Education Commons^™

The Impact Of Poverty Informed Faculty On Community College Student Success, Barbara J. Embacher

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Community college completion has been proven to be a ticket to a middle-class life. Moreover, we know that poverty causes educational barriers, including community college completion. Community colleges across the nation are identifying significant equity gaps between students from poor versus middle-class or affluent households. One solution to close equity gaps and increase student success rates for students experiencing poverty is to educate college faculty through professional development. This includes 1) information on the causes, myths, stereotypes, and other facts about poverty, 2) the impact poverty has on student achievement, and 3) instructional strategies that can help students experiencing poverty …

Linguistically Responsive Leaders: Working With Multilingual Students And Their Families, Aprille Phillips, Joan Barnatt, Kara Viesca

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

The demographic composition of the United States (US) has transformed since the early 1990s with immigrant arrivals from Mexico and Central America. Education leaders frequently exit preparation programs without content focused on opportunities around working successfully with multilingual students. This qualitative case study explores the implementation of online learning modules focused on engaging multilingual students and their families that were embedded into advanced leadership preparation coursework. Utilizing data (e.g., classwork, fieldnotes, semi-structured interviews) collected from 10 participants, findings include recommendations for stronger preparation on multilingual learners and flexible learning experiences that encourage the application of knowledge in professional practice.

What Really Matters For Instructors Implementing Equitable And Inclusive Teaching Approaches, Tracie Marcella Addy, Philip M. Reeves, Derek Dube, Khadijah A. Mitchell

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Supporting instructor implementation of equitable and inclusive teaching approaches is a critical area of focus in educational development. However, there is limited empirical evidence on factors that either support or hinder instructors’ implementation of inclusive teaching. The results of this national survey study reveal several predictors of instructors’ utilization of inclusive teaching approaches and reported obstacles faced. For this sample, knowledge of inclusive teaching was a statistically significant predictor of implementation, as was being from a non-STEM discipline. Responses highlighted promising approaches, several of which can inform the efforts of educational developers.

Where Are The Students In Efforts For Inclusive Excellence? Two Approaches To Positioning Students As Critical Partners For Inclusive Pedagogical Practices, Alison Cook-Sather, Tracie Marcella Addy, Anna Devault, Nicole Livitskiy

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Most educational development for inclusive excellence does not draw directly on the experiences and perspectives of students. This article presents two different approaches to positioning undergraduate students as critical partners in developing inclusive pedagogical practices. Co-authored by the directors of and student partners who participated in each approach, the article defines inclusive excellence and inclusive teaching and provides selected examples of partnership work that strives for equity and inclusion. It then describes our different approaches, discusses potential benefits of launching student-faculty partnership work through these approaches, and offers recommendations for developing pedagogical partnership efforts for inclusive excellence at other institutions.

Disrupting Evasion Pedagogies, Kara Mitchell Viesca, Tricia Gray

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

As we have researched in schools and reflected on our own teaching, we have come to recognize the lie and our untruthfulness that permeates many of our cultural scripts (Gutierrez et al., 1995) and practices as teachers. It is within these cultural scripts and practices that inequity is perpetuated and humanizing learning evaded. Thus, what we term evasion pedagogies, serve to sustain the status quo and are powerful tools to maintain oppressive projects like white supremacy, heteronormativity, gender binaries, patriarchy, ableism, classism, and linguicism. In this piece, we examine the notion of evasion pedagogies as a powerful lie in practice …

Motivation In The Mathematics Classroom, Evan Thornton-Kolbe

Honors Theses

Mathematics has always seemed to be an unpopular subject amongst primary and secondary students in the United States. This project seeks to identify the roots of these attitudes and examine them in ways that allow for personal reflection, community building, and student advocacy. An individual’s access to educational resources and equitable treatment play a large role in shaping their mathematics learning identity. This topic was examined via traditional research methods for the written paper portion and also includes a set of lesson plans for teachers to use. These lesson plans utilize the ideas discussed in the paper portion to provide …

The Equity And Engagement Challenges Of Teaching Reading In Middle School, Edmund T. Hamann, Stephanie Malone

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

The point is to look at midlevel and high school students—those often encapsulated by the term ‘adolescent literacy’—and to ask what it is that makes those students less likely to engage in productive reading practice. That may at first look like a psychological question about motivation, which makes the challenge seem like it is something inside the student that needs attention or ‘fixing’. But the orientation here is instead more sociological. If we talk about instruction, in this case reading instruction, it is intrinsically interactive, between teacher and student most obviously, but also interactive between students and their peers (e.g. …

Role(S) Of Higher Education In Helping Diverse And Excellent Public Schools Gain Recognition, Edmund T. Hamann, Mark Larson

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

Often education researchers enter schools only to depict inequity and weak practice, but the same empirical skills that illuminate challenges can, under a different premise, illuminate excellence. This brief, laid out as a dialogue between university-based researcher, Dr. Edmund Hamann, and urban high school principal, Mark Larson, describes how graduate students helped a diverse public high school document its excellence and win National Education Policy Center (NEPC) recognition as a 'School of Opportunity'. Although this case is unique in specific detail, other school/higher education partnerships could clearly function like this one did. Good schools may not have staff to document …

Equity-Minded Faculty Development, Aeron Haynie

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

A governing principle of equity-minded faculty development is a commitment to supporting marginalized populations who may feel unwelcome in academia: from minority college students to first-generation graduate students to faculty of color. Faculty development should encourage faculty to notice inequities and not dismiss them as student’s individual failures; to examine institutional data on student, graduate student, and faculty achievement patterns; and to collaborate with other campus partners on interventions. As we work with faculty to develop strategies to ensure all students can succeed, we must also enact the same empowering, strengths- based practices we promote.

Children, Mathematics, And Videotape: Using Multimodal Analysis To Bring Bodies Into Early Childhood Assessment Interviews, Amy Noelle Parks, Mardi Schmeichel

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

Despite the increased use of video for data collection, most research using assessment interviews in early childhood education relies solely upon the analysis of linguistic data, ignoring children’s bodies. This trend is particularly troubling in studies of marginalized children because transcripts limited to language can make it difficult to analyze embodied power relations between majority researchers and minority children. This article responds to this problem by outlining a theoretical position on power and bodies, describing multimodal analysis strategies, and using these strategies to analyze the subject positions available during a mathematical assessment interview for three African American preschool child-participants and …

Good Teaching? An Examination Of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy As An Equity Practice, Mardi Schmeichel

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

The adoption of educational policy measures to close the achievement gap, as well as the significant amount of scholarship dedicated to the subject, are just some of the indicators that reflect the tremendous concern in education about the academic performance of students of color. Within research aimed at promoting equitable practices in education, culturally relevant teaching has emerged as a good teaching strategy to improve achievement. Using genealogical methods to examine the ways in which culture has become relevant to classroom practice, the author argues that the perceived difference from white students that made it possible to conceive of children …

Rp95-568 Alternative Financial/Organizational Structures Of Farm And Agribusiness Firms, Michael Boehlje, David Lins

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension: Historical Materials

The range of options for organizing and financing a business has expanded considerably in recent years as innovations in financial markets created new alternatives to meet the varied needs of business managers.

The purpose of this publication is twofold: (1) to provide a comprehensive listing of organizational and financing options for farm and agribusiness firms, and (2) to explain the circumstances under which these various options are likely to be most useful.