Curriculum and Instruction Commons^™

Perceptions Of Agricultural Careers In African American School-Age Students Implications For Public Health Workforce, Brittany M. Prince

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This study evaluated a six-week enriched agricultural education curriculum on African American students’ knowledge and perceptions of agriculture and agricultural careers in two selected populations. The study aimed to expand awareness about agriculture and diverse agricultural career opportunities in an effort to reduce perceived stereotypes. The study employed a pre-post-test design, implemented at one middle school and one high school that were intentionally selected based on their population demographics. Participants included 108 students across both schools, with the majority identifying as African American. Data analysis included paired-sample t-tests and One-Way ANOVAs and revealed statistically significant increases in knowledge for middle …

Bringing A Missing Minority Into Focus: Foster Parents’ Voices And Their Impact On Foster Children’S Academic Experiences, Clair Rutherford

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Foster children face persistent educational inequities shaped by trauma, frequent placement changes, and systemic barrierswithin schools. This dissertation investigates how foster parents perceive and influence the educational experiences of the children in their care, emphasizing the intersection of advocacy, trauma-informed teaching, and institutional response. Grounded in trauma-informed pedagogy, critical ecology and curriculum studies, the study interrogates how schools both support and constrain foster children’s educational opportunities. An arts-based methodology was employed, combining fictionalized portraiture and digital ethnography. Data sources included foster parent social media posts, reflexive journalling, and researcher positionality as both teacher and foster parent. Composite narratives were constructed …

Beyond The Possible: Climate Justice, Global Citizenship, And Classrooms – Speculative Essays, Amanda C. Fanelli

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the potential of speculative essays as pedagogical tools to inspire K-12 educators to integrate climate justice education within their classrooms, utilizing the framework of Global Citizenship Education (GCE). While climate change is often presented in schools as a scientific or technical issue, the literature on environmental justice demonstrates that climate change is inextricably linked to systemic inequities rooted in race, gender, colonialism, and economic oppression (Bullard, 2000; Shiva, 1988; Whyte, 2017). Yet educators frequently lack accessible, integrative frameworks for addressing these intersections in their teaching without overhauling existing curricula. This study addresses that gap by triangulating ecopedagogy, …

Tweeting Over Time: Twitter/X For Communication, Assessment, And Growth In Middle Level Teacher Education, Toni M. Williams

Current Issues in Middle Level Education

This article shares how preservice Middle Level teacher candidates used social media, specifically Twitter/X as both a resource and a tool and how that tool became important in assessing student growth and knowledge building which, in turn, informed instructional planning for the teacher education classroom. This is paramount for teacher educators and the future educators they teach, as they are preparing to create a variety of engagements for learning in teacher education programs and in middle level classrooms. Creating an online community is a means in which all preservice teachers can use their voices while at the same time having …

Translanguaging In Middle Level Education, Helen Brandon, Ellis Hurd

Current Issues in Middle Level Education

This case study explores the experiences of two teacher candidates (TCs) in professional development school (PDS) settings with multilingual learners. While valuing multilingual learner’s diverse linguistic backgrounds and language repertoires by drawing from a toolkit of responsive practices, the TCs embraced but struggled with layering translanguaging into their classroom practices. It also examines the middle grades program that these TCs attended while centering asset-based thinking and culturally responsive practices. Overall, this study shows that teacher education programs must include another critical layer to TCs’ experiences: building the toolkit of middle school cooperating teachers (CTs). This study also serves as a …

Embodied Cognition And Teaching Stem: Tenets To Explain And Enhance A Middle School Science Project, Jonathan E. Roberts, Joshua L. Williams, Robert A. Hodgdon, Caroline Payne, Gabriela Ruiz Emmanuelli

Current Issues in Middle Level Education

STEM pedagogy is a popular area for research and discussion. The empirical literature on this topic supports a variety of approaches (e.g., inquiry-based) to help instructors spark student interest create an effective learning environment, and foster long-term retention and transfer of information related to STEM topics. One potential approach is to use tenets of embodied cognition, in which behavior and cognition emerge out of real-time sensorimotor behavior of the individual situated within a particular context, to implement strategies to enhance STEM pedagogy. We applied the six lessons of embodied cognition to understand the beneficial aspects of a middle-school project on …

How Can An Oyster Reveal The Stories Of A Place?, Ariel Cornett, Delandrea Hall, Kathryn L. Haughney, Cynthia C. Massey, Amanda Wall

Teaching Social Studies in the Peach State

This inquiry leads students through a place-based investigation of oysters. Students will learn how artifacts, such as oysters, have the potential to reveal the stories of a place. Oysters are connected to the 4,000 year human history of Ossabaw Island that spans many cultural groups including, but not limited to Indigenous People, Enslaved People, and Genesis Project Members. These human inhabitants used oysters in a number of ways to sustain their physical bodies, structures, and connection to the land and waterways. Visible influences of the oyster can be observed on Ossabaw Island today.

Teaching Literacy: The Intersection Of Social Studies And Language Arts Through Integration- Lesson Plan Exemplar, Pamela Mccabe, Jennifer Shiers, Christopher D. Moore, Jeremy Nix

Teaching Social Studies in the Peach State

This lesson plan exemplar, based on third grade GSE ELA and social studies standards, demonstrates how teachers can best integrate social studies and ELA content to maximize instructional time and increase litearcy and social studies background knowledge.

Teaching Literacy: The Intersection Of Social Studies And Language Arts Through Integration, Christopher D. Moore, Jennifer Shiers, Pamela Mccabe, Jeremy Nix

Teaching Social Studies in the Peach State

Social studies education has always been an important component of K-5 education; however, as dedicated, content-specific instructional time has steadily decreased over the past two decades to give more time to mathematics and specifically English Language Arts, literacy scores have also decreased. Partnering ELA and social studies in the K-5 space allows for students to build their background knowledge in social studies, while increasing their literacy by using instructional resources connected to social studies during the ELA block, and then teaching social studies thinking skills during devoted social studies class time.

Revealing The Stories Of A Place: Designing Curricula On An Island, Ariel Cornett, Delandrea Hall, Kathryn L. Haughney, Cynthia C. Massey, Amanda Wall, Kania Greer

Teaching Social Studies in the Peach State

Ossabaw Island is a Georgia barrier island, accessible solely by boat and protected from development through a public-private partnership between a foundation and the state. This site has the potential to serve as a primary resource for inspiration, education, and lifelong learning. Our study illuminates how one pre-service teacher (PST) and six teacher educators (TEs) experienced an immersive site visit to this local learning environment. We highlight the importance of experiencing places first-hand and using sources (e.g., oral histories) to make content connections. Additionally, the immersive site visit experience allowed us to collaboratively brainstorm place-based curricular units.

The Legacy Of Oscarville: Using Critical Participatory Action Research And Learning Teaching As An Interpretive Process To Sustain A Placeless Place, Leah Panther, Kristie Smith, Mary Mitchelson, Robert Bonner Jr.

Teaching Social Studies in the Peach State

The history of Oscarville, Georgia, nestled within the Lake Lanier region of North Georgia, remains both known and unknown, existing as a significant yet elusive part of local lore and historical retellings. This article delves into the innovative approach of a place-based critical participatory action research program, "Historicizing Oscarville," which engaged teacher candidates and educators in exploring the obscured history of Oscarville. The narrative uncovers the complex layers of settler colonialism, slavery, racial cleansing, and subsequent erasure that characterize Oscarville's past. By employing the framework of Learning Teaching as an Interpretive Process (LTIP) within a place-based education model, the project …

Supporting Middle Grades Pre-Service Teachers In Building Professional Dispositions, Hilary Dack

Current Issues in Middle Level Education

Promoting pre-service teachers' development of professional dispositions through purposefully designed learning experiences may be middle level teacher education's most important contribution to a novice's development from student to teacher. The 2022 Revised Middle Level Teacher Preparation Standards explicitly address this expectation in Standard 5, with Component 5.d noting that middle grades pre-service teachers should become "continuous, collaborative learners who demonstrate knowledgeable, reflective, critical perspectives on their teaching." This article offers detailed illustrations of the approaches one middle grades teacher education program used to intentionally select professional dispositions to target in early coursework and teach those dispositions to candidates. Approaches included: …

Course Correction: Examining 2020’S Middle Level Teacher Education Through A Critical, Antiracist Lens-A Collaborative Self-Study Of Teacher Education Practices, Kristie W. Smith, Kristina N. Falbe

Current Issues in Middle Level Education

The work of teacher education in a 2020’s context is challenging and filled with opportunity. With a diversifying P-12 student body (Love, 2020; Pitts, 2019) and the confluence of social, political, and educational factors (Nieto & Bode, 2018), the complexities of teacher education are vast and fluid. In a historical moment that has included teaching in a time of pandemic, national reckonings over race and injustice, and explicit legislation to guide teaching about social history (Kelly et al, 2023), effective middle level teacher education is multifaceted. It calls for the development of teacher candidates skilled in creating school environments that …

Get Fit! With Math And Lit: A Pilot Program Of Physical Activity, Mathematics, And Literacy With Middle Grades Students Through Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Christine L. Craddock, Brittany Pinkerton

Current Issues in Middle Level Education

In an afterschool program at a university literacy center, we piloted the integration of physical activity with multimodal mathematics and literacy exercises. We aimed to incorporate the three tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) including academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness with middle grades participants by utilizing a sports-based youth development model (SBYD), Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR). Participants participated in 30-minute sessions bi-weekly over two months, which included reflective discussions and journaling to begin and end activities, respectively. Participants were invited to suggest activities during sessions and interact cooperatively with facilitators and peers. They also engaged in …

Female Medical Students’ Lived Experiences Of Financial Stress And Coping, Untara Shaikh, Dr. Kimberlee Bonura

Georgia Public Health Association Annual Meeting & Conference

Financial stress is a pervasive concern among medical students, with documented associations with adverse physical health, psychological morbidity, and ineffective coping. This study focuses on understanding the financial stressors female medical students face and the coping strategies they employ. While financial stress and coping mechanisms have been explored in the literature, a notable gap exists in understanding these dynamics among female students.

The study employed a phenomenological research approach to obtain data from the respondents, where data collection involved face-to-face semi-structured interviews. The Adaptation Model of Nursing, complemented by Lazarus and Folkman's Coping Theory, was a comprehensive framework for analyzing …

That’S Using Your Brain!: Mind-Mapping And Ai Tools For Information Management And Information Literacy Instruction, Ruth L. Baker

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

TheBrain.com is a dynamic, mind-mapping tool you can use to manage your files, links to web sites, and other content–any kind of information you need to collect and manage. You can use your ‘digital brain’ to gather and visualize information from various sources and formats (i.e. create ‘thoughts’). The advantage is you can organize your files and information according to how you think about them, without the limitations of a typical folder-and-file organization system.

Your digital brain is an invaluable tool for collecting and managing information but it also can be used as a tool in the higher education classroom. …

Ethical Considerations In Using Generative Ai In Writing Studies Research, Shiva Mainaly

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

If an AI system like ChatGPT generates text used in a research paper, proper attribution, and delineation of human-written vs. AI-generated text is essential. Research has suggested that many readers cannot reliably distinguish between human and AI writing. Failing to attribute AI writing could constitute plagiarism (Dobrin, 2023). Guidelines need to be established. Similarly, if ChatGPT is used to analyze sensitive interviews or user data from research study participants, appropriate consent, privacy protections, and data security controls must be implemented. Researchers should be transparent about any AI analysis or exposure of protected participant data. On the heels of this comes …

Ai-Powered Learning: Blending Ai With Active Learning In The Information Literacy Classroom, Kevin J. Reagan, Wilhelmina Randtke

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

In 2016, the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education launched in response to more voluminous, less-vetted online information, including misinformation and content farms. Subsequently, the ACRL Framework has been widely adopted, and numerous high-quality lesson plans and resources for teaching the frames already exist, including published lesson plans and textbooks. Now, generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT and other chat bots present new challenges for information literacy educators. For instance, in addition to teaching students how to identify issues such as fake news, the information literacy professional has to address topics such as ethical AI use, AI hallucination …

Beyond Navigating: Empowering Ourselves And Our Communities Through Critical Technology And Information Research, Sarah Appedu

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly being sold to the public as transformative, world-changing, life-improving advancements in human evolution. Information literacy librarians have and will continue to play an instrumental role in challenging and critiquing new technological “advancements” that make their way into the lives and practices of their organizations and communities. However, librarians may be underutilizing the important skills they hold in evaluating complex information sources and systems when helping their communities critically respond to new tools like those powered by artificial intelligence. While emphasizing skills related to source evaluation, identifying algorithmic bias, and critically examining the economic context of …

Getting Student Buy-In On Information Literacy In A Generative Ai Information World, Vincent Larkin

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Even before the emergence of ChatGPT and similar programs, it could be difficult to get students interested in tracking down information sources and evaluating the authority, context and intent of content. With the emergence of generative AI tools, many educators are finding more unattributed or AI generated content in submitted student work, and for the students who use these tools, the speed and perceived authority of these tools may blind them to the difficulty of tracking and crediting the original sources. Given the emergence of these tools, how can we get students to value and put into practice information literacy …

Yes, Use Ai, But Not Like That! Helping Student Researchers Navigate Conflicting Messages About Generative Ai, Ali Krzton, Todd Shipman

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

University students are being encouraged by their peers, or even their institutions, to use generative AI tools to make the research process more efficient and less stressful. However, they are also cautioned against inappropriate use of generative AI by course instructors, research supervisors, and those same institutions. Many librarians are reluctant to enter the discussion and provide instruction in the appropriate use of generative AI, perhaps to avoid the appearance of endorsement. On the other hand, the implications of student use of AI for information literacy cannot be ignored. One possible strategy is for librarians to explore the use of …

Harnessing Generative Ai For Targeted Libguide Development, Autumn Johnson

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

LibGuides are indispensable tools for librarians, facilitating information literacy teaching in a variety of contexts and enhancing the overall learning experience for users. This is particularly true for guides tailored to specific courses. Course guides and others that closely align with student learning objectives and assignment requirements, provide a more immediate and targeted response to user’s needs. Yet, developing guides with such customized content often proves to be a time-consuming process for Librarian creators.

Librarians might consider leveraging generative AI to assist them in creating guides with more focused and timely content, making their work easier and more efficient. Generative …

The Generative Power Of Teamwork: Using Collaboration To Support Genai Literacy, Annelise Sklar, Amanda Roth, Natalie Tagge

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

The potential impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) on the academic community raises numerous questions and answers, many of which have yet to be discovered. As a new and innovative technology, GenAI poses questions about functionality, training data integrity, ethics, intellectual property, and research functionality capabilities. With so many questions and little specific GenAI expertise, librarians at UC San Diego saw an opportunity to bring together experts in various disciplines to address the literacy needs of a campus community and fill the gaps where the campus had no official policy or guidance.

In this poster presentation, you will learn how …

Exploring The Ethical Use Of Ai In Information Product Creation: A Guide For Librarians, Dawn N. Cannon-Rech

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Exploring the Ethical Use of AI in Information Product Creation: A Guide for Librarians

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the way information products are created, raising ethical considerations that demand the attention of educators, researchers, and librarians. This poster presentation aims to delve into the ethical aspects of AI-generated information products, such as papers, Open Educational Resources (OER) materials, images, etc., and to provide practical tips for teaching librarians on how to navigate and address citation rules associated with these products.

Objectives:

1. Understanding AI in Information Product Creation: Explore the key principles behind AI algorithms and …

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How Many Steps To Connect With The Library And A Librarian In Academic Libraries In The Southeast, Viki Stoupenos, Christine Woods Dr.

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Transactional distance is defined as the gap between the learner and the teacher in online classes. In other words, how far away does the learner feel from the teacher or the ability to get help. This definition is applied to how far away the learner feels from the library and the ability to get help from a librarian.

Two important issues in transactional distance are structure and dialogue. Librarians should be aware of the structure of learning materials and have clear visible pathways so that students may reach out to ask for assistance. Websites must have logical structure and students …

A Collaborative Approach To Exploring Generative Ai With Undergraduate English Students, Chrissy O'Grady

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

How can librarians support students in exploring the use of generative AI to aid in the research process? This presentation will discuss a partnership between an academic librarian and an English faculty at a comprehensive state university in fall 2023 and spring 2024. In two sections of a 300-level major English course, students are required to use generative AI for an assignment. The collaboration consists of two information literacy sessions that utilize scaffolded activities. The first session focuses on students using generative AI to aid in their research process. We discuss their experiences using generative AI tools, develop an understanding …

Lesson Planning To Active Engagement: Harnessing Ai Tools For Academic Library Instruction, Helen E. Bischoff, Lisa Nichols

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Love it or hate it, AI is here to stay. So how can librarians embrace AI in the classroom and use it to their advantage when working with students? Drawing from our own experiences in K12 and university settings, we will highlight AI tools instruction librarians can use to support their own teaching and learning in terms of lesson planning, classroom activities, and research consultations. We will demonstrate AI tools we have used such as ChatGPT and Semantic Scholar to engage middle school and undergraduate students and offer tips for promoting thoughtful, ethical use of AI for learning. We will …

Brewing Scholarly Connections: The Evolution Of Scholar Sips At Gs Libraries, Jessica L. Swaringen

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

The Scholar Sips lecture series at Georgia Southern University aims to facilitate student-faculty connections through intellectual exploration. Scholar Sips provides a space for faculty to present and discuss their recent, topical research with students who may or may not be in their classes already. Scholar Sips participants are also treated to complimentary coffee and tea. The library acts as a neutral third-space that levels the power dynamic between professor and student, positioning them both as explorers of a given topic. This presentation will describe the philosophical approach behind Scholar Sips, its gradual transformation over three semesters, as well as strategies …

Information Literacy As A Discipline In The Age Of Ai: A Conversation, Karen Kaufmann, Clarence Maybee

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Is Information Literacy (IL) a discipline in itself? How does that situate with our current climate of AI in the information ecology?

The presentation will focus on the rationale for recognizing IL as a discipline, and the inquiry of IL as a Discipline in the age of AI. In the session, we will explore the opportunities afforded by recognizing information literacy as a discipline. Participants will be able to share their ideas of what would be included in an IL curriculum or research inquiry situated in the AI information ecology via an online question-and-answer platform inviting small discussions and an …

Chatgpt And Friends: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Lara Little

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

ChatGPT and similar large language models have taken the world by storm. Many librarians and teachers are trying to get up to speed on these new technologies and understand how they will affect information literacy, the classroom, and more. This presentation will give a not-too-technical overview of how these technologies work, what they can be used for, ethical issues of hallucinations, copyright, and potential student plagiarism, and considerations for libraries and librarians to take into account as students and teachers embrace (or avoid!) this form of artificial intelligence. Attendees will come away with a better understanding of what ChatGPT and …