Education Commons^™

Book Review: Children Of Immigration, Edmund T. Hamann

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

Children of Immigration is a highly readable and welcome addition to the study of contemporary immigration, particularly the experience of immigrant children in the United States. It thoroughly covers a range of immigrant-related issues from the salience of legal status, to the way immigration changes gender roles and parent/child relationships, to the bevy of psychological adjustments required by transnational relocation. The ongoing research of the Harvard Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Project, which the wife/husband co-authors codirect, provides one foundation for the book’s content, but a multidisciplinary and extensive list of research, plus popular media and more literary sources (such as …

What Constitutes Becoming Experienced In Teaching And Learning?, James C. Field, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta

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

In this paper, we attempt to address one of the central questions for teachers and teaching: how is it that teachers are able to see and act appropriately in concrete circumstances? To do so, we examine the ontological meaning of experience in teacher education. The discussion is anchored in the concrete particulars of a grade 5 art lesson. Our intent is to show the dynamic processes involved in becoming experienced as a teacher and to draw connections between experience and practical wisdom (phronesis). Thus, we argue that phronesis is not so much a form of knowledge as it is dynamic …

Beliefs Of Science Teachers Toward The Teaching Of Science/Technological/Social Issues: Are We Addressing National Standards?, Jon E. Pedersen, Samuel Totten

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

As science educators, we must view the changing nature of society brought on by technology and the global nature of society as an impetus to reexamine the nature of science instruction. We have been bestowed with the responsibility to educate students on a variety of topics that less than two decades ago did not exist. Many of these social issues are controversial in nature and are directly linked to the local, regional, national, and global communities in which we exist. However, including these social issues in the extant curriculum of science has, at best, been limited. This is true even …

Exploring Alternative Conceptions In Our Environmental Education Classroom, Gayle A. Buck, Patricia Meduna

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

Teaching is an inexact science. Even experienced teachers have difficulty assessing the effectiveness of their lessons and students mastery of concept. Teachers must be particularly careful to avoid introducing or reinforcing student misconceptions. The following describes how we scrutinized and modified our own environmental education teaching practices to ensure that our students were learning what we were teaching. Our inquiry into students’ alternative conceptions about the environment was a very enlightening experience for both of us. Th e process revealed some beliefs that surprised us. However, the real surprise came when we realized that our own lessons reinforced (and sometimes …

Letting Aesthetic Experience Tell Its Own Tale: A Reminder, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta

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

In my desire to trace further the meanings and traditions sedimented in the term aesthetic, inherited and being reconstructed, I am drawn to my knowings of the beach as a place to begin. I know aesthetic experience to be a disclosive dynamic revealing the fore-understandings that have shaped my way of seeing and being. I am a living embodiment of these structures. I know aesthetic experience to depend on this sense of placedness. It is an ongoing search for attunement that assumes and acknowledges the pres¬ence of cognitive, affective, and somatic dimensions. I turn to my own know¬ing of aesthetic …

School Portfolios, Critical Collegiality, And Comprehensive School Reform, Edmund T. Hamann, Brett Lane, Susan Hackett Johnson

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

Maine’s deployment of the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) program has been substantially different from that of other states. It has included the addition of several parameters and operating requirements that have made the school change process that was prompted by CSRD in that state particularly promising and worthy of study (Hamann et al., 2001). Maine’s adaptation of the CSRD framework has led to the adoption of school portfolios at 11 high schools. The state urged schools to adopt this measure in addition to focusing all of its comparatively modest CSRD allocation at the high school level and assuring further …

English Language Learners, The Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Project, And The Role Of State Departments Of Education, Edmund T. Hamann, Ivana Zuliani, Matthew Hudak

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

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
MAKING THE CASE THAT CSRD OVERLOOKS ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS
Methodology
Reviewing the data
What could be
ENDNOTES
REFERENCES
APPENDIX A: References to ELLs and/or to programs that serve ELLs in various states’ CSRD applications to the U.S. Department of Education (Connecticut , Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont )
APPENDIX B: References to ELLs and/or to programs that serve ELLs in federal CSRD guidelines to states
Federal Guidelines to States

Theorizing The Sojourner Student (With A Sketch Of Appropriate School Responsiveness), Edmund T. Hamann

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

In response to inadequate local resources (as subjectively defined) in both sending and receiving communities and in response to related local racial/ethnic discriminations, transnational families engage in transnational economic, cultural, and psychological risk-minimization strategies— the substance of a “transnationalism from below” (Smith and Guarnizo 1998)—that are discordant with the enculturative presumptions of schooling. A special type of transnational migrant described here—the sojourner student—is thus vulnerable not only to (a) the original migration-inducing conditions and (b) the limitations of opportunity in the receiving community, but also (c) to the contradictions between their response strategy and the standard suppositions of schooling. This …

Validating The Draw-A-Science-Teacher-Test Checklist (Dastt-C): Exploring Mental Models And Teacher Beliefs, Julie A. Thomas, Jon E. Pedersen, Kevin Finson

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

The National Science Education Standards [National Research Council (NRC), 1996] encourage science learning as an active, inquiry-based activity that children do rather than something that is done to them. Following the explicit goal of the standards to establish scientific literacy for all, students are expected to participate in hands-on and minds-on learning experiences that reflect the intellectual traditions of contemporary science. Standards-based lessons involve children in inquiry-oriented investigations, help them to establish connections, encourage questions, promote problem solving, and support group discussions. In the words of the standards, "Emphasizing active science learning means shifting away from teachers presenting information and …

High School Students' Perceptions Of Evolutionary Theory, C. Sheldon Woods, Lawrence C. Scharmann

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

If we are to be successful in teaching evolution, we must take into account our students' worldviews as well as their individual understandings and misconceptions. It is im-portant to know our students their cultures, personal his-tories, cognitive abilities, religious beliefs, [and] scientific misconceptions. [It is also important] to address directly the likely cultural/religious concerns with evolution and to do so early on so as to break down the barriers that keep many students from hearing what you say. (Smith, 1994, p. 591)

Smith penned these words for a special issue of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching which focused …