Curriculum and Instruction Commons^™

Investigating Epistemic Violence In Schools Using Machine Learning (Ai) To Explore The Effects Of Culturally Inclusive Curricula On High School Students’ Racial-Ethnic And Civic Identities, Leylah M. Bighach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated the impact of culturally sustaining/inclusive curricula (CSP/CIC) and experiences of racism in school on racial-ethnic identity, racial self-worth, civic efficacy, and activism for African American/Black, Latino(a)(x), Asian, and Indigenous youth. The effect of CIC/CSP on developmental psychological self-concepts and the impact of the public health crises occurring in 2020 on curricula and activism was explored. The effect of CIC/CSP on non-White youth from New York City was captured using an interactive web-based survey (n=155) and quantified using a branch of artificial intelligence called machine learning. Consensus narratives and focus groups (n=20) were used to follow up on …

Building A Pedagogy Of Idea Generation And Embodied Inquiry, Kate Joranson

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

What futures become possible when we center questions, inquiry, and affective responses in research processes? What does it mean to support encounters with new ideas? In this article, I explore non-extractive models of teaching and learning, sharing ways of making space for idea generation, an under-described part of research and creative practice. The coming-up-with-ideas part of creative and scholarly work can be challenging to articulate, share, and teach. What if we paused and stretched this part out, making it more visible? By browsing physical collections of books in community with one another, during “curated browsing” experiences, we give ourselves — …

Teaching Beyond ‘Kings Leopold’S Ghost’: New Sources And Voices In A Global History Curriculum On The Democratic Republic, Jen Chapin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The complicated history of the Democratic Republic of Congo is not typically part of high school curricula, yet events and historical trends concerning this nation connect with many key topics and themes, including feudalism, Haitian Revolution, New Imperialism, genocide, World War I & 2, Decolonization movements, Cold War politics, neo-colonialism/globalization, modern China’s economic power, authoritarianism, cult of personality, grassroots democracy movements, responses to climate change, etc. Designing and delivering a rigorous yet accessible curriculum on Congo poses a challenge for teaching beyond “King Leopold’s Ghost”, meaning, working past the prevalence of materials focusing on Belgian king’s genocidal two-decade rule over …

Coloniality, Western Science, And Critical Ethnic Studies In Stem Education, Latoya M. Strong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I use a critical transdisciplinary approach to examine how the coloniality of Western Science impacts science education teaching, learning, and research. Weaving together Black geographies, settler colonialism, and decolonial theory, I illustrate how the historical, symbiotic relationship between colonization and Western Science created a culture that continues to shape modern science practices and science education. The coloniality of Western Science was codified into science education, resulting in three approaches to teaching, learning and research—the assimilationist model, the capitalist model, and the imperialist model. Moving from theory to research, I collaborated with STEM educators over six weeks to …

Children And Technology: Why Technology Is Important For Our Children, Jill Mactiernan

Student Theses

Many people get scared when they hear about how much technology runs the world today. They tend to get frightened when they go to a store and have to use a selfcheckout instead of a cashier. Parents are scared of the dangers of the internet and how it will affect their children, so they tend to try to prevent/limit their children’s usage of the internet and other technologies. However, that may not always be the right move. Technology can not be avoided; it is a part of our everyday lives. With proper guidance and teachings, children can learn how to …

The ‘Ezel Project’ Inquiry: Mesotransformative Praxis To Decenter Whiteness In Racialized Organizations And Schools, Justin Gerald

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, a Black scholar in the midst of understanding his neurodivergence and his identity as someone who has been dis/abled reacts to the prodding of white peers by creating a course on decentering whiteness. The scholar then interviews ten of the participants in said class to understand how they came to select such a course and what they might have accomplished in attempting to challenge the structure of whiteness in their institutions. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, Dis/Crit, and in particular the work of Victor Ray, this work seeks to examine the narratives that brought …

Learning Beyond Measure: Critical Numeracy And Resistance To Racial Capitalism, Atasi Das

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this three-article dissertation, I connect with and expand from learning theories and mathematics and numeracy practices to reimagine numeracy as a potential tool towards liberation and human emancipation. Developing a framework and activity of critical numeracy, I explore the ways numbers and static categories have been used to “objectively” create, reproduce, and reify hierarchies within historical contexts and power relations. The core of this work examines, what do numbers and numeracy mean for us? Who are “the us” we can organize for? And for what purpose can and should we utilize, teach, and learn with numbers in and beyond …

Muslim Fashion Influencers Shaping Modesty In The Twenty-First Century On Social Media, Awa Sanno

Student Theses and Dissertations

The depiction of Muslim women in Western media has been a long-running joke, as they are framed to be oppressed by the burdens of their religion and the hijab. However, Muslim women have used the power of social media to counter that narrative through their large followings as fashion influencers, digital creators, food bloggers, makeup artists, lifestyle bloggers, musicians, and so much more. Specifically, Muslim fashion influencers are changing and redefining the notion of modesty throughout their posted content on social media. Many people in Muslim communities see this redefinition of modesty as a conflict with the "proper" ways of …

Teaching For Transformation: Developing Agency And Solidarity Consciousness In A Critical-Transdisciplinary, Garden-Based Urban Environmental Studies Program, Pieranna Pieroni

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on “Community Roots,” an instantiation of urban, garden-based environmental education that employs a “critical-transdisciplinary” design framework and pedagogies. The “crit-trans” construct, articulated by the Urban Environmental Studies Research Coven (Strong et. al., 2016) is offered as both a generative approach to liberatory (environmental) pedagogies with applications across the curriculum and as a form of resistance to neoliberal logics shaping educational (and other) settings. After situating Community Roots in its socio-environmental, institutional, historical and theoretical contexts, a detailed description of the course’s instantiation of crit-trans pedagogy is offered. Additionally, reflections of 14 youth and adult participants are analyzed, …

Digital Storytelling As Community Practices By Early Childhood Teacher Candidates, Ting Yuan

Open Educational Resources

This OER course unit is designed as part of an undergraduate literacy methods course. The unit will highlight teacher candidates’ digital storytelling practices and their development of teachable lesson plans and tutorials for local primary grade classrooms.

Covid-19 Impact On Radiology Students’ Distance Learning (Summer 2021), Mary Lee, Jason Chan, Cheryann Jackson-Holmes, Renzo Marmolejo, Zoya Vinokur

Publications and Research

The Radiological Technology students have adjusted from the urgent distance learning that was enacted in the Spring of 2020, to the hybrid distance learning that is currently in place. This hybrid distance learning is the same way the incoming class of radiological technology students were taught. Both cohorts of students were tracked over the year by online anonymous surveys. We wanted to know how students were adapting to distance learning, if their focus and motivation varied over the course of the year due to changing pandemic conditions. For the students that were working, what impact did it have on their …

Refugee Higher Education And Participatory Action Research Methods: Lessons Learned From The Field, Hadas Yanay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Refugee access to higher education is devastatingly low. Recognizing the complex barriers facing refugee learners, global educational initiatives are innovating flexible learning models which promote blended online and in-person learning modalities. This article describes the implementation of a five month, online-based internship pilot offered to 21 refugee participants in qualitative and quantitative research methods, through a participatory action research (PAR) framework in five different countries -- Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, and Lebanon. The internship is part of the Global Education Movement (GEM), which brings refugees accredited online college degree and career development opportunities. Through direct engagement, observation of the …

Spirits In The Dark: Black Community Education And The Light It Bears, Sydoni A. Ellwood

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Spirits in the Dark” is a digital space dedicated to the efforts of Black community education. It memorializes the commitment and strategies of spirits, light bearers like Mary McLeod Bethune and Huey Newton – people who devoted their lives to the fortification of their communities via education. This project also presents a variety of answers to one specific question: What lessons can school leaders and educators incorporate from community-controlled education programs to make learning spaces affirming and engaging for Black students? In totality, the digital space contributes to conversations in urban education and sociology, specifically the ones being held around …

Covid-19 And Racial Justice In Urban Education: Nyc Parents Speak Out, Kelly Brady, Mieasia Edwards, Whitney Hollins, José Luis Jiménez, Wendy Luttrell, William Orellana, David Rosas, Nga Than

Publications and Research

The COVID-19 pandemic and global calls for racial justice surfaced tremendous inequities and revitalized the debate about schooling and its purpose. NYC Parents Speak Out is a public engagement project, based on an interactive survey and interviews that records and reflects NYC family educational experiences during the unprecedented school year of 2020-2021. Our research collective, comprised of researchers, parents, advocates, teachers, and school leaders from the Urban Education Ph.D. Program at The Graduate Center (CUNY) identified three key recommendations based on research findings: to improve communication through family and community engagement; give greater attention to social-emotional and mental health; and …

Covid-19 Impact On Radiology Students’ Distance Learning (Spring 2021), Mary Lee, Jason Chan, Cherylann Jackson-Holmes, Renzo Marmolejo, Zoya Vinokur

Publications and Research

Radiologic Technology students are well into a full year of distance learning. The Juniors are utilizing a hybrid mode, where they continue to have laboratory classes on campus at half capacity and every other week. The Senior students are completely learning through distance learning and focusing their efforts on reviewing for their licensing exams. Both cohorts are in clinical rotation with COVID-19, a smaller threat to their schooling, but still a hazard that can impact their personal and educational lives. With the use of surveys that are distributed during online classes, we hope to evaluate how a full semester of …

Interdisciplinary Thinking: Financial Literacy Crosses Disciplinary Boundaries, Marla A. Sole

Publications and Research

Financial literacy is ideally suited to be integrated into mathematics courses and taught in an interdisciplinary manner. Students learn best and are motivated when tackling real-world meaningful questions. This article shares how elementary mathematics was applied to better understand the debate about raising the minimum wage and the United States National Debt. To serve as a guide for other teachers who wish to incorporate financial literacy into their mathematics courses and take an interdisciplinary approach, this article suggests readings, data sets, and pedagogical practices. Students were engaged and enthusiastic to work on problems that challenged their thinking about financial issues.

Covid-19 Impact On Radiology Students’ Distance Learning, Mary Lee, Fahameda Hassan, Zoya Vinokur

Publications and Research

Distance learning (DL) is a teaching tool that offers education to students remotely in various locations (Ruiz, 2006). The increase in distance learning education is evident in all types of educational programs including those in Radiologic Sciences. DL education programs are expected to comply with all standards just as traditional programs are (Aaron, 2015). With a traditional class setting, knowledge is taught at a given time and day, which is structured in terms of course development and attendance. It does not factor in the domestic and familial responsibilities of the students outside the classroom walls. What happens when a pandemic …

Rethinking Gaming & Representation Within Digital Pedagogy: An Instructor’S Guide, Anthony Wheeler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work fully analyzes the creation process and implementation of a deeply-structured social commentary in the form of a digital interactive-fiction, created in the open software known as Twine. My co-developer, Raven Gomez, and I created a game that explores the challenges of navigating spaces within higher education as someone who identifies as something considered to be “other” by the standards of the common Western curriculum. Once the infrastructure of the product itself is outlined, this work follows students in an English Composition I course throughout their experiences creating digital interactive-fiction games based on pivotal moments in their lives that …

Democracy For Homework: A Review Of Civic Engagement In Urban Public Schools, Amanda B. Rosenblum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Civic engagement education prepares students to actively engage in social and political processes and influence community change. Many educators believe that civic engagement ought to be a central mission of schools because: 1. Adolescent civic engagement predicts adult civic engagement; 2. Schools may be able to reduce the inequity in political participation between individuals of different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and 3: Civic engagement orientation and competencies can be developed through any and all content courses and extracurricular opportunities. This literature review on civic engagement education in urban public middle and high schools over the past 15 years explores: 1. …

Participatory Action Research In Schools: Unpacking The Lived Inequities Of High Stakes Testing, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Tabatha Cortes, Israt Hoque

Publications and Research

Purpose – This paper aims to examine a school-based Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project on educational inequity and high stakes testing.

Design/methodology/approach – A former high school teacher (currently a university professor) and two former students (currently research assistants and university students) take up a youth studies framework to collaboratively resee multimodal artifacts from a tenth-grade course in qualitative research.

Findings – Findings illustrate the power of finding allies in peers and educators; the transformative power of deep participation; and the longitudinal nature of social change and action. Thus, this research demonstrates that when students are positioned as researchers, …

Multilingual/Translanguaging: Narrative Writing Through Authentic Language, Lucia E. Brea

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Transforming School Hallways Through Critical Inquiry: Multimodal Literacies For Civic Engagement, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Christopher Curmi-Hall

Publications and Research

The authors examined the research and activism of 10th graders (ages 15–16) involved in a youth participatory action research project in a course in qualitative research at their small public school in New York City, New York. The authors, a classroom researcher and a high school teacher, looked closely at how the youth researchers used photography, collage, and videography to transform their school hallways into a space for critical conversations about race and gender. The authors examined how the hallways became a civic space shaped by collective youth resistance, multimodal counterstories, and negotiated civic engagement.

Works In Process - Scholar Edition, Pablo Galindo Aragon, George Garrastegui Jr.

Publications and Research

The creative field revolves around many professions. Creatives share a lot of common themes that are part of their process. It is with these themes that we establish a more impact way to listen to a podcast. Reviewing and breaking episodes up into chapters can effectively guide a student, aka a Scholar, in their path to establishing a creative career.Some of the most powerful ways to get ahead in the creative field is by networking, and obtaining valuable knowledge from other creatives. Gathering this information and making these connections can be quite the task. Not all young creatives are aware …

Radical Solace And Young Adult Writing: Racialized Dis/Ability, Fan Fiction, And Feel(Ing)S In Composition, Jenn Polish

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Deficit-model pedagogies too often abound in our writing classrooms, in everything from punitive attendance policies to content selection and course design methodologies that inadvertently favor students whose bodies fit a white supremacist, ableist norm. I develop conceptions of fandom and consent-based pedagogical practices, and I argue that these can bring us closer to radical solace in our college writing classrooms, particularly when our classrooms are full of variously marginalized students. These students too often must endure deficit-model pedagogies that assume inexpert writing styles in both their written compositions and, indeed, in the very composition of their bodies. What happens, I …

Youth Researchers Wrestling With Gender And Sexuality, Tiffany A. Dejaynes

Publications and Research

Working in research teams, public school students in New York approaches questions about gender identities and sexualities and then, based on their findings, advocated for institutional reforms.

“College Material” Structural Care At A New York City Transfer School, C. Ray Borck

Publications and Research

Based on ethnographic research at Brooklyn Community High School (BCHS), a transfer high school in New York City I demonstrate that students narrate their educational histories in terms of their experience of care, or lack of care, from teachers. Contributing to research on student-teacher relationships, care, resilience and retention, I develop the concept structural care, arguing that teachers’ ability to demonstrate care for their students, and students’ ability to perceive that care, is enabled or constrained by larger, socio-structural forces such as the national educational policy landscape, widespread cultural beliefs about schools and students, and processes of racialization, criminalization, and …

“What Makes Me Who I Am?”: Using Artifacts As Cosmopolitan Invitations, Tiffany A. Dejaynes

Publications and Research

As a classroom researcher, Tiffany DeJaynes revisited the curriculum of an English elective she helped design and found students using artifacts to investigate personal identity and create community

From Deficit To Diversity: How Teachers Of Recently-Arrived Emergent Bilinguals Negotiate Ideological And Pedagogical Change, Laura Ascenzi-Moreno

Publications and Research

Although the number and diversity of emergent bilingual students is rising, this population is viewed as homogeneous rather than vibrant and eclectic. This case study explores how two secondary English as a New Language (ENL) teachers uncover the diversity of their recently-arrived emergent bilingual population through implementing translanguaging pedagogy, a strength-based vision of student language development. The findings indicate that teachers’ shifts in how they conceive of their students are intertwined with meaningful pedagogical changes.

Contextualizing Developmental Math Content Into Introduction To Sociology In Community Colleges, Stuart Parker, Amy E. Traver, Jonathan Cornick

Publications and Research

Across community colleges in the United States, most students place into a developmental math course that they never pass. This can leave them without the math skills necessary to make informed decisions in major areas of social life and the college credential required for participation in growing sectors of our economy. One strategy for improving community college students’ pass rate in developmental math courses is the contextualization of developmental math content into the fabric of other courses. This article reviews an effort to contextualize developmental math content (i.e., elementary algebra) into Introduction to Sociology at Kingsborough Community College and Queensborough …

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance As A Site For Adolescent Social-Emotional And Political Development, Lauren M. Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values …