy elements of accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Through action research studies, teachers can study their own classrooms …

Exploring Teachers’ Assessment Literacy: Impact On Learners’ Writing Achievements And Implications For Teacher Development, Morteza Mellati, Marzieh Khademi

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Teacher-mediated classroom assessment might have significant impacts on learners’ academic achievements and teachers’ development. The current study investigated teachers’ assessment literacy and its impact on their current assessment practices and learners’ writing outcomes. The study sought to gain an understanding of the extent to which teachers’ assessment literacy affects their practices and their learners’ outcomes. To conduct the study and gather the required data, the researchers employed teachers’ assessment literacy inventory, semi-structured interview, non-participatory observation, and Writing Competence Rating Scale (WCRS). Ten male EFL instructors and 75 male sophomores from Iranian EFL contexts were selected from four language schools in …

‘Aboriginal Learning Style’ And Culturally Responsive Schooling: Entangled, Entangling, And The Possibilities Of Getting Disentangled, Greg Vass

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Arising from the author’s experiences as a high school teacher, and now teacher educator and education researcher, this article is motivated by concerns to do with ‘good’ schooling practices in connection with Indigenous education in Australia. More specifically, the paper critically considers the enduring and worrying influences of ‘Aboriginal learning style theory’, alongside considering the possibilities of culturally responsive approaches. While interest in culturally responsive schooling is growing, the argument put forward here is that concomitant with these efforts, more attention needs to be invested into teasing out how and why this approach differs from learning styles in significant ways, …

Early Career Teachers’ Knowledge And Practice In Spelling Instruction: Insights For Teacher Educators, Grace Oakley

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Children who cannot spell fluently are likely to encounter difficulty in writing texts across the curriculum. Furthermore, spelling is often a component in high stakes tests, the results of which have significant implications for students and schools. In the context of debates on teacher quality, it is pertinent to examine the views of early career teachers on their preparedness to teach spelling. This article reports on a small scale study on the views, knowledge and practices of early career teachers in relation to the teaching of spelling, and their views on their pre-service teacher preparation. Participants were early career teachers …

Implementation Of A Response To Intervention Block, Amy Roberts Mcglohorn

Theses and Dissertations

The location of this study is Bulldog Elementary School (BES) (pseudonym) in Suburban School District (SSD) (pseudonym). According to the Read to Succeed Act (2016), students must read on grade level by the end of third grade. Therefore, the students reading achievement level is the problem of practice. This action research study describes the impact of the Response to Intervention (RtI) model within an instructional framework for English Language Arts (ELA) in an elementary level classroom and its impact on student growth in reading by reviewing student universal screening assessment data and progress monitoring using a pre-test/post-test model as well …

What Are The Effects Of Curriculum Compacting On Students’ Ability To Use Higher Order Thinking?, Anthony L. James

Theses and Dissertations

This action research study was a presentation of a problem of practice involving a perceived underdevelopment of higher-order thinking skills of gifted (GT) children. I identified a weakness in the previous current third-grade math curriculum that appeared to hinder the development of higher-order thinking skills. This observation led to the development of an intervention that included alternate teaching materials and strategies. The intervention aimed to address the effect of curricular modifications using a different teaching approach called curriculum compacting. Curriculum compacting (Reis, Burns, & Renzulli, 1993; Renzulli & Reis, 1994) is an instructional strategy that has been used to streamline …

Middle School Student Perception And Understanding Of Differentiated Instruction: A Phenomenological Study, Zoie Park

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Lack of published research on student perception and understanding of differentiated learning hinders educators attempting to diversify learning for individual students. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to investigate the perception and understanding of differentiated instruction of middle school students in a charter middle school in central Florida, as a review of literature reveals limited research conducted from a student perspective. The study will broaden existing educational practices in relation to individualized student differentiated instruction and suggest a relationship between differentiated instruction and student understanding of educational material. The brain-based theories guiding this study are Piaget’s theory of cognitive …

The Impact Of Technology Innovations In High School Biology Courses On Science Learning For Hmong Students, Thai Xiong

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Hmong high school students struggle in science courses and have difficulty using technology, leaving them behind other ethnic groups in science performance. There is lack of research regarding Hmong students' struggle in technology-focused science courses, especially regarding the experiences of Hmong students with using science technology and teachers' experiences with these students. This single case study was designed to explore how technology innovations in high school biology courses impact science learning for Hmong students based on Gu, Zhu, and Guo's technology acceptance model. Both Hmong student and science teacher interviews as well as reflective journal data were collected to better …

Mentoring Novice Teachers, Jessica Floyd, Kendra Lynn, Lisa Mccullough, Chandra Morrow

Instructional Modules for Professional learning Responding to Opportunities and Valuing Educators (IMPROVE)

The purpose of this module is to explore key foundation skills necessary for successful mentoring of novice teachers. Participants who utilize this module will learn the four essential components of successful mentoring--building trust, communication and collaboration, meeting the needs of diverse learners through cultural responsiveness, and building ownership, through student data. This module was developed for mentors working with novice teachers, but the essential components addressed can also be applied to veteran teachers as well.

The learning module is intended for use by all educators.

View professional learning module.

Building A Foundation For Cultural Responsiveness, Denise Cyrus, Jill Douds, Sara Newell

Instructional Modules for Professional learning Responding to Opportunities and Valuing Educators (IMPROVE)

This site provides an overview of culturally responsive teaching philosophies and practices in order to make educators aware of the importance of having a culturally responsive mindset. This module also provides research, classroom practice resources, and thought-provoking videos meant to assist educators in using a culturally responsive mindset to improve their practices and positively impact all students.

View professional learning module.

The Pedagogy Of Intertextuality, Genre, And Adaptation: Young Adult Literary Adaptations In The Classroom, Brooke L. Poeschl

Undergraduate Honors Theses

No abstract provided.