Education Commons^™

Testing The Knowledge Of Early Childhood Educators, Dianne S. Mccarthy

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

Teacher certification exams are supposed to assess if a student is likely to succeed in teaching. What if an exam seems to be inappropriate? This article is an inquiry of the New York State Content Specialty Test for Early Childhood Candidates, particularly the math section. It raises the issue of whether we are asking the right questions and ascertaining the right data to decide if someone has the appropriate math knowledge and is ready to teach math to young children.

Never Too Old For A Field Trip: Exploring Community Assets For Middle Grades Literacy Integration, Christine L. Craddock, Stacie K. Pettit 2949136

Current Issues in Middle Level Education

Middle Grades teacher candidates participated in a “field trip” in an Integrated Reading course to model best practices in culturally responsive teaching. The college students visited their downtown city including a regional art museum and memorial sculpture garden commemorating local Black history to experience and contemplate possibilities for literacy integration in their pedagogy. Teacher candidates were encouraged to explore and understand community culture, history, and assets with respect to their future students’ lives, identities, interests, and experiences, and how these considerations should motivate their instructional decision making with literacy applications. A follow-up discussion was facilitated by the course professor along …

The Race, Social Class, And Place-Based Gap In Rural Turnaround Policy: A Policy Brief, Karynecia E. Conner

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

Abstract: For teachers, leaders, and policymakers To understand the factors that contribute to the successful implementation of rural school turnaround, there is a need to understand how turnaround leadership implements school improvement in different types of communities of color (Wright, 2019). Studies examining the implications of school turnaround in minoritized educational contexts have solely examined urban school contexts to exclude rural contexts (Mette & Stanoch, 2018). Rural schools of color undergoing turnaround face the fundamental unique educational challenges of rural schools and the education debt that has accumulated over time for people of color (Ladson-Billings, 2006). There is a greater …

Democratic Disagreements. A Book Review Of Lived Democracy In Education. Young Citizens’ Democratic Lives In Kindergarten, School And Higher Education, Sonja Helkala, Julia Jaakkola, Tuukka Tomperi

Democracy and Education

As the title Lived Democracy in Education suggests, the predominantly Norwegian writers of the book share a deep and robust vision of democracy. Drawing on deliberative democratic theory and many other theoretical perspectives, the authors blend theory, practice, and empirical case studies to illuminate these modes of “lived democracy” in educational contexts. In particular, the book’s chapters examine different communicative interactions between children and young people, presenting these as examples of learning to live with controversies in communities of disagreement. The book contains valuable perspectives on democratic discussion in education. As several authors are experts in mathematics and science education, …

Moving Toward Critical Political Education With Elementary Preservice Teachers. A Response To “The Impact Of Polarization On The Political Engagement Of Generation Z Elementary Preservice Teachers And Their Teaching", Sara B. Demoiny

Democracy and Education

In “The Impact of Polarization on the Political Engagement of Generation Z Elementary Preservice Teachers and Their Teaching,” Keegan and Vaughan engaged with questions of preparing Gen Z, elementary preservice teachers (PSTs) in political education. Their much-needed study confirmed the continued call for social studies teacher educators to cultivate critical, civically active elementary PSTs who will intentionally attend to political education in the classroom. In this response, I situate Keegan and Vaughan's findings in white discomfort (Zembylas, 2018) as a way to consider a path forward in elementary teacher preparation, moving from a centering of white PSTs’ individual responses to …

The Impact Of Polarization On The Political Engagement Of Generation Z Elementary Preservice Teachers And Their Teaching, Patrick Keegan, Kelly P. Vaughan

Democracy and Education

This instrumental case study of Generation Z preservice teachers enrolled in elementary teaching methods courses in social studies and literacy explores the impact of polarization on their political engagement and teaching. Using the 2020 presidential election as a teachable moment, participants developed and taught literacy-infused civics units in order to bring to light their understandings of their role in preparing elementary students as political actors. This study has important implications for how teacher educators can better facilitate elementary preservice teachers’ own political engagement, thereby ensuring equitable democratic learning opportunities for students.

Book Review Of Beyond Provincialism: Promoting Global Competencies In Teacher And Educator Preparation, David Sandles

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

With an increased emphasis on intercultural and global competence, teacher preparation programs around the world are stridently searching for growth opportunities for students in these areas. An important resource to this discussion is Beyond Provincialism: Promoting Global Competencies in Teacher and Educator Preparation, which supplies readers with scholarly, pragmatic approaches to developing students’ knowledge quotients with salient ideas that revolve around food insecurity, school improvement, communities of practice, mathematics education, internationalization of the curriculum, place-based education, and distance learning. Expertly linking these global issues to the United Nation’s Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDGs), the authors seek to educate educator preparation …

Positive Impacts Of Tilt: Two Professors’ Journeys In Creating More Student-Centered Teacher Education Courses, Michael Crosby, Rebecca Short

Perspectives In Learning

As the K-12 classroom changes to support the needs of our every-changing society, so should the teacher education courses change on the university level. Additionally, the focus on higher education has become more student-centered with an emphasis on transparency in teaching and learning (TILT). The purpose of this article is to highlight the positive experiences two teacher education professors had using TILT to examine assignments and course syllabi. The journey of developing transparent assignments and student-centered syllabi is time-consuming, challenging, and on-going, but the benefits of a student-centered classroom are invaluable.

Towards Pre-Service Teachers’ Theory-Praxis Nexus In Early Years English And Literacy Education: A Pilot Study, Maryanne Pale, Sarah Ohi, Lyn Kee

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

International literature highlights that a perennial challenge for initial teacher educators is to guide Pre-Service Teachers (PSTs) to develop a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between theory and practice. Whilst there is a growing body of research that examines the relationship and/or the gap between theory and practice in teacher education, there remains a paucity of research that examines this phenomenon in the teaching of English and literacy units in higher education. This pilot study examined how PSTs from two Australian universities made connections and/or links (nexus) between their academic knowledge (theory) and professional experience (praxis) for the teaching of …

Arts-Based Interdisciplinary Music And Mathematics Tasks: Exploring Conceptualizations Of Equitable Creative Learning In Teacher Education, Alesia Mickle Moldavan, Graham Johnson

Georgia Educational Researcher

Preservice teachers need opportunities in teacher education courses to explore arts-based interdisciplinary learning that can inspire connections between communities of practice and allow learners to integrate concepts and imagine creative possibilities. This study reports on preservice teachers engaged in a workshop on arts-based interdisciplinary music and mathematics tasks. Data included surveys, task-related artifacts, and participant observations to examine how preservice teachers conceptualize and engage in such tasks. Three resonating themes were identified, revealing that preservice teachers generally thought (a) music and mathematics are more engaging and relatable in interdisciplinary contexts than when taught alone, (b) interdisciplinary music and mathematics tasks …

Pandemic As Portal: Disrupting The Violence Of Epistemicide In Teacher Education, Ramon Vasquez

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Epistemicide involves more than just the accidental displacement of different knowledges. By its very nature, epistemicide involves the intentional silencing, devaluing, and violent destruction of knowledge systems (Mignolo, 2007). While much has been written about radically altering education by including other knowledge in schools, what this entails within the context of teacher education methods courses, particularly during the pandemic, has received less attention. This paper examines and discusses what creating another teacher education might involve by probing some of the spaces and openings for epistemic disobedience exposed and made visible during the pandemic. My conceptualization of another teacher education simultaneously …

A Glimpse Behind The Curtain: The Detailed Structure Of The May Literacy Center, A University-Based Literacy Clinic, Brian M. Flores, Amber Meyer

Journal of Research Initiatives

Literacy centers have existed in the United States since the 1920s and have seen many changes over their vast and essential history. Initially, clinics focused on remediation with a deficit view that positioned struggling readers as lazy and unmotivated. Over time, clinics shifted to a medical model, which also held a deficit view that involved pathologizing, testing, and diagnosing to "fix what was wrong" with the struggling reader. Today, university-based reading clinics focus on research-based literacy practices providing opportunities for undergraduate teacher candidates and graduate students to support struggling readers. Research on literacy clinics primarily focused on funding, student demographics, …

Reconstituting Teacher Education: Toward Wholeness In An Era Of Monumental Challenges, Jessica E. Masterson, Lauren Gatti

Democracy and Education

Speaking to the political and social upheaval of our present moment, and drawing on discourses of democratic education, we argue that the U.S.’s racial reckoning propelled by recent events constitutes a sort of “founding” for our democracy and that this founding has important implications for reconfiguring citizenship within institutions and practices of teacher education. In building this argument, the authors articulate the aims of teacher education in a democracy and expand upon political scientist Danielle Allen’s theoretical concepts of "sacrifice," "reconstitution," and "wholeness," demonstrating their urgent utility within our “thinning” democracy (Hess & McAvoy, 2015). We then draw on relevant …

Collaboration In Mathematics Teacher Education: The What, How, And Why Of Mathematical Modeling, Aubrey Neihaus, Amy Bennett

The Advocate

In this paper, we share our collaboration across the disciplines of mathematics and mathematics education to develop and implement a mathematical modeling task for prospective secondary mathematics teachers. Through this collaboration, we identified three key components of mathematical modeling: the what, how, and why. In this paper, we outline these components from the literature and how each framed our development and implementation of the Sprinkler Task in our mathematics content and mathematics methods courses for secondary teachers. These three components show that mathematical modeling is a particularly fruitful space for collaboration between the disciplines of mathematics and …

Implementation Of A Student Research Group With Undergraduate Preservice Teachers, Melissa S. Martin, Alison Puliatte, Emily Blankenship Bostedor

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of an undergraduate student research group with preservice teachers at a university in the Northeastern United States. Following the guidelines of Shanahan et al. (2015), university faculty provided intensive mentoring, scaffolded support, and instruction related to research evaluation and methodology. Undergraduate students completed literature reviews of a specific topic related to education and conducted their own research studies. This article describes a model of undergraduate research the authors developed for elementary and special education preservice teachers.

Hearing Silence: Understanding The Complexities Of Silence In Democratic Classrooms And Our Responsibility As Teachers And Teacher Educators. A Response To "Creating A Democratic Mathematics Classroom: The Interplay Of The Rights And Responsibilities Of The Learner.", Kersti Tyson, Allison Hintz, Andrea English, Diana Murdoch

Democracy and Education

This response to Priya Prasad’s and Crystal Kalinec-Craig’s article on the interplay of the Rights and Responsibilities of the Learner aims to engage with and add on to the authors’ exploration of learners overexercising or opting out of their rights. While grappling with these challenges alongside the authors, our curiosity deepened about a significant and understudied facet of democratic classrooms: silence. Through this response, we consider the multifaceted dimension of silence and how a focus on silence may help us more fully understand the tension between learners’ rights and responsibilities to self, each other, and the collective. Specifically, we engage …

Foreword/Advancing Teacher Education: Promises And Challenges, Shain L. Wright

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Shain Wright, Associate Editor of the Northwest Journal of Teacher Education, frames Volume 17, Issue 2, a collection of eight articles that explore student experiences, educator responsibilities, teaching strategies, and modes of course delivery. Threaded through these articles are core themes of humanity, holistic approaches to teaching and learning, and solutions-focused research.

Technology In Teacher Education: Student Perceptions Of Instructional Technology In The Classroom, Jennifer Zakrzewski, Brianne Newton

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version of this article here.

Instructional technology continues to become more prevalent in classrooms around the globe. However, it is unclear whether teachers are prepared and have the self-efficacy to incorporate instructional technology into the classroom. This study reviews an instructional technology course for preservice teachers and whether student comfort increased with instructional technology throughout the course. In addition, data were collected regarding preferences pertaining to instructional technology. The data shows preservice teachers’ comfort increased throughout this course in terms of instructional technology. In addition, the data show preservice teachers are more comfortable working with instructional …

Full Issue: Journal On Empowering Teaching Excellence, Volume 6, Issue 1, Spring 2022

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The full-length 2022 Special Issue (Volume 5, Issue 3) of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version (with downloadable EPUB format) here.

The Spring 2022 issue begins with research that explores the perceptions of pre-service teachers relative to learning mathematics and science, with suggestions for how findings can impact curriculum and further research. The focus on pre-service teachers continues with research into their sense of self-efficacy with instructional technologies and whether specific techniques increase comfort level with technologies. Next, researchers explore the products that Generation Z students value most in their learning of a second language, …

Fostering And Maintaining Relationships: Teacher Education During Covid-19, Jessica Vanvalkenburgh, Aaron R. Gierhart

Current Issues in Middle Level Education

This article expounds how our pedagogical practices have changed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these effects others have contended with in the education community. The authors share pedagogical strategies they have found to be effective in terms of building and supporting relationships with teacher candidates. They suggest using digitally-mediated teaching and learning strategies, staying connected with students, and badge-based assessment and feedback approaches to build and support relationships with students; examples of the instructional design and implementation strategies are described. The authors propose that when looking forward, teachers at any level may benefit from providing students …

“A Tale Of Two Classrooms”: Designing Culturally-Relevant Hip Hop Curriculum To Support Stem Identity Of Underrepresented Students, Jessica Mcclain, Rebecca Colina Neri Ph.D

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This article explores how educators can contribute to the development of STEM identity in historically marginalized groups by using critical frameworks and pedagogies like Funds of Knowledge and Critical Hip-Hop Pedagogy as a curricular tool to counter traditional teaching practices. The authors amplify the importance of cultural spaces that support educators in examining aspects of power, access, and cultural awareness in STEM classrooms to increase student participation and acquisition of STEM knowledge. This article provides a guided activity named “A tale of two citiez” as an example of how educators can act towards (re)conceptualizing and (re)imagining STEM classrooms.

The Start Of A Conversation With Critical Friends: Can The Caltpa Be Used As A Catalyst For Program And Professional Inquiry?, Lara Ervin-Kassab, Karen Escalante, Daniel Soodjinda

Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice

Performance assessments of teachers and/or teaching (TPA) are becoming part of the educational accountability landscape on an international scale. This article presents insight into the process three teacher educators have followed as their research evolves from a critical document analysis into a collaborative self-study of their programs and practices. The work is framed by critical race theory and guided by practices undertaken in becoming critically reflective educators. This piece represents the conversations and connections to research around the critical need for educators to examine bias-based assumptions and internalized deficit-thinking. The tools we have developed for our next steps into collaborative …

Increasing Awareness Of Inclusive Stem Education Through A College-Level Student Research Group, Sami Kahn, Tiffany Agyarko, Grace Lanouette, Sean Lee, Courteney Wiredu

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

The underrepresentation of persons with disabilities in STEM reflects not only a moral failing in society’s commitment to equity but also a practical dilemma as science benefits from the contributions of people with diverse perspectives. While teacher education programs attempt to address equity at the K-12 level, societal biases and misconceptions about who is “able” in science present persistent barriers for people with disabilities throughout the STEM pipeline, in higher education, employment, and beyond. How can we ensure that students with disabilities will encounter professors, employers, coworkers, and peers who are supportive of their efforts in STEM? To address this …

Supporting High Quality Teacher Preparation: Results From A Mentoring Program For Special Education Faculty - Two Years Later, Harriet J. Bessette, Katie Bennett

The Advocate

Two years ago, we presented a newly formalized process for systematically inculcating new faculty into our department, which up to that point had relied solely on the generosity of the department chair, seasoned faculty, and other new faculty for advice, support, and the sharing of ideas, resources, and knowledge about the specifics of the university, college, department, and academe in general. The mission of our mentoring program was envisaged as providing visible and consistent support for new and early career faculty development. The program that was established was conceived as a reciprocal learning relationship characterized by trust, respect, and commitment …

The Show Must Go On: Challenges, Questions, And Pedagogical Pivots In Response To Covid-19, Patrick S. De Walt

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

On March 18, 2020, many universities and university systems had or were in their initial stages of transitioning to virtual teaching as a result of COVID-19. This transition had varied effects on all aspects of the university community. This paper explores this transition through the teaching experiences of a tenure-track professor during the pandemic. The examination of six sections of a capstone undergraduate course over the course of three semesters was conducted. Through self-reflection, many of the challenges faced shifting from face-to-face to a virtual environment were discussed. Among some of the challenges and limitations experienced when teaching nontraditional and/or …

A Book Review Of The Art Of Reflective Teaching: Practicing Presence, Jeff Frank

Democracy and Education

No abstract provided.

Unlearn: Preparing Preservice Teachers As Antiracist Educators, April Eddie

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This paper explores a Teacher Education faculty member’s approach in providing preservice teachers a holistic, antiracist preparation that includes prioritizing the hiring of Black and Brown faculty, teaching critical pedagogies, and providing diverse experiences to enhance their theoretical and classroom learning. Although research that explores the impact of race and education exists, more is needed if we are to deconstruct the impact of antiblackness in Teacher Education programs.

Volume 26 Of The Journal Of The Assembly For Expanded Perspectives On Learning, Wendy Ryden

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.

A Call For A Third Wave Of Ethnic Studies Curriculum. A Book Review Of Transformative Ethnic Studies In Schools: Curriculum, Pedagogy, & Research, Robert G. Unzueta Ii

Democracy and Education

Transformative Ethnic Studies in Schools: Curriculum, Pedagogy, & Research calls on our faculty, educators, community members, students, activists, and allies to usher in the third wave of ethnic studies curriculum into compulsory school conversation. At the center of ethnic studies curriculum, according to the authors, is a push for the humanization of our most dehumanized students in our society. At a time when institutions are grappling with how to move forward in response to the multiple national pandemics, this text offers a practical, sustainable, and evidence-based research, why we need ethnic studies curriculum in every classroom, including STEM.

Creating A Democratic Mathematics Classroom: The Interplay Of The Rights And Responsibilities Of The Learner, Priya V. Prasad, Crystal Kalinec-Craig

Democracy and Education

One way in which democratic classrooms can reflect a democracy is by guaranteeing students some inalienable rights; Kalinec-Craig (2017) outlined Olga Torres’s Rights of the Learner (Torres’s RotL) in mathematics classrooms. However, democracies rely not only on citizens’ rights, but on their willingness to take up certain responsibilities as well. We extend this idea to mathematics classrooms to explore the consequences of the interplay of learners’ rights and responsibilities, in the context of the preparation of elementary mathematics teachers. In addition, we explore ways in which learners may overexercise their rights of the learner or opt out of exercising them …