Education Commons^™

Teaching Business: Looking At The Support Needs Of Instructors, Kurtis Tanaka, Danielle Cooper, Cara Cadena, Preethi Gorecki, Jon Jeffryes, Carol Sanchez

Scholarly Papers and Articles

In 2018, Ithaka S+R began a new research program investigating scholars’ undergraduate teaching practices. As a first foray in this program, we looked at the teaching practices and needs of instructors teaching in business and business related disciplines. The project was undertaken collaboratively with research teams at 14 academic libraries in the United States and we thank those institutions and their researchers for partnering with us.

Establishing A Presumption Of Competence In The Ela Classroom: One Teacher’S Story Of Creating Space For Autistic Culture, Christopher Bass

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Much has been written about the exclusive nature of inclusive teaching (Allan 2015; Owen & Gabriel, 2010; Smith 2010; Ware, 2004). Many general educators approach neurodiversity with a deficit approach (Smagorinsky, Tobin and Lee, 2019; Myers, 2019) As an active ELA teacher, I argue that teachers must first establish a presumption of competence (Biklen, 2005), then model and promote asset-based rhetoric around ability. Once students engage with asset-based rhetoric, the classroom may become more inclusive of autistic culture. This article shares the story of my attempt to establish a presumption of competence through student tattoos.

You And Me, Suzanne J. Gikas

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Poem

Seeing In Color: How Are Teachers Perceiving Our Diverse Autistic Students?, Merida Lang

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Although the discipline gap between Black and White students is well documented and the discipline gap between students with disabilities and those without has also been researched, the discipline gap between autistic students of color and White students has received very little attention. This essay asks educators to consider the ways in which autistic students of color exist in a specific cross section of double-discrimination and considers what can be done to reduce unconscious bias, including developing a broader and more diverse understanding of autistic culture.

The Moon Is Especially Full: Notes On Poetry, Teaching, Tests, And [Autistic] Intelligence, Chris Martin

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This essay explores the ways in which poetry can help autistic students utilize creative expression and develop tools for self-advocacy.

Growing Elementary Education With Curriculum Founded In Place, Sally A. Triant

Culminating Experience Projects

Public school education has become increasingly homogenized as teachers work to meet national and state standardized curriculum goals. What is at risk is students losing touch with the places where their learning occurs. By inviting our schoolyard habitats, neighborhoods, and communities back into the curriculum educators can reconnect their classrooms to place allowing the environment, both ecological and cultural, to serve as the foundation for meaningful learning. Through the development of a guidebook, that administrators and educators can use, this project serves as a tool to implement place-based education. The guidebook has been designed as a scaffold of seven core …

Denis Diderot: A Secular Hero, Ben Scott-Brandt

Honors Projects

My Honors Senior Project is a biography of Denis Diderot in the form of a children's song. MY understanding of Diderot's life is based on Andrew Curran's book, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely.

Songs help us memorize and retain information about the world, and singing songs together strengthens cultural and religious connections. Secular (nonreligious) people need songs, too. Diderot was a philosopher who didn't believe in God. He was an editor of L'Encyclopédie, one of the first encyclopedias, and he snuck in articles that challenged how people think. This was an important moment -- knowledge about the world …

Laker Survival Guide, Clara Bernal

Honors Projects

It was not until her Junior year of college when she became a Peer Mentor for incoming freshman students, that Clara created a mini guide to GVSU's long list of resources for students. She prepared this guide for her mentees as initially what she called, "Things you'll want to use to survive college." Clara wanted to hand her mentees all of the resources she had learned in three years on day one. This list included various academic support resources, places to feel culturally accepted, and resources for non-traditional students. After receiving a lot of positive feedback from her mentees, peers, …

Political Activist + Public Servant?, Sharon Murchie

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

How do we write as political activists while also working as public servants? Do we have freedom of speech as public school teachers? Can—and should—our writing and our speech be censored? How can we write and work for social and political change, when we are charged with remaining apolitical in the classroom? This article outlines the limitations on teachers’ First Amendment Rights and is both a call to action and a call to caution.

Where's My Happy Ending? Fostering Empathy Through Conversations About Anxiety And Depression In Young Adult Literature, Kathleen Deakin, Gloria Eastman

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

The authors advocate for the use of text sets to initiate conversations about anxiety and depression in the Secondary classroom.

Exploring Privilege With Young Adult Literature, Stefani Boutelier

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

It is imperative to utilize Young Adult (YA) literature themes to transfer deeper ideologies. This article layers I am Alfonso Jones, a YA graphic novel, by Tony Medina to frame the exploration of privilege during a literature unit in a secondary ELA classroom. Teachers can facilitate understanding of such an often overused, yet misunderstood phrase, through multiple means (e.g., conversation protocols, performance assessment). The topics examined in this article supports a praxis model of moving critical pedagogy and equity literacy theories to the forefront of one’s teaching by including student voice, incorporating relationship building, and building important conversation skills to …

Yellow Pads And The Return Of The Writer, Gregory Shafer

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

Using Inquiry In Teacher Professional Learning To Build Efficacy For Writing Instruction, Jacqueline B. Koonce, Melissa Brooks-Yip, Kathleen Gibson

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Whitacre (2019) and Curtis (2017) found that participants’ efficacy impacted their writing instruction and ability to engage students. We share our experiences with a professional development program aimed to improve teacher efficacy and literacy of elementary teachers. In this professional learning network, the Study of Early Literacy (SOEL), a higher percentage of teachers reported to a Hanover Research survey that they felt less confident in teaching writing than other areas of literacy. To address this need, one of the authors developed a subgroup to specifically address the teaching of writing with an inquiry-based action research component. Most of the teachers …

Choose Your Own Initiative: Exploring The Landscape Of Oer And Textbook Affordability Programs, Matt Ruen, Jacklyn A. Rander, Janelle Yahne

Presentations

Congratulations! Your college or university is ready to plan (or maybe expand!) a campus-wide initiative focused on Open Educational Resources or other textbook alternatives. But OER and affordability programs vary widely in scope, funding, and strategies, described in articles, book chapters, and news stories. At Grand Valley State University, library OER supporters faced this situation when our faculty senate established a task force to identify university-wide strategies for OER and affordable course materials. To help this task force hit the ground running, we surveyed the landscape of programs at other institutions, identified organizations actively engaged in OER work, and selected …

Oer & Textbook Affordability Initiatives: An Introduction, Janelle Yahne, Jacklyn A. Rander, Matt Ruen

Library Reports and Communication

An overview of initiatives and programs supporting the use and creation of Open Educational Resources (OER) or other Affordable Course Materials at higher education institutions. The report also identifies relevant organizations, addresses related issues in higher education and the textbook industry, and provides further readings and resources on OER.

This was originally assembled as background and reference materials for the 2018-2019 University Academic Senate Task Force on Open Educational Resources and Affordable Course Materials, at Grand Valley State University (Allendale, Michigan). It was subsequently revised and expanded in Summer 2019. The report focuses primarily on the Michigan context, and is …

Grand Valley Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 2, Fall 2019, Grand Valley State University

Grand Valley Magazine

Grand Valley Magazine is a quarterly publication about Grand Valley State University produced by University Communications since 2001.

Open Access For All: Uniting A University Community, Erin Mcintosh

Library Scholars Manuscripts

Open Access is not just the distribution of journal articles and scholarly information that’s free of barriers. It’s an issue of income inequality, paywalls, supplemental course material, and research impact beyond the university. Open Access has not been thoroughly discussed throughout all members of the university. This project takes a look at the conversations going on at the university levels through the perspectives of students, teaching faculty, and library faculty. Through this research, it became apparent that the value of Open Access advocacy is multifaceted, interdisciplinary and benefits from advocacy across all levels of the university. This essay is broken …

Preservice Teachers' Community-Based Field Experiences, Erica R. Hamilton, Kelly C. Margot

Funded Articles

There exists much potential for the use of community-based partnerships to support preservice teachers’ learning and development. These opportunities can also expand preservice teachers’ understanding of when and where teaching and learning take place. This paper reports the results of a qualitative, yearlong pilot study focused on secondary preservice teachers’ (N = 42) weekly community-based field experiences at a newly opened secondary public museum school, located in a large Midwestern urban area. Specifically, preservice teachers worked weekly with sixth grade students in an urban public museum setting as part of a required undergraduate content area literacy teacher education course. This …

Ithaka S+R: Supporting The Changing Practices Of Teaching In Business, Cara Cadena, Preethi Gorecki, Jon Jeffryes, Carol Sanchez

Scholarly Papers and Articles

In the Fall of 2018, Grand Valley State University (GVSU) joined twelve other institutions to participate in an Ithaka S+R study to understand the pedagogical support needs of business school faculty. Each participating institution served as a research site with a local team of researchers. This report will outline the methodology, findings, and recommendations for instructional faculty, librarians, and administrators.

Protein Structure Analysis, Agnieszka Szarecka, Chris Dobson

Peer Reviewed Articles

We describe a series of engaging exercises in which students emulate the process that researchers use to efficiently develop new pharmaceutical drugs, that of rational drug design. The activities are taken from a three- to four-hour workshop regularly conducted with first-year college students and presented here to take place over three to four class periods. Although targeted at college students, these activities may be appropriate at the high school level as well, particularly in an AP Biology course. The exercises introduce students to the topics of bioinformatics and computer modeling, in the context of rational drug design, using free online …

The Impact Of Healthy Living Education On Parents When Selecting Snacks For Their Children, Daphnea Lou Sutherland

Masters Theses

The increasing prevalence of childhood obesity has become a major health concern in the United States and other countries. Obese children are now acquiring what is considered adult diseases, at a young age. This will have detrimental effects on their health as a child and even more so as an adult, resulting in poor quality of life and a shorter lifespan. An obese child also faces delays and shortages in meeting developmental standards, such as physical development, psychosocial, emotional development, cognitive, and so forth. When obese, children will have a harder time concentrating on learning materials and will struggle in …

Acrl Diversity Alliance Residency Program: Gvsu Libraries Faculty Fellowship – Roles, Grand Valley State University

Library Reports and Communication

A document to outline the roles of those who are involved in the Grand Valley State University Libraries ACRL Diversity Alliance Residency Program. This includes the ACRL GVSU Coordinator, Department Heads, Functional Area Leads, Project Sponsors, ACRL GVSU Sponsor, and ACRL Cohort Mentor.

English In France - Linguistic Dominance And Ambivalence, Chloe Kampf

Honors Projects

Whenever English is perceived as a threat to a nation’s language, English proficiency suffers, and France is guilty as charged. Many people know France as a nation with exceptional cuisine, famous artists, and breathtaking countrysides. What many are not aware of, on the other hand, is that France has the least proficient English speakers out of any EU country. Through in-depth research, literature reviews, interviews with French citizens, and analyzations of personal experiences, I attempt to expose the underlining truth behind this intriguing phenomenon.

Grand Valley Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 1, Summer 2019, Grand Valley State University

Grand Valley Magazine

Grand Valley Magazine is a quarterly publication about Grand Valley State University produced by University Communications since 2001.

Strengthening Spanish-Speaking English Learners’ Acquisition Of English By Supporting Cross-Language Transfer During Early Childhood, Ashley Golin

Award Winners

In the United States, Spanish-speaking English Learners (ELs) represent a growing and significant portion of the student population. ELs require targeted instructional strategies and classroom environments in order to fully acquire language and learn content. Studies in bilingual and second language education have demonstrated how students’ native language (i.e., first language, or “L1”), once believed to be a limitation that should be kept separate from students’ use of the target language, can instead serve as an asset benefitting English acquisition. However, educators who are unfamiliar with Spanish and components of language transfer may not be able to fully support students …

Grand Valley Forum, Volume 043, Number 16, April 22, 2019, Grand Valley State University

2018-2019, Volume 43

Grand Valley Forum is Grand Valley State's faculty and staff newsletter, published from 1976 to the present.

Report Of 2018-2019 Open Educational Resources & Affordable Course Materials Task Force, Thomas Pentecost, Annie Bélanger, Lihua Huang, Charles Lowe, Erin Mcintosh, Matt Ruen, Eric Szczepaniak

Library Reports and Communication

The University Academic Senate charged the OER/ACM Task Force to:

1. Explore current GVSU practices involving course material decisions.
2. Recommend strategies to recognize existing OER/ACM use by GVSU faculty.
3. Recommend strategies to increase use of existing OER/ACM services and support.
4. Recommend new initiatives or support to increase OER/ACM adoption by GVSU faculty.

This report fulfills these charges, providing information on the context of textbook usage at GVSU and delivering recommendations and possibilities for expanded OER/ACM support.

Grand Valley Forum, Volume 043, Number 15, April 8, 2019, Grand Valley State University

2018-2019, Volume 43

Grand Valley Forum is Grand Valley State's faculty and staff newsletter, published from 1976 to the present.

College, Career, And Community Writer’S Program (C3wp) Data-Driven Reports Of Literacy Growth, Kathy J. Kurtze

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Through the implementation of mini-units in from the C3WP, a teacher demonstrates that routine argument writing leads to great gains in argument writing literacy.

Living Into Our Values: How New Student Affairs Professionals Embody The Values Of The Field, Katelyn Elaine Gaither

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.