Education Commons^™

Teaching Choral Music Of The African Diaspora In The United States: Toward A “Living Black History”, H. Roz Woll

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In higher education choral curricula, the opportunity to study the breathtakingly rich scope of music rooted in Africa and the African diaspora with rigor and depth is often marginalized, neglected, or missing. If studied, it may be framed in the context of “other music” in contrast to music of the Western European canon, creating an oppositional framework rather than an interdependent one. Moreover, opportunities to study the political economy of this music in relationship to race, class, gender, and religion are lacking. This has multiple ramifications for music students’ preparedness to engage in global habits of citizenship in support of …

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.

How Do Art Teachers Describe The Ways In Which Choice-Based Art Lessons May Contribute To An Inclusive Learning Environment?, Skylar M. Gerken

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this research was to highlight the many different ways art educators in New York City create lessons, prompts, and projects with the use of choice-based lessons. By using a choice-based curriculum students will become empowered to make artworks that best represent them. When working within choice-based parameters an inclusive classroom can emerge. The research is backed by literature, theorists and educators that work or have worked in the field of art education. The topic explores how choice should be at the forefront of lesson making, if educators are interested in creating a classroom that could be seen …

Federation Divided, Max M. Balton

Capstones

At the start of the 2020 school year, a lack of covid safety plans led teachers like Rosy Clark to protest, urging her union the United Federation of Teachers to act. She and other progressives in the dissident caucus, Movement of Rank and File Educators, were willing to strike to ensure their safety. Union leadership hesitated largely because public union strikes are illegal under the state’s Taylor Law.

This four-part audio documentary looks at the history of the UFT and this contentious state law. The union began striking under more onerous strike prohibition legislation. Its roots are steeped in radical …

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 …

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 …

Covid-19 Impact On Radiology Students’ Distance Learning, Mary Lee, Fahameda Hassan, Zoya Vinokur

Publications and Research

Distance learning (DL) is a teaching tool that offers education to students remotely in various locations (Ruiz, 2006). The increase in distance learning education is evident in all types of educational programs including those in Radiologic Sciences. DL education programs are expected to comply with all standards just as traditional programs are (Aaron, 2015). With a traditional class setting, knowledge is taught at a given time and day, which is structured in terms of course development and attendance. It does not factor in the domestic and familial responsibilities of the students outside the classroom walls. What happens when a pandemic …

The Objectives Of Public Higher Education In New York City Through The Lens Of Language, John-Nicholas Parker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper displays the objectives of public higher education in New York City and their relation to changes in the city. Public higher education in New York City relies on the support of the public. This paper details adjustments to the lexicon of the school in response to changing demographics and historical events by examining statements provided by the school during different periods. Changes to the lexicon relating to class, gender, race, ethnicity, and military service are examined in relation to their historical context. Sources examined in this paper include commission reports, student newspapers, and mission statements. The paper finds …

Cracks In The Bathroom Stall: A Discourse Analysis On Transgender Bathroom Usage At Garden Spot High School, Kirsten D. Corneilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, high schools across the country have seen the concern around transgender students using gendered facilities, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, come to the forefront. Often, dissenters raise worries of privacy and of “catering to a minority,” no matter what decision is reached. At Garden Spot High School in New Holland, Pennsylvania, the site of this research, one such concern has led to a district-wide decision to eliminate gendered facilities and move to single-use facilities, in the name of preserving student privacy. Through the examination of historical precedent and discourse analysis, this paper examines how transgender surveillance …

Rethinking Gaming & Representation Within Digital Pedagogy: An Instructor’S Guide, Anthony Wheeler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work fully analyzes the creation process and implementation of a deeply-structured social commentary in the form of a digital interactive-fiction, created in the open software known as Twine. My co-developer, Raven Gomez, and I created a game that explores the challenges of navigating spaces within higher education as someone who identifies as something considered to be “other” by the standards of the common Western curriculum. Once the infrastructure of the product itself is outlined, this work follows students in an English Composition I course throughout their experiences creating digital interactive-fiction games based on pivotal moments in their lives that …

Popular Education In The Civil Rights Movement: Bridging Depth And Scale, Amanda Altman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis looks at the question of how the direct actions of the civil rights movement worked synergistically with grassroots educational projects like the Citizenship Schools. This thesis makes the case that the lesser-known history of the popular education work of the civil rights movement provides important clues as to why activists were able to organize mass mobilizations and formulate increasingly transformative strategies for change, like the rise of the Freedom Democratic Party. I look at the popular education work of the civil rights movement through an in-depth case study of the Citizenship Schools. The Citizenship Schools were a network …

Democracy For Homework: A Review Of Civic Engagement In Urban Public Schools, Amanda B. Rosenblum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Civic engagement education prepares students to actively engage in social and political processes and influence community change. Many educators believe that civic engagement ought to be a central mission of schools because: 1. Adolescent civic engagement predicts adult civic engagement; 2. Schools may be able to reduce the inequity in political participation between individuals of different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and 3: Civic engagement orientation and competencies can be developed through any and all content courses and extracurricular opportunities. This literature review on civic engagement education in urban public middle and high schools over the past 15 years explores: 1. …

Participatory Action Research In Schools: Unpacking The Lived Inequities Of High Stakes Testing, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Tabatha Cortes, Israt Hoque

Publications and Research

Purpose – This paper aims to examine a school-based Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project on educational inequity and high stakes testing.

Design/methodology/approach – A former high school teacher (currently a university professor) and two former students (currently research assistants and university students) take up a youth studies framework to collaboratively resee multimodal artifacts from a tenth-grade course in qualitative research.

Findings – Findings illustrate the power of finding allies in peers and educators; the transformative power of deep participation; and the longitudinal nature of social change and action. Thus, this research demonstrates that when students are positioned as researchers, …

Multilingual/Translanguaging: Narrative Writing Through Authentic Language, Lucia E. Brea

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Teaching Students To Critically Evaluate Textbooks, Christopher Mchale, Ian Mcdermott, Steven Ovadia

Publications and Research

This chapter is a case study describing how library faculty combined service learning and information literacy to help students evaluate textbooks, comparing commercial ones to Open Education Resources. The underlying idea was to give students not only a scholarly grounding that would help them as they move through their academic careers but also a practical vocational orientation to help them succeed in the workforce and, hopefully, become future contributors to the free culture movement.

Promoting Inclusion In A "Struggling School": Supporting Co-Teachers Through Critical Appreciative-Inquiry Based Professional Development, Louis Olander

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the extent to which the beliefs and practices of teachers who work in a “struggling” school can be shifted towards inclusiveness through an action research based professional development program. The school was struggling in that it was charged with the education of children who are marginalized by a range of social forces while simultaneously accountable to institutional priorities. Broadly speaking, these institutional priorities preferred behaviorist punishment and technocratic approaches to meeting student needs, devaluing and decontextualizing students’ proficiencies as test scores and special education labels, in turn impeding inclusive change. Over the course of four months, an …

Transforming School Hallways Through Critical Inquiry: Multimodal Literacies For Civic Engagement, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Christopher Curmi-Hall

Publications and Research

The authors examined the research and activism of 10th graders (ages 15–16) involved in a youth participatory action research project in a course in qualitative research at their small public school in New York City, New York. The authors, a classroom researcher and a high school teacher, looked closely at how the youth researchers used photography, collage, and videography to transform their school hallways into a space for critical conversations about race and gender. The authors examined how the hallways became a civic space shaped by collective youth resistance, multimodal counterstories, and negotiated civic engagement.

Cultural Competence Amongst Undergraduate Healthcare Students (Spring 2019), Mary Lee, Tiffany Yip, Teresa Lok, Zoya Vinokur

Publications and Research

As students in the healthcare field, we want to be able to provide care that best serves the needs of a culturally diverse patient body. This study aims to look at whether healthcare students at City Tech are able to clearly define and understand the concepts of cultural competence and implicit bias in their healthcare encounters. Our research expands upon existing data from the previous

year. We opened the scope of the project to include students in non-healthcare majors to understand how the general student population perceives their healthcare encounters. While focusing on improving our data analysis, we distributed two …

A Space To Learn, Amy R. Goods

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I explore what it means to different people, in different places throughout life’s spectrum to create a space to learn. This dissertation is a collection of work that I have written throughout my time at the CUNY Graduate Center. The chapters herein represent an arch of my learning over the past five years. The title, A Space to Learn, has multiple meanings. For one, writing this dissertation has provided me a space to explore and reflect on a variety of topics, ranging from memory loss, to teacher preparation programs, to eugenics and special education, to tracking and …

Works In Process - Scholar Edition, Pablo Galindo Aragon, George Garrastegui Jr.

Publications and Research

The creative field revolves around many professions. Creatives share a lot of common themes that are part of their process. It is with these themes that we establish a more impact way to listen to a podcast. Reviewing and breaking episodes up into chapters can effectively guide a student, aka a Scholar, in their path to establishing a creative career.Some of the most powerful ways to get ahead in the creative field is by networking, and obtaining valuable knowledge from other creatives. Gathering this information and making these connections can be quite the task. Not all young creatives are aware …

Changing The Narrative: Building A Conceptual Framework For Advocating Representation In History Textbooks, Valerie Paul

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At a time where Americans are beginning to engage in critical dialogue about the representation of minorities in the media, conversations about representation in education have been somewhat elusive or condensed. With the popular focus for marginalized communities being on issues of stereotype threat, achievement deficits, and culturally responsive pedagogy, it seems that policy makers are often left to make decisions that lack considerable connection between the cognitive, social and emotional implications of inclusivity in educational curriculum. Furthermore, there hasn't appeared to be an extensive analysis of these issues between and among relative disciplines. For example, when we discuss representation …

Caring Choices? Supporting And Dreaming With Students In New York City’S Stratifying High School Admissions System, Megan R. Moskop

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In New York City, all eighth graders attending public school must apply for high school. They have 400 schools from which to choose, and they must create a ranked list of twelve choices. They are then matched to one school. The results of this process play a large role in creating one of the most segregated and unequal school systems in the country. In “Caring choices? Supporting and dreaming with students in New York City’s stratifying high school admissions system,” I share an autoethnographic account that spans ten years of work as an activist educator striving both to support students …

Radical Solace And Young Adult Writing: Racialized Dis/Ability, Fan Fiction, And Feel(Ing)S In Composition, Jenn Polish

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Deficit-model pedagogies too often abound in our writing classrooms, in everything from punitive attendance policies to content selection and course design methodologies that inadvertently favor students whose bodies fit a white supremacist, ableist norm. I develop conceptions of fandom and consent-based pedagogical practices, and I argue that these can bring us closer to radical solace in our college writing classrooms, particularly when our classrooms are full of variously marginalized students. These students too often must endure deficit-model pedagogies that assume inexpert writing styles in both their written compositions and, indeed, in the very composition of their bodies. What happens, I …

Social Justice, Debbie Sonu

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Outsider Within: Thoughts And Musings On Exclusion As Stranger-Making, Debbie Sonu

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Youth Researchers Wrestling With Gender And Sexuality, Tiffany A. Dejaynes

Publications and Research

Working in research teams, public school students in New York approaches questions about gender identities and sexualities and then, based on their findings, advocated for institutional reforms.

“College Material” Structural Care At A New York City Transfer School, C. Ray Borck

Publications and Research

Based on ethnographic research at Brooklyn Community High School (BCHS), a transfer high school in New York City I demonstrate that students narrate their educational histories in terms of their experience of care, or lack of care, from teachers. Contributing to research on student-teacher relationships, care, resilience and retention, I develop the concept structural care, arguing that teachers’ ability to demonstrate care for their students, and students’ ability to perceive that care, is enabled or constrained by larger, socio-structural forces such as the national educational policy landscape, widespread cultural beliefs about schools and students, and processes of racialization, criminalization, and …

Engaging Biomedical Engineering In Health Disparities Challenges, Maribel Vazquez

Publications and Research

Health Disparities (HD) are community-based, biomedical challenges in need of innovative contributions from Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields. Surprisingly, STEM professionals demonstrate a persistent lack of HD awareness and/or engagement in both research and educational activities. This project introduced Health Disparities (HD) as technical challenges to incoming undergraduates in order to elevate engineering awareness of HD. The objective was to advance STEM-based, HD literacy and outreach to young cohorts of engineers. Engineering students were introduced to HD challenges in technical and societal contexts as part of Engineering 101 courses. Findings demonstrate that student comprehension of HD challenges increased …

Numbers Are Just Not Enough: A Critical Analysis Of Race, Gender, And Sexuality In Elementary And Middle School Health Textbooks, Sherry L. Deckman, Ellie Fitts Fulmer, Keely Kirby, Katharine Hoover, Abena S. Mackall

Publications and Research

Textbooks are a multimillion dollar publishing business in the United States. Even as 21st-century classrooms become more multimodal, digital and hardcopy textbooks remain a key feature of American education. Consequently, classroom textbooks have been shown to control knowledge dissemination across the content areas. In particular, health texts have been uniquely shown to communicate values that validate or marginalize students and encourage healthy or harmful activity. Thus,what textbook makers choose to include as worthy of study, and how they portray various groups of people with regard to race, gender, and sexuality has societal implications. Employing quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods, …

Emancipatory Learning, Open Educational Resources, Open Education, And Digital Critical Participatory Action Research, Jason Leggett, Jay Wen, Anthony Chatman

Publications and Research

Given that we must prepare students for the future workforce today how can we use the power of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Digital Social Science research to improve student learning and help students develop technical skills needed for the high-tech workforce? In this article, we use transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1978) and Digital + Critical Participatory Action Research (D+CPAR) to analyze the effectiveness of integrating OERs into a course and reflect on how we used OERs to support student learning and make civic engagement more equitable at an urban community college. In a criminal justice course analyzing the legal …