Digital Commons Network^™

Interdisciplinary Thinking: Financial Literacy Crosses Disciplinary Boundaries, Marla A. Sole

Publications and Research

Financial literacy is ideally suited to be integrated into mathematics courses and taught in an interdisciplinary manner. Students learn best and are motivated when tackling real-world meaningful questions. This article shares how elementary mathematics was applied to better understand the debate about raising the minimum wage and the United States National Debt. To serve as a guide for other teachers who wish to incorporate financial literacy into their mathematics courses and take an interdisciplinary approach, this article suggests readings, data sets, and pedagogical practices. Students were engaged and enthusiastic to work on problems that challenged their thinking about financial issues.

A Party Platter Of Peer-Reviewed Oer Assignments, Elizabeth Jardine, Ece Aykol, Justin Rogers-Cooper

Publications and Research

Many colleges and universities have adopted core competencies during the last two decades. Their adoption reflects larger national trends in outcomes assessment, teaching and learning, and regional accreditation. Faculty at LaGuardia Community College sought model assignments with reflections on their design that speak to the college’s core competencies— integrative learning, inquiry and problem-solving, and global learning—and the communication abilities that students use to express them—written, oral, and digital communication abilities. In response, the college’s assessment leaders looked to the assignment library created by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) for inspiration. They developed the Learning Matters Assignment Library, …

Connecting To Place: A City As Text™ Assignment Sequence, Sara Quay

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Educators need to ‘begin again,’ to put aside old assumptions and look at themselves and their world with new eyes. They need to achieve the freedom to redefine civic opportunities and responsibilities. City as Text provides a preparation, format, and philosophy for accomplishing this exciting and formidable task. —Gladys Palma de Schrynemakers, 2014

If, as Gladys Palma de Schrynemakers asserts, City as Text™ (CAT) has the power to “redefine civic opportunities and responsibilities” (99), then the heart of that work lies in CAT pedagogy’s carefully crafted link between site-specific observations and written reflections. Schrynemakers goes on to claim that civic …

The Merits Of Applied Learning, Michael Rossi

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In the fall semester of my senior year in 1998, twenty-two years before the time of this writing, I participated in the National Collegiate Honors Council’s Honors Semester in Thessaloniki, Greece. I still remember this experience as vividly as if it were yesterday: a four-month long study at Aristotle University in which half our time was spent walking through Thessaloniki’s medieval streets and modern boulevards; interacting with the people on a daily basis in the limited (but workable) Greek we knew; and making a number of weekend excursions—beginning on Wednesday evenings for us—to surrounding areas: Athens, Pelion, the beaches of …

Transforming Community-Based Learning Through City As Text™, Jean-Paul Benowitz

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors students at Elizabethtown College have used City as Text™ (CAT) strategies to address the racism they experienced in new student orientation programming, to transform volunteerism opportunities into sustained civic engagement experiences, to prepare for study abroad and study away, and to strengthen their applications for prestigious scholarships and fellowships. Their research projects have enabled them to publish scholarship informing federal, state, and local historic preservation public works projects; to improve town and gown relationships; and to partner with local stakeholders in community economic development initiatives. Drawing on City as Text pedagogy, they have introduced new courses and academic programs …

Fostering Community In The Face Of Covid: Case Studies From Two Community College Honors Programs, Anne Dotter, Kathleen King

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This article features the work of two community college honors programs toward establishing and fostering community amid the COVID-19 crisis. Authors describe shared goals and priorities for their students during abrupt and extended shutdowns of both campuses. While working in tandem to ensure that their students felt cared for and contented, each program achieved the same goal in different ways, leading to long-lasting changes to be preserved after the pandemic.

We Found Ourselves In The Twilight Zone, Brigett Scott

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The author describes how using free internet extensions allowed for the continuation of a media-based honors course during the COVID-19 crisis.

I am a big fan of science fiction and have a bit of a crush on Rod Serling, so deciding what topic to teach in my Honors Forum course this semester was a clear choice. The Twilight Zone television series provided a wide selection of material that could be linked to the students’ diverse fields of study. The television series tackled social issues through nonthreatening disguises (okay, sometimes aliens were threatening), moral lessons, and fun. These features fitted well …

Territorial Games: Honors, Outreach, And Collaboration, Andrew Martino

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay explores and expands the boundaries by which honors is defined and defines itself. By opening a path toward a more expansive and public perception of honors, the author argues for emphasis on the public good as a key element in honors discourse and the broader dissemination of its theories and practices. Drawing from characteristics of the public intellectual, the author encourages honors practitioners to resist hyper-professionalization and insularity in favor of more open and collaborative practices.

Honors In Practice, Volume 17 (2021)

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Contents

Editorial Policy, Deadline, and Submission Guidelines

Dedication to Elaine Torda

Editor’s Introduction • Ada Long

Founders Award Acceptance Speech (18 December 2020) • Jeffrey A. Portnoy

Coordinating Multi-Campus Honors Programs and Colleges • Larry R. Andrews

From Program to College: The Vision and Curriculum Evolution of the Virginia Tech Honors College • Stephanie N. Lewis, Anne-Lise K. Velez, Desen S. Ozkan, Raymond C. Thomas, and Kimberly A. Carlson

The Role of Admissions Practices in Diversifying Honors Populations: A Case Study • Andrea Radasanu and Gregory Barker

A View of Health as a Human Right: A Snapshot from an Honors …

Understanding Competency Based Learning For Reading Literacy, Sri Aurobindo Society, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

ACER India

Competency-based learning, unlike curriculum-based learning, emphasizes a student-centred approach to education. It is heavily driven by experience and discovery rather than lecture and memorization. The focus of competency-based learning is on what students understand and how they apply what they learn in real-life situations rather than what they remember. This learning framework for reading literacy is an effort to introduce competency-based learning to classroom teaching and learning in India to prepare Indian students for the rapidly changing future. It provides resources that can be used by schools and teachers for supporting secondary school students to acquire reading literacy and is …

Understanding Competency Based Learning For Mathematical Literacy, Sri Aurobindo Society, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

ACER India

Competency-based learning, unlike curriculum-based learning, emphasizes a student-centred approach to education. It is heavily driven by experience and discovery rather than lecture and memorization. The focus of competency-based learning is on what students understand and how they apply what they learn in real-life situations rather than what they remember. This learning framework for mathematical literacy is an effort to introduce competency-based learning to classroom teaching and learning in India to prepare Indian students for the rapidly changing future. It provides resources that can be used by schools and teachers for supporting secondary school students to acquire mathematical literacy and problem-solving …

Understanding Competency Based Learning For Scientific Literacy, Sri Aurobindo Society, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

ACER India

Competency-based learning, unlike curriculum-based learning, emphasizes a student-centred approach to education. It is heavily driven by experience and discovery rather than lecture and memorization. The focus of competency-based learning is on what students understand and how they apply what they learn in real-life situations rather than what they remember. This learning framework for scientific literacy is an effort to introduce competency-based learning to classroom teaching and learning in India to prepare Indian students for the rapidly changing future. It provides resources that can be used by schools and teachers for supporting secondary school students to acquire scientific literacy and problem-solving …

Perceptions Of Factors Leading To Forensics-Drama Coaching Efficacy, Anthony Wooley

Ed.D. Dissertations

Participation in nonacademic activities that focus on creative skill improvement, like forensics‑drama, can increase high school students’ intrinsic desire to learn. Intrinsic motivation to learn resulted in academic success at the secondary and collegiate levels and career success at the professional level because the students felt confident in their abilities. Because the forensics-drama coach was the primary factor affecting students’ forensics-drama abilities, a greater understanding of the sources of forensics-drama coaching efficacy was required to discover how to better serve the students. Ten forensics-drama coaches in the state of Tennessee participated in this qualitative interpretive study in which they were …

Stakeholder Perceptions Of Student Opportunity In Consolidated Rural High Schools, Bradley Smith

Ed.D. Dissertations

Since the early 1900s, educational leaders and policymakers looked to consolidation as a way for rural schools and school systems to overcome financial challenges and improve the educational experiences for students. Stakeholders were met with conflicting claims about the effects of school and system consolidation. Proponents of consolidation claimed a consolidation would provide students with more curricular and extracurricular options by way of financial savings experienced from economies of scale, while opponents of consolidation claimed the consolidation would not relieve financial stress but would risk more behavioral problems and a loss of community identity. In this case study of a …

Lessons From The Pivot: Higher Education's Response To The Pandemic, Janine S. Davis, Christy Irish

Education Faculty Articles

The intensity of major events often leads us to remember minute details of where we were and what we were doing when they occurred: what we wore as we watched the towers fall on September 11, 2001; the faces of our classmates when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986; the smell in the air when we lived through a major earthquake, fire, or other personal tragedy. Similarly, faculty, staff, and students will remember the series of moments that led to the closure of their schools and universities as the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic spread throughout the world--the timeline …

Scallywag Pedagogy, Peter Mclaren, Petar Jandrić

Education Faculty Books and Book Chapters

This chapter explores the dynamic between truth and deceit in twenty-first-century transnational capitalism, emerging neo-fascist movements, and post-truth media landscapes marked by the Covid-19 pandemic and the anthropogenic bioinformational challenge. It establishes the centrality of the concept of truth in revolutionary critical pedagogy and underscores the importance of linking true words with true actions in the formation of critical praxis. Revolutionary praxis consists of the dialectical process of self and social formation, while critical educators are situated as protagonistic agents who work in and through history. Truth is therefore not about a timeless or objective state we name history. Action …

Teachers’ Experiences Of A District’S Transformational Leadership Design Program: A Qualitative Study, Jarit Unrau

Education (PhD) Dissertations

Facing the rapidly changing 21st-century education, educational organizations strive for innovative ideas to continuously motivate their teachers to enhance student performance. iLead is a district’s pioneering attempt to incorporate transformational leadership's essential elements, the four I’s, Inspirational Motivation, Idealized Influence, Intellectual Stimulation, and Individualized Consideration, into its program design and implementation to develop a collaborative learning culture through teacher motivation and the focus on improving student achievement. The iLead program has drawn statewide attention by winning the 2020 California Golden Bell Awards recently. The annual awards promote excellence in education and recognize prominent California schools’ and districts’ programs and exemplary …

Claremont College Students’ Perceptions Of Sexual Education Effectiveness: An Analysis Of Demographic Characteristics And Values, Michelle Calcany Blair

Pitzer Senior Theses

The purpose of this paper is to determine college students’ attitudes and evaluations of their K-12 sex education while considering demographic factors; in doing so, one can provide young adults with more autonomy over their education while better understanding how to make sex education more effective. The demographic factors that were considered along with student responses were: state of schooling, whether their schooling was religious or non-religious, whether one’s school was public or private, political affiliation of the school and neighborhood, race of the participants, and gender of the participants. These factors were deemed relevant for helping shape how people …

Korean War Coverage In High School History Textbooks, Zarek Nolen

Masters Theses

This content analysis investigated coverage of the Korean War in recent high school U.S. history textbooks. Open coding techniques applied to six textbooks yielded data for the following categories: background of the war, the outbreak of the war, the sequence of the war, the conclusion of the war, the devastation of war, the effects of the war, U.N. and U.S. politics, the Chinese intervention, General Douglas MacArthur, and African Americans in the military. Data from these categories were compared and scrutinized against historians’ knowledge using axial coding techniques. This study's findings support past research on Korean War coverage in high …

Leveling The Opportunity For Achievement: White Teachers' Critical Consciousness Development As An Entry Point, Alexandra Merritt

Theses and Dissertations

Although formal education is often lauded as the great equalizer in the U.S., schools often mirror and replicate the deep-seated inequalities of society. In a recent report, the U.S. Congress noted that race, gender, and socioeconomic status are the primary axes of inequality in educational achievement (Hussar et al., 2020). Scholars have long known the existence of this disparity in achievement outcomes, but efforts to close the gap have often been from a deficit lens aimed at changing the effort and motivation of students. This framing has problematized ethnic-racial minority students’ abilities and behaviors from an ahistorical lens that fails …

Lessons From The Pivot: Higher Education's Response To The Pandemic, Janine S. Davis, Christy Irish, Ellen Watson, Rosemary Huff Arneson, Jennifer D. Walker, Tracey S. Hodges, Olivia Murphy, Lee Skallerup Bessette, Et Al.

Education Faculty Books

This text includes chapters from instructional designers, university faculty and staff, and undergraduate and graduate students, and the text has been divided into three sections to reflect these varied perspectives. Each section begins with research-based perspectives, but also contains more personal narratives at the end. While the context of most of the chapters is the United States, there are also chapters with a Canadian context. It is also important to note that, as of the first half of 2021, the pandemic rages on, and mentions of COVID-19 in the following chapters will be reflective of the state of affairs in …

Embedding Anti-Racism In The Community Development And Youth Work Programme (Cdyw) 2020/2021, Brid Ni Chonaill, Mairead Cluskey, Georgina Lawlor, Liam Mcglynn, Sheila Coyle, Garreth Smith, Noirin Macnamara

Case Studies

The overall aim of the Le Chéile journey of the Community Development and Youth Work programme team was to embed anti-racism in the teaching, learning and assessment of the programme. Changes were introduced to modules in terms of new content, students were exposed to different perspectives and voices, and new workshops were designed for placement preparation around identifying and responding to racism. With regard to assessment, case studies were used to develop responses to the lived experiences of racism in community development, youth work and higher education settings. Lecturing staff increased their racial literacy through participation in anti-racism training and …

Understanding How Experienced World History Teachers In Minnesota Choose Course Content: A Mixed Methods Study, Kathleen Ferrero

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Education in the United States has consistently utilized tests as well as a relatively standard curriculum to educate the youth. However, the introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act and the subsequent implementation of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, has created an educational environment focused largely on math and literacy skills. This mixed methods study discovered the primary factors experienced world history teachers in Minnesota utilize to balance historical thinking skills and the inclusion of current events against national and statewide curricular standards. Five experienced teachers were interviewed, and their responses coded using qualitative methods. These themes informed …

Context-Responsive Equitable Strategies For Developing Gender-Responsive Curriculums In Nepal, Parbati Dhungana Ms, Roshani Rajbanshi, Lina Gurung

Transformations

We argue that context-responsive equitable strategies support the development of a gender-responsive curriculum in the context of higher education in Nepal. This paper is our reflective journey of curriculum content analysis of the two Master’s programs (Mathematics and English) from an inclusive cultural perspective of gender which engaged us to explore the answer to the question- How can we develop a gender-responsive curriculum? Adapting inclusive cultural perspective and participatory design we engaged with students and faculties and management representatives in the process of gender mainstreaming through action-reflection cycles. Further, we braided discussion with poetry, that is, a poetic inquiry to …

Critical Media Literacy In Social Studies : A Case Study, Lauren Collet-Gildard

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

There have been many efforts to address the importance of media literacy in schools, but little research has focused on critical media literacy (CML) in social studies curricula or classrooms. This is the first case study to examine the planning and implementation of a school wide CML lesson designed by teachers, and it traces this process from inspiration and collaborative conception of the lesson through its enactment within the classroom. In addition, this research provides unique insight into how teachers arrive at CML as a means of empowering students in the face of widespread disinformation and political polarization. In my …

The Mediating Role Of Self-Directed Learning Readiness In The Relationship Between Teaching-Learning Conceptions And Lifelong Learning Tendencies, Kasım Karataş, Cihad Şentürk, Aziz Teke

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

In this study, the mediating role of readiness for self-directed learning in the relationship between pre-service teachers’ teaching-learning approach and lifelong learning skills was examined. The study group consisted of 800 pre-service teachers studying in different universities in Turkey. Data were collected with three different scales. The analysis of the data was carried out using structural equation modelling. According to the findings obtained and the results of the mediation analysis, it is clear that the readiness of self-directed learning in the relationship between constructivist teaching-learning, which is one of the learning teaching approaches, and lifelong learning tendencies has a full …

How Constructivist Theories Of Development Can Be Used To Re-Conceptualise Naplan As An Opportunity To Develop Student Resilience, Robert M. Vanderburg, Paul Trotter

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Teachers have come under increased pressure to improve educational outcomes as Australia has sought to meet the challenges of competing on an international level. This intensified pressure has been accompanied by improved levels of funding, a National Curriculum for all Australian states, and territories, along with assessments to measure these key outcomes. However, this increased level of scrutiny has affected the pedagogical choices of teachers. Traditional modes of instruction have been reinforced, with teachers moving away from effective constructivist approaches to learning. This article will propose that a reinterpretation of constructivist theories of development is needed to arrest this decline, …

Second Language Teachers’ Perceptions Of Their Pedagogical Practices, Collaborations, And Relationships With Other Teachers Through Professional Development, Simone Smala, Robyn M. Gillies, Katherine Mclay, Huong Ngyuen

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper reports on the relationship between language teacher practices and their collaborations with other teachers through professional development. The paper argues that there is a link between the disposition to use evidence-based practices in language teaching, and ongoing reinforcement of such practices through dialogic exchange in professional practice sessions. Furthermore, the paper understands the learning and development of such disposition as a career-long endeavour, first encountered in quality teacher education programs and then continued by committing to ongoing professional development. Survey data were collected from a group of language teachers from various second languages in primary and secondary schools …

To Teach As We Are Known: The ‘Heart And Soul’ Labor Of Teacher Educators Of Color Working In Pwis, Amanda R. Morales, John Raible

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

In this chapter, the authors outline the ongoing dialogues, thought processes, and pedagogical moves we make as two seasoned colleagues of color attempting to enhance the cultural competence of students through a critical multicultural education course offered at a public university-based teacher education program. We document how we address many enduring moral, ethical, and epistemological questions through our practice that are unique to educators of color working at predominantly white institutions (PWIs). We frame our work within the literature on diversity and social justice pedagogy and link our own work to the broader well-documented challenges faced by many educators of …

Perspectives On Professional Development On Common Core Standards For English Language Arts, Martin W. Jones

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Middle school teachers at a rural site in a western state have faced problems in implementing Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts (ELA), as well as in resolving achievement gaps in ELA between regular education students, special education (SPED) students, English language learners (ELL), and at-risk students. The purpose of this case study was to obtain teachers’ and school leaders’ perspectives on how CCSS for ELA can be used to enhance learning for all populations of students using the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. The CCSS for ELA and UDL comprised the frameworks employed in this …