Education Commons^™

Enriching Science And Math Through Engineering, Adrienne Redmond, Julie Thomas, Karen High, Margaret Scott, Pat Jordan, Jean Dockers

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

This case study reviewed the collaborative efforts of university engineers, teacher educators, and middle school teachers to advance sixth- and seventh-grade students’ learning through a series of project-based engineering activities. This two-year project enriched regular school curricula by introducing real-world applications of science and mathematics concepts that expanded opportunities for creativity and problem-solving, introduced problem-based learning, and provided after-school programming (for girls only) led by engineering students from the local university. This engineering education initiative showed significant impact on students’ (1) confidence in science and mathematics; (2) effort toward science and mathematics; (3) awareness of engineering; and (4) interest in …

Hyphenated Identities As A Challenge To Nation-State School Practice?, Edmund T. Hamann, William England

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

This chapter concludes the edited volume Hyphenated Identities and affords a chance to juxtapose how transnational students negotiate school and identity with how school systems in turn view such students, and then it allows the examination of two different strategies -- situational ethnicity versus the assertion of hyphenated identity -- as a glimpse into the cosmology of transnationally mobile students as they come into adulthood.

Schooling, National Affinity(Ies), And Transnational Students In Mexico, Edmund T. Hamann, Víctor Zúñiga

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

An examination of responses by 346 students from Nuevo León and Zacatecas, Mexico, who had previously attended schools in the United States, found that 37% asserted a hyphenated identity as "Mexican-American," while an additional 5% identified as "American." Put another way, 42% did not identify singularly as "Mexican." Those who insisted on a hyphenated identity were not a random segment of the larger sample, but rather had distinct profiles in terms of gender, time in the United States, and more. This chapter describes these students, broaches implications of their hyphenated identities for their schooling, and considers how this example may …

A Distance-Delivered Teacher Education Program For Rural Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Teacher Candidates, Gayla Lohfink, Amanda Morales, Gail Shroyer, Sally Yahnke, Cecilia Hernandez

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

This article describes a collaborative, distance-delivered, teacher preparation program for rural, culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) teacher candidates. Multiple institutions partnered with one university in order to diversify the teaching force in the region and meet the needs of CLD students living there. In describing the program's design and implementation phases, a focus on cultural responsiveness to the candidates ' needs, their rural settings, and high populations of Latino/a students in the rural areas in which they were trained is presented. Assessment of each implementation phase guided program practice for the participants ' training as effective teachers. Relevant discussion indicates …

Elementary Teachers’ Comprehension Of Flooding Through Inquiry-Based Professional Development And Use Of Self-Regulation Strategies, Elizabeth B. Lewis, Katrien J. Van Der Hoeven Kraft, Nievita Bueno Watts, Dale R. Baker, Meredith J. Wilson, Michael Lang

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

This study focuses on elementary teachers’ comprehension of flooding before and after inquiry-based professional development (PD). There was an improvement in teachers’ understanding toward a normative view from pre- to post-test (n = 17, mean gain = 4.3, SD = 3.27). Several misunderstandings and a general lack of knowledge about flooding emerged from the geoscience content two-tier pre-test, some of which persisted throughout the PD seminar while other responses provided evidence of teachers’ improved understanding. The concepts that teachers struggled with were also apparent upon examining teachers’ reflections upon their learning and teaching practices throughout the seminar. Teachers were challenged …

Using The Communication In Science Inquiry Project Professional Development Model To Facilitate Learning Middle School Genetics Concepts, Dale R. Baker, Elizabeth B. Lewis, Sibel Uysal, Senay Purzer, Michael Lang, Perry Baker

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

This study describes the effect of embedding content in the Communication in Inquiry Science Project professional development model for science and language arts teachers. The model uses four components of successful professional development (content focus, active learning, extended duration, participation by teams of teachers from the same school or grade level) and instructional strategies for inquiry, academic language development, written and oral discourse, and learning principles as components of science activities. Teachers were given a pre/ post-institute genetics assessment. There was a statistically significant increase in scores for the entire sample and a statistically significant difference between science and language …

Teacher? Learner? Both!, Deborah L. Hanuscin, Delinda Van Garderen, Deepika Menon, Jeni Davis, Eun Lee, Rena Smith

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

February 2011 55 It may be cold and snowy, but it’s not too early to begin seeking summer professional development (PD) opportunities. Summer is a great time for teachers to attend PD workshops and learn new techniques to bring back to their classrooms. However, teachers often wonder if by the time September rolls around, they’ll remember everything they learned. Will they have the necessary knowledge and skills to implement new ideas and content in their classrooms? Teachers often have questions about how the strategies they learned at the workshop will work with their students. Wouldn’t it be great if teachers …

Promoting L2 Reading In Less Commonly Taught Languages With Hypertexts, Theresa Catalano

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

This study explores the use of hypermedia reading texts for the language classroom and more particularly for less commonly taught languages (LCTLs). In the article, I review relevant research on the use of hypertexts in the foreign language classroom and how they can be used to facilitate the teaching of reading. A qualitative study of the use of these hypertexts with Italian university students was conducted, along with an explanation of what hypertexts are available for LCTL teachers currently, and how teachers can create their own hypertexts and implement them in the classroom. The study suggests that although hypertexts have …

The Anglo Politics Of Latino Education: The Role Of Immigration Scripts, Edmund T. Hamann

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

In the 41 states without a substantial historic Latino population, large-scale schooling of Latinos is a comparatively new issue and the nature of that schooling is fundamentally shaped by how the more established (usually Anglo) populations understand this task. This chapter describes the understandings that led to, but also limited, one particularly comprehensive attempt in Georgia to respond to Latino newcomers. In that sense, this is a study of the cosmologies that can undergird the politics of schooling of Latinos. This chapter utilizes the concept of the script, or broadly shared storylines about how things are or should be, to …

Navigating The Waves Of Social And Political Capriciousness: Inspiring Perspectives From Dream-Eligible Immigrant Students, Amanda Morales, Socorro Herrera, Kevin Murry

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

This article examines the psychological and sociological impacts of the proposed Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act and instate tuition legislation on DREAM-eligible students in the Midwestern United States. The researchers sought to capture the lived experiences of undocumented immigrant students through their rich interpretations of current immigration policy and how participants described their situation, their identity, and their dreams in relation to the volatility of their external environment.

Resumen: Este manuscrito examina el impacto psicológico y sociológico del propuesto Acto de Desarrollo, Asistencia, y Educación para Menores Extranjeros (DREAM) y la ley de educación para …

Common Ground With A Common Faith: Dewey’S Idea Of The “Religious”, Bradley Baurain

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

In A Common Faith, Dewey rejects organized religion and belief in the supernatural, instead arguing for an authentically “religious” attitude which this interpretive essay analyzes in terms of four propositions: 1) Knowledge is unifi ed. 2) Knowledge is democratic. 3) Th e pursuit of moral ideals requires moral faith. 4) Th e authority for moral ideals is experience as explored via inquiry. Th e author responds from the perspective of his own religious faith and outlines conceptual relationships with modern spirituality in education writers. Th e common ground is that the “religious” must be seen as a signifi cant way …

What Makes The Anthropology Of Educational Policy Implementation 'Anthropological'?, Edmund T. Hamann, Lisa Rosen

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

As sociocultural theorists (e.g., Gutierrez and Rogoff, 2003; Orellana, 2009) have recently asserted, "culture" is something one does, rather than something one has. That is, human beings produce, perform, and reproduce culture every day. Policy implementation — or what Milbrey McLaughlin (1987: 175) has called "muddling through" — is deeply implicated in these processes of cultural production and thus invites anthropological inquiry. Indeed, it is possible to link the study of policy implementation to some of the foundational efforts of anthropology, particularly cultural anthropology (Wedel et at., 2005). Our discussion in this chapter thus borrows explicitly and centrally from an …

Feminism, Neoliberalism, And Social Studies, Mardi Schmeichel

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

The purpose of this article is to analyze the sparse presence of women in social studies education and to consider the possibility of a confluence of feminism and neoliberalism within the most widely distributed National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) publication, Social Education. Using poststructural conceptions of discourse, the author applies second-wave feminist theory and Fraser’s (2009) work on neoliberalism as lenses to illuminate the limited attention to women and feminism in this text during the 1980s in order to better understand how women have been marginalized in social studies education and to consider the possibility that the …

Creating A “Third Space” In Student Teaching: Implications For The University Supervisor’S Status As Outsider, Alexander Cuenca, Mardi Schmeichel, Brandon M. Butler, Todd Dinkelman, Joseph R. Nichols Jr.

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

The work of teacher education during student teaching typically takes place in two distinct “spaces”: placement sites and college/university settings. The program featured in this article is structured in ways that clearly mark out those two spaces. Yet this configuration led our university supervisors, whose work primarily took place in the field, to feel like “outsiders.” To redress this concern, a third learning space was incorporated into our student teaching seminar. We suggest that “third spaces” in combination with return-to-campus courses not only mitigates the peripherality of university supervisors but also amplifies the influence of a teacher preparation program.

Developing Pck For Teaching Teachers Through A Mentored Internship In Teacher Professional Development, Deborah L. Hanuscin, Deepika Menon, Eun Ju Lee, Suleyman Cite

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

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), according to Shulman (1987), is what makes possible the transformation of disciplinary content into forms that are accessible and attainable by students. This includes knowledge of how particular subject matter topics, problems, and issues can be organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners and presented for instruction (Magnusson, Krajcik, & Borko, 1999). Recently, researchers have argued that a parallel form of PCK exists for science teacher educators (Abell et al., 2009). Nonetheless, little is known about the process through which teacher educators develop their PCK, and more specifically, how doctoral programs …

Beginning With El Barrio: Learning From Exemplary Teachers Of Latino Students, Jason G. Irizarry, John Raible

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

This study draws from data collected through phenomenological interviews with a group of urban teachers identified as “exemplary” by Latino students, parents, and community members. The authors critically examine the participants’ biographies and document factors they cited as most germane and influential to informing their practice with Latino students. The article concludes with a discussion of barrio-based epistemologies and ontologies, or ways of being and knowing that are informed by extended immersion in and connection to Latino cultural and linguistic communities, particularly as they are developed explicitly and leveraged to improve educational experiences and outcomes for Latino youth.

What Makes The Anthropology Of Educational Policy Implementation “Anthropological” ?, Edmund T. Hamann, Lisa Rosen

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

Many of the roots of interdisciplinary educational policy implementation studies are anthropological. It follows that what constitutes an anthropology of educational policy implementation should be articulated. This chapter draws on the works of Bronislaw Malinowski, Frederick Erickson, and Joseph Maxwell, among many others to identity the anthropological contributions and prospective contributions to inquiry into the study of the interface between educational policy and practice.

As sociocultural theorists (e.g., Gutiérrez and Rogoff, 2003; Orellana, 2009) have recently asserted, “culture” is something one does, rather than something one has. That is, human beings produce, perform, and reproduce culture every day. Policy implementation …

Seriously Popular: Rethinking 19th-Century American Literature Through The Teaching Of Popular Fiction, Lauren Gatti

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

A teacher breathes new life into canonical works—such as those of Hawthorne, Melville, and Longfellow—by asking students to examine the differences and similarities between their own reading tastes and those of 19th-century American readers.

taste. What do our students expect from the books they read? And that question sur faces a related one about readers in Hawthorne's time: What did 19th-century readers expect from their texts and how did Melville's and Hawthorne's work address or interact with those expectations? Curious about the connections between my stu dents' reading tastes and those of 19th-century readers, I read Nina Baym's excellent text …

Exploring Us Textbooks’ Treatment Of The Estimation Of Linear Measurements, Kuo-Liang Chang, Lorraine Males, Aaron Mosier, Funda Gonulates

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

Learning to estimate a linear measurement is critical in becoming a successful measurer. Research indicates that the teaching of the estimation of linear measurement is quite open and that instruction does not make explicit to students how to carry out estimation work. Because written curriculum has been identified as one of the main sources affecting teachers’ instruction and students’ learning, this study examined how estimation of linear measurement tasks were presented to students in three US elementary mathematics curricula to see how much and in what ways these tasks were presented in an open manner. The principal result was that …

Evolution And Personal Religious Belief: Christian University Biology-Related Majors’ Search For Reconciliation, Mark Winslow, John Staver, Lawrence C. Scharmann

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

The goal of this study was to explore Christian biology-related majors’ perceptions of conflicts between evolution and their religious beliefs. This naturalistic study utilized a case study design of 15 undergraduate biology-related majors at or recent biology-related graduates from a mid-western Christian university. The broad sources of data were interviews, course documents, and observations. Outcomes indicate that most participants were raised to believe in creationism, but came to accept evolution through evaluating evidence for evolution, negotiating the literalness of Genesis, recognizing evolution as a non-salvation issue, and observing professors as Christian role models who accept evolution. This study lends heuristic …

Schooling And The Everyday Ruptures Transnational Children Encounter In The United States And Mexico, Edmund T. Hamann, Víctor Zúñiga

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

Using examples of students in Mexico who used to attend US schools and examples from Georgia of students who used to and might again attend Mexican schools, this chapter considers how an unremarkable, quotidian activity—the act of attending school—can become means for transnationally mobile children to experience shock, disconnection, and a reiterated sense of dislocation if schools are incompletely responsive to learners' biographies.