Education Commons^™

Democratic Foundations For Spiritually Responsive Pedagogy, Audrey Lingley

Democracy and Education

Spirituality has been identified as an important component of democratic education by influential scholars such as Dewey, Freire, hooks, and Noddings. However, many teachers in the United States do not engage openly with a framework for understanding, organizing, and integrating pedagogical knowledge of spirituality within the context of culturally conscious social justice education. Drawing from an analysis of the works of Dewey, Noddings, Freire, and hooks and using a critical construct of spirituality that emphasizes inquiry, practical experience, meaning making, and awareness of interconnectedness, I argue that spiritually responsive pedagogy is a vital element of emancipatory, culturally responsive education in …

The Common Core And Democratic Education: Examining Potential Costs And Benefits To Public And Private Autonomy, Benjamin J. Bindewald, Rory P. Tannebaum, Patrick Womac

Democracy and Education

This conceptual paper assesses prevalent critiques of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and analyzes content from the CCSS in language arts and literacy to determine whether the standards are likely to support or undermine key democratic aims of education. The authors conclude that critiques of the CCSS have some merit but are generally overstated and misdirected, and the standards give inadequate attention to the development of public autonomy but an ideal amount of attention to development of private autonomy.

The Moral Call To Learn: A Qualitative Investigation Of Encounters With Unfamiliarity In Everyday Life, Jonathan S. Spackman, Stephen C. Yanchar, Edwin E. Gantt

The Qualitative Report

This qualitative study explored the moral aspects of learners’ “encounters with unfamiliarity” in their everyday experiences. The encounter with unfamiliarity, as a basic phenomenon within the conceptual framework of embodied familiarization, was investigated using a multiple case study approach (Stake, 2006). Findings from this study are presented first as brief case narratives and second as themes based on a cross-case analysis. Themes of the study point to the nature and significance of the encounter as a part of learning, often as an invitation with a kind of moral significance that called participants to learn, or not learn, in particular ways. …

The First Year Of The San Bernardino Restorative Youth Court, John M. Winslade

Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice

The San Bernardino Restorative Youth Court was established by the San Bernardino City Unified School District school board and has operated for one school year (2015-16). The purpose of this article is to document what has happened in this year and to begin to address questions about the value of the youth court for those for whom it aims to make a difference. Data collated are at this point preliminary but some tentative conclusions can be drawn, even at this early stage. Here we shall outline these data and the conclusions that are suggested by them. The best available measure …

A Phenomenological Study To Examine The Motives Of Tenth Grade Students Perpetrating Cyberbullying, David Farkas

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to investigate the underlying cyberbullying motives for 10th grade students at a suburban high school in Southern California. The theory guiding this study is Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory (1978) as it relates to the roles members of a community play in decision making. The study consisted of interviewing 14 sophomore students from a suburban high school in Southern California. At the conclusion of the interviews, six of these students were selected to participate in a focus group based on their identified actions as cyberbullies. Data was analyzed through Moustakas’ seven steps approach. The …

Revolution And Education, Lilia D. Monzó, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Denied the right to recognize patterns of violence and their relationship to class and specifically to the capitalist mode of production through an institutionalized historical amnesia, we live our lives as mere passengers on a train that stops at death’s door. In the self-proclaimed greatest super power, the United States, the mythical alliance to democracy serves to obfuscate its systematic plundering of life and earth in service to the transnational capitalist class. We have been brainwashed through state and corporate-sponsored lies, myth, and a national zealotry to forget and continue to repeat the atrocities of our past. We have been …

The Influence Of Spousal Support On Air Force Senior Noncommissioned Officers' Pursuit Of A Bachelor's Degree: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study, Randy Croft

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore perceptions of spousal support among active-duty Air Force Senior Noncommissioned Officers (Senior NCOs) in their pursuit of a bachelor’s degree. Senior NCOs are comprised of enlisted Airmen in the ranks of E-7 through E-9. Fourteen active-duty Air Force Senior NCOs, who have completed, or are enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program completed an online survey and a personal interview regarding their perceptions of spousal support in their pursuit of a bachelor’s degree. In addition, participants completed a written timeline, which helped provide context to college degree enrollment decisions and spousal …

Making All Students "Our" Students: Where To Start?, Frank E. Mullins Ph.D., Janice Murdock Ph.D., Phoebe A. Okungu Ph.D., Deann A. Lechtenberg Ph.D.

Journal of Human Services: Training, Research, and Practice

The collaborative team approach is an approach in which general education and special education teachers work together in a single classroom to provide instruction to all students. Neither teacher has more authority than the other.

Education should not be compartments in which one has a mindset of “my students” and “your students”. The mindset must be changed to “our students”. This change in mindsets must begin in pre-service programs in order to carry on to PreK-12 classrooms. As inclusion becomes more and more accepted in public education, educators must be taught strategies that will enable them to work collaboratively with …

Nurturing A Heart For The New Evangelization: A National Study Of Catholic Elementary School Principals In The U.S., David D. Spesia

Journal of Catholic Education

The Catholic Church calls school principals to serve not only as educational leaders and ecclesial ministers, but also as agents of the New Evangelization. Given the Church’s ongoing call for a New Evangelization, it is essential to establish how the principals themselves perceive this missionary mandate; it is also important to explore what elements of the principals’ own faith formation have best equipped them for this unique role and what areas for ongoing growth they themselves identify. This mixed-methods study collected both quantitative and qualitative data through a survey of over 600 Catholic elementary school principals across the U.S.; personal …

Amazing Grace, How Sweet The Sound: A Journey In Four Verses, Anita L. Bright

The Journal of Faith, Education, and Community

Although for some people, faith or membership in a faith community is a life-long, unwavering endeavor, for others, such as this author, initial belief systems can crack and crumble into dust, leaving behind complicated memories that are overlaid with what feel like clearer and more real, contemporary understandings, although at times threaded with sorrow at loss of affiliation (Smith, 2011). This shift from believer to non-believer is nuanced and disquieting, and in many settings, may leave the new non-believer in a dangerous or vulnerable position (Berger, 2013) as an apostate. Informed by an unintentional, un-sought-after outsider, non-believer status, this autoethnographic …

Dear Lucy: A Multilogue Response To Lucy E. Bailey's "Epistolary Hauntings", Naomi Norquay

Education's Histories

Naomi Norquay provides a multilogue response to Lucy E. Bailey's essay, "Epistolary Hauntings: Working 'With' and 'On' Family Letters."

Forgotten Memories Of A Social Justice Education: Difficult Knowledge And The Impossibilities Of School And Research, Debbie Sonu

Publications and Research

This paper is about memory, the elusive process of remembering and of an encounter between a researcher and a participant who after five years reunited to remember. The object under study is a high school social justice curriculum with a central focus on the development of social action projects. Grounded in Pitt and Britzman’s work on difficult knowledge, this paper asks: What do 10th grade students who spent four years attending a school committed to the Freirian principles of political engagement remember about their high school experience? Past and recent interviews are woven together to surface three emergent lines of …

Creating The Sandbox: The Juxtaposition Of Collections And Student Development, Helen Salmon, Linda Graburn

Charleston Library Conference

While academic library collections are typically built and assessed in relation to pedagogical or curricular needs and accreditation processes, they can also be intentionally developed, accessed, and promoted with more conscious attention to the developmental needs and context of the students who will use them. This paper will explore the roles that academic library collections play in relation to the psychosocial development of young adults. Drawing upon contemporary learning and young adult development theory, we will situate the role of academic library collections in relation to the various developmental stages, tasks, and learning challenges that young adults experience during a …

Epistolary Hauntings: Working “With” And “On” Family Letters, Lucy E. Bailey

Education's Histories

Lucy E. Bailey, Oklahoma State University, pursues multiple theoretical frameworks for analyzing her personal collection of family letters.

Creating Inclusive Learning Communities For Ell Students: Transforming School Principals' Perspectives, Kathryn Brooks, Susan R. Adams, Trish Morita-Mullaney

Kathryn Brooks

School-level administrators are often concerned about tertiary supports for English language learners (ELLs), such as translating signs and school documents or offering Spanish classes for their teachers. Although modeling and learning the heritage language(s) of the ESL population can be helpful, its focus on language differences can limit our considerations of broader systemic challenges that impact the success of ELLs in our schools. This article shares the dialogues that school administrators are having about ELL students and discusses the use of social justice and equity focused professional learning communities as a way to transform this discourse to address the broader …

A Letter To Future Educators: Making The Case For Progressive Education, Melissa C. Barone

SPACE: Student Perspectives About Civic Engagement

Northeastern Illinois University requires pre-service teachers to take EDFN 313: Problems, Issues and Practices in Education, to receive a middle school endorsement. The course was offered in the summer of 2016 over a six-week period. The main objective of the course was to discuss the issues in education related to the middle school curriculum philosophy while introducing ideals of progressive education. This is a daunting task in a short period of time. This is especially true when most students have not been exposed to the historical, philosophical, and sociopolitical aspects of middle level education in the context of progressive education. …

Applying Andragogical Principles To Enhance Corporate Functioning, John A. Henschke Edd

IACE Hall of Fame Repository

No abstract provided.

Presidents' Perceptions Of Entrepreneurial Strategies In Community Colleges: A Disruptive Innovation, James Tyler Hart

Educational Foundations & Leadership Theses & Dissertations

The community college, like all of higher education, has been significantly impacted by a shifting business model and changes in funding. The purpose of this mixed methods, sequential study was to examine community college presidents’ perceptions of entrepreneurial strategies in the higher education industry. The shifting business model requires presidents to look for alternative ways to innovate and adapt as community college funding models change. Community college leaders have also been proactively seeking out alternative revenue streams in order to help offset decreased state funding. Findings of this study show that community college presidents perceive that they must be entrepreneurial …

Mindfulness In Learning, Anna Malyukova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In our everyday life, people feel busy, rushed, pressured to be productive and successful. There is little room for pausing, slowing down, having a moment of non-judgmental reflection on everyday activities, which include learning. One way to achieve balance and harmony in life is to become more mindful of oneself and one’s emotions. I argue that the speed and drive for productivity and achievement has disharmonized our lives, from the learning process inside and outside of the classroom to the way we interact with technology and attempt to find balance in life. Through my own personal journey of reflection on …

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: A Duoethnographic Exploration Of The Dissertation Relationship, Robert J. Helfenbein, Susan R. Adams

Susan Adams

In the aftermath and mop-up following a successful dissertation defense, an unintended and unexpected data source remained unexplored and unanalyzed: 32 audio-recorded discussions and work sessions documenting the processes, approaches, and decisions made by a dissertation director and his doctoral candidate. What might those conversations reveal about the dissertation relationship? Taking a page from Raymond Carver’s short story, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love,” we wondered what we might have been talking about when we were talking about dissertation writing. Inspired and shaped by Norris, Sawyer, and Lund’s (2012. Duoethnography: Dialogic methods for social, health, and educational …

Holding Space For Progressive Practice, Abbe Futterman, Dyanthe Spielberg, Cecelia Traugh

Occasional Paper Series

Elementary principals Futterman and Spielberg and Bank Street dean Traugh use a descriptive review process to share their methods for maintaining educational spaces that are grounded in progressive values, in the face of conflicting mandates from the district or the state.

Say That The River Turns: Social Justice Intentions In Progressive Public School Classrooms, Beatrice Fennimore

Occasional Paper Series

Fennimore confronts the deficit-based talk prevalent in many schools serving marginalized students in “Say that the River Turns.” She argues that teaching for social justice begins by replacing deficit-based talk with clearly articulated intentions that subsequently transform into actions.

Beyond Child-Centered Constructivism: A Call For Culturally Sustaining Progressive Pedagogy, Alisa Algava

Occasional Paper Series

Algava argues that twentieth-century constructivist pedagogies are not sufficient to fulfill progressive education's inherently political, activist and democratic potential. She calls for a culturally sustaining progressive pedagogy that critically engages questions of power with both children and teachers.

The Center For Inquiry: Anatomy Of A Successful Progressive School, Christine H. Leland, Amy Wackerly, Christine Foxen Collier

Occasional Paper Series

Describes the work of the Center for Inquiry Schools in Indianapolis, Indiana. Authors Leland, Wackerly, and Collier were part of the original cohort of teachers and university faculty who founded a progressive magnet school. Premised on inquiry-based teaching and learning, the Center for Inquiry has grown from one to four schools.

Reenvisioning The Classroom: Making Time For Students And Teachers To Play, Jill Leibowtiz, Corinthia Mirasol-Spath

Occasional Paper Series

Explores the benefits of play for students and teachers alike in a New York City elementary school that provides students with time to explore their interests through long-term projects of their choosing.

Leonard Covello: A Study Of Progressive Leadership And Community Empowerment, Lorenzo Krakowsky, Patrick Shannon

Occasional Paper Series

Describes Leonard Covello's progressive work at and around Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem, NY.

The Key Of Connection, Lori Desautels

Lori Desautels

Over the past few weeks, I have learned deeply. My students were paramount teachers as I was privileged to share a part of their interior worlds, their "private logic" that is a culmination of accumulated beliefs, experiences, values, thoughts and feelings. This inner world is often kept tucked away unless an environment is created that allows for feelings of safety and an untainted sense of belonging. When any child or adult enters into a space that accepts, inspires and affirms their "ever-changing personhood," we have finally found the key that unlocks the door to extravagant learning! What is that key? …

Another Person's World: Ed Reform Through True Understanding, Lori Desautels

Lori Desautels

Anthropologist and humanist Ashley Montagu stated: "Love is profound involvement in the well-being of others." Several weeks ago, I experienced this kind of love in West Humboldt Park, an impoverished, gang-and-violence-infested inner city Chicago neighborhood.

Should Children Work? Dilemmas Of Children’S Educational Rights In The Global South, Conrad John Masabo

Southern African Journal of Policy and Development

The realisation of Children’s Rights and the right to education, in particular, have for quite long left the children of the Global South at a crossroads. The ideal of a childhood free from work has in itself become a barrier to access this social good. As such, due to their country’s minimal or non-existent educational funding and family abject poverty, some children in the Global South have realised that adopting a pragmatic strategy of combining school and work is the only feasible solution. This study, therefore, examines the interface between children’s work and schooling in the Global South.

Epilogue: Open Education, Social Practices, And Ecologies Of Hope, Steven L. Thorne

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

For more than a decade, some of the world's top-ranked universities have invited the global public to freely access the very curricular content that previously had only been available to a privileged few. Under the umbrella term Open Education (OE), which refers to the advancement of education through "open technology, open content and open knowledge" (Iiyoshi & Kumar, 2007), this movement encourages universities, as well as educators at other institutional levels, to serve the greater public good through the sharing of topical and thematic learning objects as well as intact course materials and curricula.