Education Commons^™

The Sound Of Fury: Teaching, Tempers, And White Privileged Resistance, Tema J. Okun

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

This essay focuses on the resistance of students situated in positions of privilege in classrooms addressing issues of dominance, identity, and oppression related to race and racism. Examining the psycho/social history of two critical aspects of resistance – defensiveness (related to guilt and shame) and denial – the author draws from both practice and theory to explicate the roots of this resistance and offer specific, effective ways to support students in moving through resistance into responsibility.

Connect & Thrive: Perspectives Of A Newly Tenured Professor, Corey A. Ciocchetti

Corey A Ciocchetti

This essay encapsulates my perspective (newly-tenured and seven years into my career) on how average professors can become highly effective professors. The secret rests in the ability to genuinely connect with students. Connecting really matters - even if it takes some personality adaptation and thrusts academics out of their comfort zones. Many professors fail to connect with students in a meaningful way. My evidence for this assertion is simple and straightforward. In addition to teaching, I am blessed to travel the country and speak on college campuses.3 After extensive discussions on these trips, students consistently claim their professors are boring, …

Best Instructional Practices For Distance Education: A Meta-Analysis, Robin Michael Roberts

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Recent meta-analyses on the efficacy of distance education have concluded that no significant difference exists between face-to-face and distance education. At the same time, these meta-analyses noted that considerable heterogeneity existed between the individual studies used in the meta-analyses. Investigation of moderators responsible for that heterogeneity suggested that four things other than media delivery were primarily responsible for the majority of variation between study outcomes: methodological quality, instructor involvement, type of interaction, instructional methods and time-on-task. A comparative meta-analysis was performed to further investigate these moderators. Methodological quality, maturational differences in students and any undetermined media effects were controlled for …

Qualitative Study Of Current And Prospective Student Perceptions Of A University Website, Sheila J. Henderson, Jennifer Coloma

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal

Building a sustainable system that goes beyond myopic interests and short-term policies is an arduous task for any school leader. In the U.S., our education system has been criticized for being too shallow in curriculum and unsustainable in the long run. In fact, a 2007 report by UNICEF concerning children’s well-being in 22 countries ranked the U.K. and the U.S. at the bottom of the industrialized nations in the survey. Hargreaves (2007) laments that these two countries, in their single-minded pursuit of economic competitiveness and development at all costs, are destroying the planet, while “eating their young.”

Extensiveness And Perceptions Of Lecture Demonstrations In The High School Chemistry Classroom, Daniel S. Price

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

While lecture demonstrations have been conducted in chemistry classrooms for hundreds of years, little research exists to document the frequency with which such demonstrations are employed or their effect on learners’ motivation and performance. A mixed-methods research study was performed, using quantitative and qualitative survey data, along with qualitative data from follow-up interviews and structured correspondence, to determine the extent to which lecture demonstrations are used in high school chemistry instruction, and the perceived effects of viewing such demonstrations on students’ performance on course assignments and on motivation to excel in current and future chemistry courses. Fifty-two randomly selected chemistry …

Silence = Bullying And Death, Conversation = Relationships And Life, Amy E. Ryken

All Faculty Scholarship

Keynote address examining schools' responses to bullying and the kinds of questions young children pose about identity given by Amy E. Ryken at the Lavender Graduates Celebration on May 13, 2011 at the University of Puget Sound.

Bank Street And Teach For America: Process And Preparation, Paul Shirk

Graduate Student Independent Studies

In this paper I analyze the goals and practices of education that are implied in the mission statements and literature of Bank Street College of Education (Bank Street) and Teach for America (TFA). I noticed and struggled to understand the tension between the mission statements of the two organizations that I was a part of during my master's program. While analyzing the readings and my experiences, I began to see differences between these two organizations' theories and beliefs about child development. I considered how my experiences with children supported or refuted these beliefs. From Bank Street, I recognized many beliefs …

Putting History Teaching 'In Its Place', Keith A. Erekson

Keith A Erekson

Recent literature on history teaching has emphasized "doing history"—whether as "active learning," "historical thinking," or reading photocopies of primary sources. This paper extends the discussion of a "signature pedagogy" of history teaching and learning to include attention to the places where historians do history--in the archives and at the presenter's podium. It presents a case study of effective teaching from the 1920s and 1930s and provides recommendations for helping students to research in nearby archives (such as the home) and present their findings to public audiences.

Whatever Works: Teaching Adults With Learning Difficulties In Adult Basic Education Programs: A Dissertation, Susan Noyes Spear

Educational Studies Dissertations

Research indicates that significant numbers of adult learners who attend adult basic education (ABE) programs have learning difficulties and/or learning disabilities. However, most ABE teachers have not been trained to teach students with these complex learning needs. This qualitative study, conducted through an interpretivist/constructivist lens, used in-depth individual interviews to garner the voices and experiences of ten ABE teachers as they described how they identify and manage the learning needs of their students. Results showed that ABE teachers described their practice in terms of how they identified their students' learning difficulties; their perceptions of their identity and role as an …

The Impact Of National Cultures On Corporate Cultures In Organisations, Kwasi Dartey-Baah

Academic Leadership: The Online Journal

The school’s main core business is teaching and learning. A quality curriculum and effective instruction are key elements to ensure successful teaching and learning in schools (Grigsby et. al. 2010). Thus, various activities and resources established in the schools should be optimized to ensure that teaching and learning are implemented effectively. From the human resource perspective, the main drivers of successful teaching and learning are teachers. Hence, quality teachers who can perform their responsibilities with commitment are prerequisites for successful and excellent education.

Emancipatory Education And Democratic Politics: An Analysis Of The Sociological Imagination In A First Grade Classroom, Ellen Lin

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This autoethnographic research follows my personal and professional experiences as an elementary teacher reflecting upon the travails and joys that come with journeying toward a more liberating pedagogy and democratic experience along with first grade students. Braced with Freire’s 1970 summoning to resist dehumanization in society and education, I have pursued with disappointment existing democratic and humanizing trails in schools. Excited to exit one district and move to another known as “exceptional” in the region, I found myself even more limited by a tightly controlled system. Unwilling to give up hope, I began in my second year to infuse more …

Teaching Grammer And Writing: A Beginning Teacher's Dilemma, P. Smagorinsky, Amy Wilson-Lopez, C. Moore

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

This longitudinal case study follows one high school English teacher’s path of concept development over a two-year period encompassing her student teaching and first year of full-time teaching, both at the same rural school in the southeastern United States. The authors use a sociocultural theoretical framework emerging from the work of Vygotsky to focus on the construction of activity settings and the ways in which settings help to shape concept development. In particular, the analysis finds the teacher drawing on apparently inconsistent pedagogical traditions and their associated mediational tools: one centered on a teacher’s authoritarian control of the curriculum and …

Tpck For Impact: Classroom Teaching Practices That Promote Social Justice And Narrow The Digital Divide In An Urban Middle School, Savilla I. Banister, Rachel A. Reinhart

Savilla I Banister

US schools have long struggled with what has recently been identified as the “achievement gap.” While the debate ensues in regards to an explicit definition for this phenomenon, research overwhelmingly demonstrates that students of marginalized populations remain on the lower end of most measures of school success. Accordingly, advocates of social justice point to the disparities of resources, including quality teachers, experienced by students in poverty. As a part of this movement, access to appropriate technological resources in schools has become an issue, commonly labeled the “digital divide.” This study reviews evidence of teaching for social justice and impacting the …

Teaching Grammar And Writing: A Beginning Teacher's Dilemma, P. Smagorinsky, Amy A. Wilson, C. Moore

Amy Wilson-Lopez